Madame Bovary (19 page)

As she was contemplating him, deriving a sort of depraved sensual pleasure from her irritation, Léon took a step closer. The cold that was turning him pale seemed to add something softer and more languorous to his face; between his cravat and his neck, the loose collar of his shirt revealed his skin; an earlobe showed below a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes, lifted toward the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and lovely than mountain lakes mirroring the sky.

“Naughty boy!” the apothecary shouted suddenly.

And he ran over to his son, who had just plunged into a heap of lime
to coat his shoes with white. At the scoldings that rained down on him, Napoléon began to howl, while Justin wiped off his feet with a twist of straw. But a knife was needed; Charles offered his.

“Ah!” she said to herself; “he carries a knife in his pocket, like a peasant!”

The frost was descending, and they turned back toward Yonville.

That evening, Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbors’ house, and when Charles had gone, when she was alone, the comparison returned with the sharpness of an almost immediate sensation and with the lengthening of perspective that memory gives to objects. Gazing from her bed at the bright fire that was burning, she once again saw Léon standing, as she had seen him out there, flexing his cane with one hand and with the other holding Athalie, who was sucking peacefully on a bit of ice. She found him charming; she could not stop thinking about him; she recalled other things he had done on other days, words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she said again, thrusting her lips out as though for a kiss:

“Yes. Charming! Charming! … Is he in love?” she asked herself. “Who is he in love with? … Why … it’s me!”

All the evidence arose before her at once, her heart leaped. The flame in the fireplace cast a joyful, tremulous light on the ceiling; she turned onto her back, stretching her arms.

Then began the eternal lament: “Oh, if only heaven had willed it! Why can’t it be? What kept it from happening? …”

When Charles returned home at midnight, she appeared to wake up, and when he made some noise getting undressed, she complained of a migraine; then asked casually what had happened during the evening.

“Monsieur Léon,” he said, “went upstairs early.”

She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep with her soul full of a new enchantment.

The next day, at nightfall, she had a visit from Monsieur Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant. He was a clever man, this shopkeeper.

Born a Gascon, but now a Norman, he combined his southern volubility with a Cauchois cunning. His soft, fat, beardless face looked as though it had been dyed with a decoction of clear licorice, and his white hair intensified the harsh brilliance of his little black eyes. No one knew what he had been before: peddler, said some; banker at Routot, according
to others. What is certain is that he could do complicated calculations in his head that dismayed even Binet. Polite to the point of obsequiousness, he stood with his back always half inclined, in the position of someone making a bow or extending an invitation.

After leaving his hat with its band of crepe by the door, he placed a green box on the table and began by complaining to Madame, with a profusion of compliments, that he had failed to gain her confidence before now. A poor shop like his was not destined to attract so
elegant
a lady; he stressed the word. However, she had only to place an order, and he would take it upon himself to provide her with whatever she might want, whether in the way of haberdashery, linens, knitwear, or fancy goods; for he went to the city four times a month, regularly. He dealt with the best houses. She could mention his name at the Trois Frères, the Barbe d’Or, or the Grand Sauvage; all the gentlemen there knew him as well as their own brothers! Today, he had come to show Madame, as he was passing by, a few articles he happened to have, thanks to a very rare opportunity. And he withdrew from the box half a dozen embroidered collars.

Madame Bovary examined them.

“I don’t need anything,” she said.

Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and, lastly, four eggcups made of coconut shell with openwork carving done by convicts. Then, both hands on the table, his neck outstretched, his upper body leaning forward, his mouth open, he followed Emma’s gaze as it roamed indecisively over these goods. From time to time, as if to remove some dust, he would give a flick of a fingernail to the silk of the scarves, which were unfolded at full length; and they would ripple with a soft sound, the gold spangles in their fabric sparkling like little stars in the greenish light of the dusk.

“How much are they?”

“A trifle,” he answered, “a mere trifle; but there’s no hurry; whenever you like; we’re not Jews!”

