Madame Bovary (32 page)

But the merchant exclaimed that that was not right; they knew each other; did he doubt her? What childishness! She insisted, however, that he take the chain at least, and Lheureux had already put it in his pocket and was on his way out when she called him back.

“You can keep it all in your shop. As for the cloak”—she seemed to be
thinking it over—“don’t bring that either; just give me the tailor’s address and ask them to have it ready for me.”

They were to make their escape the following month. She would leave Yonville as though to run some errands in Rouen. Rodolphe would have reserved their seats, acquired passports, and even written to Paris, in order to have the coach to themselves as far as Marseille, where they would buy a barouche and, from there, continue without stopping along the Genoa route. She would take care to send her luggage to Lheureux’s, whence it would be loaded directly onto the
Hirondelle
so that no one would suspect anything; and in all of this, the subject of her child never came up. Rodolphe avoided talking about it; perhaps she was not thinking about it.

He wanted another two weeks, in order to finish making some arrangements; then, at the end of one week, he asked for two more; then he said he was ill; after that he went on a trip; the month of August passed; and after all these delays, they settled irrevocably on September 4, a Monday.

At last Saturday arrived, two days before the Monday.

Rodolphe came that night, earlier than usual.

“Is everything ready?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

Then they strolled around a flower bed, and went to sit near the terrace, on the edge of the wall.

“You’re sad,” said Emma.

“No, why?”

And yet he was looking at her strangely, with tenderness.

“Is it because you’re going away?” she went on, “because you’re leaving the things you love, because you’re leaving your life here? Oh, I understand! … But in the whole world I have nothing. You’re everything to me. And I’ll be everything to you, I’ll be your family, your homeland; I’ll take care of you, I’ll love you.”

“How enchanting you are!” he said, taking her in his arms.

“Am I really?” she said with a laugh of voluptuous pleasure. “Do you love me? Now, swear you do!”

“Do I love you? Do I love you? I adore you, my love!”

The moon, perfectly round and deep red, was rising straight from the earth, at the far end of the meadow. It climbed quickly among the
branches of the poplars, which hid it in places like a black curtain full of holes. Then it appeared in the empty sky, dazzling white, filling it with light; and, slowing, it spread over the river a wide stain that formed an infinity of stars; and the gleam of silver seemed to twist all the way down to the bottom, like a headless snake covered with luminous scales. It resembled, too, some monstrous candelabra streaming all down its length with molten drops of diamond. The mild night opened out around them; layers of shadow filled the leaves. Emma, her eyes half closed, inhaled with deep sighs the cool breeze that was blowing. They did not speak to each other, so lost were they in their pervasive reveries. The affection of earlier days returned to their hearts, as abundant and silent as the flowing river, as
soft as the perfume borne to them by the mock-orange flowers, and cast over their memories shadows more colossal and more melancholy than those of the motionless willows that lay across the grass. Often some nocturnal creature, a hedgehog or weasel, setting off on its hunt, would disturb the leaves, or now and then they would hear a single ripe peach dropping from the espalier.

“What a lovely night!” said Rodolphe.

“We’ll have many more!” said Emma.

And, as though talking to herself:

“Yes, it will be good to travel … Yet why is my heart so sad? Is it fear of the unknown … ? Or the effect of leaving my familiar ways … ? Or … ? No, it’s because I’m too happy! How weak I am, aren’t I? Forgive me!”

“There’s still time!” he cried. “Think about it carefully, you might be sorry.”

“Never!” she said impetuously.

And, moving close to him:

“What harm can come to me, after all? There’s not a desert, not a precipice, not an ocean that I wouldn’t cross with you. When we’re living together, our life will be like an embrace that becomes closer and more complete every day! There’ll be nothing to bother us, no worries, nothing in our way! We’ll be alone together, we’ll be everything to each other, forever … Say something, answer me.”

He answered at regular intervals: “Yes … yes! …” She had slipped her fingers into his hair, and she kept repeating in a childlike voice, despite the large tears that were flowing from her eyes:

“Rodolphe! Rodolphe! … Ah! Rodolphe, dear little Rodolphe!”

Midnight struck.

“Midnight!” she said. “Now it’s tomorrow! One more day!”

He stood up to leave; and as if this motion of his were the signal for their departure, Emma, suddenly cheerful, said:

“You have the passports?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t forgotten anything?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course.”

“The Hôtel de Provence—that’s where you’ll be waiting for me? … At noon?”

He nodded.

“Till tomorrow, then!” said Emma with a last caress.

And she watched him walk away.

He did not turn around. She ran after him, and, leaning over by the water’s edge between the bushes:

“Till tomorrow!” she cried.

He was already on the other side of the stream, walking quickly across the meadow.

After a few minutes, Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her in her white dress gradually vanish into the darkness like a phantom, his heart began to pound so hard that he leaned against a tree to keep from falling.

“What an idiot I am!” he said with a dreadful oath. “Well, it doesn’t matter; she was a lovely mistress!”

And immediately, Emma’s beauty, and all the pleasures of their love, reappeared before him. At first he softened, then he turned against her.

“Because, really,” he exclaimed, gesticulating, “I can’t abandon my own country. I can’t assume responsibility for a child.”

He was saying these things to strengthen himself in his resolve.

“And besides—the difficulties, the expense … Oh, no! No, no, no! It would have been too stupid!”

As soon as Rodolphe arrived home, he sat down quickly at his desk under the stag’s head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But once the pen was in his hand, he could not think of anything, so, leaning on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded into a distant past, as if the decision he had just made had suddenly placed an immense gap between them.

