Chương Chương 9 · Part 1 Chapter Nine

. Part 1 Chapter Nine

Often when Charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the

folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar case.

She looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odour of the lining--a

mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount’s? Perhaps

it was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some

rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had

occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the

pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the

canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and

all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same

silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away

with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-mantelled

chimneys between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes;

he was at Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague

name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it

rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes,

even on the labels of her pomade-pots.

At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts

singing the “Marjolaine,” she awoke, and listened to the noise of the

iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon

deadened by the soil. “They will be there to-morrow!” she said to

herself.

And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing

villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the

end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into

which her dream died.

She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map

she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at

every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white

squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of

her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind

and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles

of theatres.

She took in “La Corbeille,” a lady’s journal, and the “Sylphe des

Salons.” She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of

first nights, races, and soirees, took interest in the debut of a

singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the

addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In

Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and

George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires.

Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages

while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always

returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made

comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened

round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened

out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.

Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma’s eyes in an

atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult

were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma

perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in

themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over

polished floors in drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables

covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses with

trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the

society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o’clock; the

women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men,

unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to

death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards

the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants,

where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the

motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as

kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence

outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of

storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it

was lost, with no particular place and as if non-existent. The nearer

things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them.

All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class

imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a

peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as

far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and passions. She confused

in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart,

elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like

Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs

by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all

the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be

separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence,

from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled

flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias, nor from the flashing of precious

stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries.

The lad from the posting house who came to groom the mare every morning

passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes

in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this was the

groom in knee-britches with whom she had to be content! His work done,

he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put up

his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the

servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could

into the manger.

To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma

took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet

face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in

the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before

coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her--wanted to make a

lady’s-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not

to be sent away; and as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,

Félicité every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone

in her bed after she had said her prayers.

Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions.

Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that

showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with

three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and

her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell

over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case,

pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she

dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,

and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She

longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same

time to die and to live in Paris.

Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on

farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid

spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined

basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he

found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed

woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say

whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous

her chemise.

She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of

arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on

her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the

servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last

mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the

watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two

large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory necessaire with a

silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements

the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the

senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust

sanding all along the narrow path of his life.

He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established.

The country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the

children, never went to the public house, and, moreover, his morals

inspired confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest

complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact

only prescribed sedatives, from time to time and emetic, a footbath,

or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people

copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the

“devil’s own wrist.”

Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in “La Ruche Medicale,”

a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little

after dinner, but in about five minutes the warmth of the room added to

the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin

on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the

lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was

not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their

books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism

sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat?

She could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been

illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers’, repeated in the

newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition.

An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat

humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled

relatives. When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma

inveighed loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He

kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with

shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window

in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.

“What a man! What a man!” she said in a low voice, biting her lips.

Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his

manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles;

after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup

he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting

fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up

to the temples.

Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest unto his

waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the dirty gloves he was

going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it

was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation.

Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in

a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the “upper ten” that she

had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an

ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to

her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to

the pendulum of the clock.

At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to

happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the

solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of

the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would

bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a

shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the

portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that

day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that

it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for

the morrow.

Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear trees

began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.

From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to

October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d’Andervilliers would give

another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or

visits.

After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained

empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would

thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing

nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some

event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences and

the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it so!

The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.

She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her?

Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking

with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel

the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while

boring herself with practicing. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery

she left in the cupboard. What was the good? What was the good? Sewing

irritated her. “I have read everything,” she said to herself. And she

sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.

How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull

attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over

some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the

highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and

the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away

over the fields.

But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the

peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed children skipping along

in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six

men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door

of the inn.

The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with

rime, and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass,

sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o’clock the lamp

had to be lighted.

On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the

cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one

to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the

espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent

under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the

many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the

curé in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right

foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white

scabs on his face.

Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with

the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever.

She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of

shame restrained her.

Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skullcap opened

the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre

over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by

three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the

bell of a public house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear

the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser’s shop

creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving

of a fashion-plate stuck against a windowpane and the wax bust of a

woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted

calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big

town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour, near the

theatre--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church,

sombre and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she

always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skullcap over

his ears and his vest of lasting.

Sometimes in the afternoon outside the window of her room, the head of a

man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with

a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately

began and on the organ, in a little drawing room, dancers the size of

a finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock

coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the sofas,

the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking glass held together

at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle,

looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and again,

while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone,

with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his

shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music

escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under

a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at

the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted

lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless

sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the

flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream

to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some coppers

in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ

on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him going.

But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this

small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking

door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life

seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the boiled beef there

rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow

eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused

herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth table cover with the point

of her knife.

She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame

Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much

surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty,

now passed whole days without dressing, wore grey cotton stockings, and

burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since

they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that

Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth

of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow

her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that

mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she

had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good

woman did not interfere again.

Emma was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself,

then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, the next

cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then,

stifling, threw open the windows and put on light dresses. After she had

well scolded her servant she gave her presents or sent her out to see

neighbours, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her

purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible

to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always

retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal

hands.

Towards the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself

brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes.

Charles being with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the

room, spat on the firedogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and

municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with

a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover she no

longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she

set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which

others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all of which

made her husband open his eyes widely.

Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue from it? Yet

she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen

duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she

execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls

to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent

pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not know, but that these

must surely yield.

She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart.

Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried

only seemed to irritate her the more.

On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this

over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which

she remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was

pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms.

As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her

illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea,

began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere.

From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and

completely lost her appetite.

It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and

“when he was beginning to get on there.” Yet if it must be! He took her

to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of

air was needed.

After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that

in the Neufchâtel arrondissement there was a considerable market town

called Yonville-l’Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a

week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the

number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what

his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being

satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma’s

health did not improve.

One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer,

something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet.

The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin

ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared

up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the

cinders, slowly devoured. She watched it burn.

The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold

lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black

butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney.

When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant.

Part II