She thought for a few moments, and ended by again thanking Monsieur Lheureux, who replied without emotion:

“Very well, we’ll come to an understanding later on; I’ve always gotten along with the ladies—except in the case of my own wife, that is!”

Emma smiled.

“What I wanted to tell you,” he went on with a simple, good-natured
air, after his joke, “was that I’m not worried about the money … I could give you some, if need be.”

She made a gesture of surprise.

“Ah!” he said quickly, in a low voice; “I wouldn’t have to go far to find it for you; you can count on that!”

And he began asking after Père Tellier, the proprietor of the Café Français, whom Monsieur Bovary was treating at the time.

“What’s the matter with him, anyway, old Père Tellier? … He coughs hard enough to shake the whole house, and I’m afraid he’ll soon be needing a wooden overcoat more than a flannel undershirt. He was such a wild one when he was young! The sort, madame, that doesn’t have the least self-discipline! He burned himself to a crisp with eau-de-vie! But all the same, it’s distressing to see an old acquaintance go.”

And while he was buckling up his box, he talked on in this way about the doctor’s patients.

“It’s the weather, no doubt,” he said, looking at the windowpanes with a glum expression, “that’s causing all this illness! I myself don’t feel altogether up to the mark; in fact, one of these days I should come and consult Monsieur about a pain I have in my back. Well, goodbye, Madame Bovary; at your disposal; your very humble servant!”

And he closed the door gently behind him.

Emma had dinner brought to her in her bedroom, by the fireside, on a tray; she took a long time eating; everything seemed good to her.

“How sensible I was!” she said to herself, thinking about the scarves.

She heard footsteps on the stairs: it was Léon. She rose, and, from the top of the chest of drawers, took the uppermost dishcloth from a pile to be hemmed. She appeared very busy when he came in.

The conversation languished, Madame Bovary abandoning it every minute, while he himself remained quite ill at ease. Sitting in a low chair, next to the fire, he was turning the ivory needle case in his fingers; she was plying her needle, or, from time to time, gathering the folds of the cloth with her nail. She did not speak; he said nothing, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her words.

“Poor boy!” she was thinking.

“What doesn’t she like about me?” he was wondering.

At last, however, Léon said that one of these days he would have to go to Rouen, on business connected with his practice.

“Your music subscription has run out—should I renew it?”

“No,” she answered.

“Why?”

“Because …”

And, pursing her lips, she slowly drew out a long needleful of gray thread.

This work irritated Léon. It seemed to be roughening the tips of Emma’s fingers; a compliment occurred to him, but he did not risk it.

“Then you’re giving it up?” he went on.

“What?” she said quickly. “Music? Oh, heavens, yes! Haven’t I my house to look after, my husband to care for, a thousand things, really, so many duties that are more important!”

She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then she pretended to be worried. Two or three times she even repeated:

“He’s so good!”

The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this affection of hers surprised him unpleasantly; nevertheless, he joined in praising him, as he had heard everyone else do, he said, especially the pharmacist.

“Ah! He’s a fine man,” said Emma.

“Indeed he is,” said the clerk.

And he began to talk about Madame Homais, whose very slovenly appearance usually inclined them to laugh.

“What does that matter?” Emma interrupted. “A good wife and mother doesn’t worry about how she looks.”

Then she fell silent again.

It was the same on the following days; her talk, her manner, everything changed. She was seen to take her housekeeping to heart, return to church regularly, and manage her servant more strictly.

She took Berthe back from the wet nurse. Félicité would bring her in when visitors came, and Madame Bovary would undress her to show off her arms and legs. She would declare that she adored children; they were her consolation, her joy, her folly, and she would accompany her caresses with lyrical effusions that, to anyone not from Yonville, would have recalled La Sachette in
Notre-Dame de Paris.