To recapture something of her, he went to the cupboard by the head of his bed and took out an old Reims cookie tin in which he was in the habit of putting the letters women sent to him, and there escaped from it a smell of damp dust and withered roses. First he saw a pocket handkerchief covered with pale droplets. It was one of hers, from when she had had a nosebleed, once when they were out together; he had forgotten. Near it, knocking against the corners of the box, was the miniature Emma had given him; he found her clothing pretentious and her
sidelong gaze
most pitiful in its effect; then, because he had been studying this picture and summoning up a recollection of its original, Emma’s features gradually became confused in his memory, as if the living face and the painted face, rubbing together, had obliterated each other. Finally he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations concerning their trip, as short,
technical, and urgent as business letters. He wanted to look at the long ones again, the ones from earlier times; in order to find them at the bottom of the tin, Rodolphe disturbed all the others; and mechanically he began rummaging through the pile of papers and other things, rediscovering in disarray some bouquets, a garter, a black mask, pins, and hair—hair!—brown, blond, some of which, even, caught on the iron fittings of the box and broke when it was opened.

Thus idling through his souvenirs, he examined the handwriting and the styles of the letters, as varied as their spelling. They were tender or jolly, facetious, melancholy; there were some that demanded love and others that demanded money. A single word would cause him to recall certain faces, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he recalled nothing.

Indeed, these women, flocking into his thoughts all at the same time, impeded and diminished one another, as though leveled by the sameness of his love. And picking up fistfuls of the disordered letters, he amused
himself for a few minutes letting them fall in cascades from his right hand into his left. At last, bored, sleepy, Rodolphe carried the tin back to the cupboard, saying to himself:

“What a load of nonsense! …”

Which summed up his opinion; for his pleasures, like schoolchildren in a schoolyard, had so trampled his heart that nothing green grew there, and whatever passed through it, more heedless than the children, did not even leave behind its name, as they did, carved on the wall.

“Come, now,” he said to himself, “let’s get started!”

He wrote:

Be brave, Emma! Be brave! I don’t want to ruin your life …

“That’s true, after all,” thought Rodolphe; “I’m acting in her interest; I’m being honest.”

Did you weigh your decision carefully? Were you aware of the abyss into which I was drawing you, my poor angel? You weren’t, were you? You were going ahead, foolishly trusting, believing in happiness, in the future … Oh, poor wretches that we are! Lunatics!

Rodolphe stopped at this point, looking for some good excuse.

“What if I told her I’d lost my entire fortune? … Oh, no! Anyway, that wouldn’t put a stop to anything. I’d just have to go through the whole thing again later. Can one ever make women of that sort listen to reason?”

He reflected, then added:

I will never forget you, believe me, and I will continue to be deeply devoted to you; but one day, sooner or later, this ardor would no doubt have diminished (such being the destiny of all things human)! We would have had moments of weariness, and who knows, even, if I would not have suffered the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse and partaking of it myself, since I would have been the cause of it. The very idea of the sorrows that burden you is torture to me, Emma! Forget me! Why did I ever have to meet you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my fault? Oh, Lord, no! Fate is to blame, only fate!

“There’s a word that always has a nice effect,” he said to himself.

Oh, if you had been one of those women with a frivolous heart—who certainly exist—I could have selfishly experimented without putting you at risk. But the delicious exaltation of feeling that is at once your charm and your torment has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. I, too, did not think about it at first, and I lay down to rest in the shade of that ideal happiness, as in the poisonous shade of the fatal manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences.

“Perhaps she’ll think I’m giving this up out of greed … Oh, well, too bad! It doesn’t matter, I must be done with it!”

The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we had gone, it would have pursued us. You would have had to submit to indiscreet questions, calumny, scorn, perhaps insult. You, insulted! Oh! … When my wish is that I might seat you on a throne! When I will carry the thought of you away with me like a talisman! For I am punishing myself by exile for all the harm I have done you. I am going away. Where? I have no idea—I have lost my reason! Adieu! Be good always! Preserve the memory of the wretch who lost you. Teach my name to your child, so that she may repeat it in her prayers.

The wicks of the two candles were flickering. Rodolphe stood up to go close the window and, when he had sat down again, said:

“I think that’s all. Oh! One more thing, for fear that she’ll come
pester me
.”

I will be far away when you read these sad lines; for I am determined to flee as quickly as possible in order to avoid the temptation of seeing you again. This is no time for weakness! I will come back; and perhaps, in time to come, we will talk together quite calmly of our old love. Adieu!

And there was one last adieu, separated into two words:
A Dieu!
which he judged to be in excellent taste.

“Now, how shall I sign it?” he asked himself. “Your devoted? … No. Your friend? … Yes, that’s it.”

Your friend.

He reread his letter. It seemed good to him.

“Poor little woman!” he thought with emotion. “She’ll think I have no more feeling than a stone; there should have been a few tears on it; but I can’t cry; it’s not my fault.” Then, having poured some water into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger in it and let fall from above a fat drop, which made a pale blot on the ink; finally, looking to seal the letter, he came upon the
Amor nel cor
signet ring.

“This is scarcely appropriate under the circumstances … Oh, well! It doesn’t matter!”

After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.

The next day, when he got up (at about two o’clock—he had slept late), Rodolphe sent for a servant to gather a basket of apricots for him. He placed the letter in the bottom, under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his plowboy, to take it carefully to Madame Bovary. This was the means he used to correspond with her, sending her either fruit or game, according to the season.

“If she asks about me,” he said, “you will answer that I’ve gone on a trip. You must give the basket only to her, put it into her own hands … Go on now, and take care!”

Girard put on his new smock, tied his handkerchief around the apricots, and, walking with long, heavy strides in his thick hobnailed clogs, tranquilly set off down the path to Yonville.

When he reached her house, Madame Bovary was arranging a bundle of linens on the kitchen table with Félicité.

“Here,” said the servant. “Our master sends you this.”