When Charles came home, he would find his slippers placed next to the embers to warm. Now his vests no longer lacked a lining, nor his
shirts buttons, and it was even a pleasure to look into the cupboard and contemplate all the cotton caps arranged in equal piles. She no longer sulked, as she once had, at taking a walk in the garden; whatever he proposed was always agreed to, even though she might not understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur;—and when Léon saw him by the fireside, after dinner, his hands on his stomach, his feet on the firedogs, his cheek flushed as he digested his food, his eyes moist from happiness, the child crawling over the carpet, and this woman with her slender figure leaning over the back of his chair to kiss him on the forehead:

“What madness!” he would say to himself. “And how can I reach her?”

Thus, she seemed to him so virtuous and inaccessible that all hope, even the faintest, abandoned him.

But by renouncing her in this way, he was placing her in an extraordinary situation. She was divested, in his eyes, of the fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to hope for; and in his heart, she rose higher and higher, withdrawing further from him in a magnificent, soaring apotheosis. His was one of those pure sentiments that do not impede the pursuit of one’s life, that one cultivates because they are so rare, and the loss of which would afflict one more than their possession delights.

Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black bands of hair, her large eyes, her straight nose, her birdlike step, always remaining silent now, did she not seem to pass through life scarcely touching it and to bear on her forehead the faint imprint of some sublime predestination? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that in her presence one felt captivated by an icy charm, the way one shivers in a church amid the fragrance of flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. Nor did others escape this seduction. The pharmacist liked to say:

“She’s a woman of great capacity. She would not be out of place as the wife of a subprefect.”

The village housewives admired her thrift, the patients her courtesy, the poor her charity.

But she was filled with desires, with rage, with hatred. That dress with its straight folds concealed a heart in turmoil, and those reticent lips said
nothing about its torment. She was in love with Léon, and she wanted to be alone so as to delight more comfortably in his image. The sight of him in person disturbed the sensual pleasure of this meditation. Emma trembled at the sound of his footsteps; then, in his presence, her emotions subsided, leaving only an immense astonishment that ended in sadness.

Léon did not know, when he left her house in despair, that she would rise immediately after he went, in order to watch him in the street. She would concern herself with his comings and goings; she would study his face; she would invent an elaborate story to have a pretext for visiting his room. The pharmacist’s wife seemed to her very fortunate to sleep under the same roof; and her thoughts were continually settling on that house, like the pigeons of the Lion d’Or coming to dip their pink feet and white wings in the channels of its eaves. But the more conscious Emma was of her love, the more she suppressed it, to keep it from being visible and to diminish it. She would have liked Léon to suspect it; and she imagined chance events, catastrophes, that would have made that possible. What held her back was probably laziness or fear, and discretion, as well. She would think that she had kept him at too great a distance, that time had run out,
that everything was lost. Then the pride, the joy of saying to herself, “I am virtuous,” and of adopting an air of resignation as she looked at herself in the mirror, would console her a little for the sacrifice she thought she was making.

Then her physical desires, her cravings for money, and the fits of melancholy born of her passion, all merged in a single torment;—and instead of putting it out of her mind, she clung to it more, provoking herself to the point of pain and seeking every opportunity to do so. She was irritated by a dish badly served or a door half open, lamented the velvet she did not have, the happiness that eluded her, her too-lofty dreams, her too-narrow house.

What exasperated her was that Charles seemed unaware of her suffering. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed an idiotic insult, and his certainty of this, ingratitude. For whom, then, was she being so good? Wasn’t he himself the obstacle to all happiness, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp-pointed prong of that complex belt that bound her on all sides?

And so she directed at him alone the manifold hatred born of her
troubles, and every attempt she made to diminish that hatred only increased it; for her useless effort gave her yet another reason for despair and contributed even more to her estrangement from him. Her own gentleness goaded her to rebel. The mediocrity of her domestic life provoked her to sensual fantasies, matrimonial affection to adulterous desires. She wished Charles would beat her, so that she could more justly detest him, avenge herself. She was sometimes surprised at the shocking conjectures that entered her mind; and yet she had to keep smiling, hear herself say again and again that she was happy, pretend to be happy, let everyone believe it!