Madame Bovary (42 page)

“How in the world did this get into my boot?”

“It probably fell out of that old box of invoices,” she answered, “on the edge of the shelf.”

From that moment on, her life was no more than a confection of lies in which she wrapped her love, as though in veils, to hide it.

Lying became a need, a mania, a pleasure, to the point that if she said she had gone down the right side of the street yesterday, one could be sure she had gone down the left.

One morning when she had just set off, as was her habit, rather lightly dressed, there was a sudden snowfall; and as Charles was watching the weather out the window, he caught sight of Monsieur Bournisien in the
boc
belonging to Sieur Tuvache, who was driving him to Rouen. So he went downstairs to entrust the clergyman with a thick shawl so that he might deliver it to Madame, as soon as he should reach the Croix Rouge. Scarcely had he arrived at the inn than Bournisien asked where the wife of the Yonville doctor was. The hotel keeper answered that she spent very little time at her establishment. And so, that evening, when he recognized Madame Bovary in the
Hirondelle
, the curé told her about his difficulty, without appearing, however, to attach any importance to it; for he commenced singing the praises of a preacher who at that time was performing wonders in the cathedral and whom all the ladies
were rushing to hear.

It did not matter that he had not asked for explanations, others might later prove less discreet. And so she felt it useful to get out at the Croix
Rouge, each time, so that the good people of her village who saw her on the stairs would not suspect anything.

One day, however, Monsieur Lheureux encountered her as she was leaving the Hôtel de Boulogne on Léon’s arm; and she was afraid, imagining that he would talk. He was not so stupid.

But three days later, he entered her room, closed the door, and said:

“I’m afraid I need some money.”

She declared that she could not give him any. Lheureux complained profusely and recalled all the kindnesses he had shown her.

Indeed, of the two notes signed by Charles, Emma had so far paid only one. As for the second, the shopkeeper, upon her entreaty, had consented to replace it by two others, which themselves had been renewed for quite a long term. Then he drew from his pocket a list of goods not paid for, namely the curtains, the carpet, the material for the armchairs, several dresses, and various toilet articles, whose value amounted to the sum of two thousand francs, more or less.

She bowed her head; he went on:

“But if you have no cash, you have
possessions.
”

And he mentioned a wretched, tumbledown cottage situated in Barneville, near Aumale, which did not bring in much. It had once been part of a little farm sold by the elder Monsieur Bovary—for Lheureux knew everything, even its area in hectares and the name of the neighbors.

“In your place,” he was saying, “I would liquidate the debt, and I would still have whatever money was left over.”

She pleaded the difficulty of finding a buyer; he offered the hope of locating one; but she asked what she would have to do so that she would be able to sell it.

“Don’t you have the power of attorney?” he answered.

The words came to her like a gust of fresh air.

“Leave me the note,” said Emma.

“Oh, it’s not worth the bother!” Lheureux said.

He came back the following week and boasted that, after some effort, he had in the end discovered a certain Langlois who, for a long time now, had been coveting the property without making known his price.

“The price doesn’t matter!” she cried.

On the contrary, it was necessary to wait, to sound the fellow out. The
thing was worth the trouble of a trip, and as she could not make that trip, he offered to go to the place in person to confer with Langlois. On his return, he announced that the buyer was proposing four thousand francs.

Emma beamed at this news.

“Frankly,” he added, “that’s a good price.”

She received half the sum immediately, and when she was about to settle his account, the merchant said to her:

“To be perfectly honest, it pains me to see you hand over such a
significant
sum all at once.”

Then she looked at the banknotes; and, dreaming of the infinite numbers of meetings represented by those two thousand francs:

“Why … What … ?” she stammered.

“Oh!” he replied, laughing good-naturedly, “one can put whatever one likes on a bill. Don’t you think I know something about household affairs?”

And he looked at her fixedly, all the while holding two long pieces of paper in his hand and sliding them back and forth between his fingertips. At last, he opened his billfold and spread out on the table four promissory notes, each for a thousand francs.

“Sign these for me,” he said, “and keep all of it.”

She cried out, shocked.

“But if I give you the surplus,” answered Monsieur Lheureux shamelessly, “aren’t I actually doing you a service?”

And, taking a pen, he wrote at the bottom of the bill: “Received from Madame Bovary, four thousand francs.”

“What are you worried about, since in six months you’ll be receiving the balance on your shack, and I’m making the last note fall due after that payment?”

Emma was becoming a little confused by his calculations, and she felt a ringing in her ears as if gold coins were bursting out of their sacks and clinking on the floor all around her. At last Lheureux explained that he had a friend named Vinçart, a banker at Rouen, who would discount these four notes, and then he himself would return the surplus of the real debt to Madame.

But instead of two thousand francs, he brought only eighteen hundred,
because this friend Vinçart (as was
only right
) had taken a deduction of two hundred, to cover commission and discount.

Then he casually requested a receipt.

“You understand … in business … sometimes … And with the date, please, the date.”

A vista of attainable fantasies then opened before Emma. She had enough prudence to put aside a thousand ecus, with which the first three notes, when they fell due, were paid; but the fourth, by chance, arrived at the house on a Thursday, and Charles, stunned, waited patiently for his wife’s return to hear her explanations.

If she had not told him about this note, it was to spare him domestic worries; she sat down on his knee, caressed him, talked lovingly to him, made a long enumeration of all the indispensable things she had taken on credit.

“So you’ll have to agree that, considering how many things there were, that wasn’t so expensive.”

Charles, at his wits’ end, soon had recourse to the eternal Lheureux, who promised to calm things down, if Monsieur would sign two notes to him, one of which would be for seven hundred francs, payable in three months. To put himself in a position to do this, he wrote his mother a touching letter. Instead of sending an answer, she came herself; and when Emma wanted to know if he had gotten anything from her:

“Yes,” he answered. “But she’s asking to see the bill.”

The next day, at dawn, Emma hurried to Monsieur Lheureux to beg him to draw up another note, which would not be for more than a thousand francs; for if she were to show the one for four thousand, she would have had to say that she had paid off two-thirds of it and confess, consequently, to the sale of the building, the negotiation of which was skillfully handled by the merchant and actually not made known until later.

Despite the very low price of each article, the elder Madame Bovary did not fail to find the expenditure unduly high.

“Couldn’t you do without a carpet? Why replace the fabric on the armchairs? In my day, they had just one armchair in a house, for the old people—at least, it was like that in my mother’s house, and she was a respectable woman, I can assure you. Not everyone can be rich! No fortune can hold out against constant wastefulness! I would blush to
pamper myself the way you do! and yet I’m an old woman, I need care and attention … What a lot! what a lot of frills and frippery! What! silk for lining, at two francs! … whereas you can find muslin at ten sous, even at eight sous, that does the job perfectly.”

Emma, lying back in the love seat, replied with the greatest calm:

“Oh, madame, that’s enough! that’s enough! …”

The other continued to lecture her, predicting that they would end up in the poorhouse. Anyway, it was Bovary’s fault. Fortunately, he had promised to cancel that power of attorney …

“What?”

“Ah! He swore to me he would,” the good woman went on.

Emma opened the window, called out to Charles, and the poor fellow was forced to confess the promise extracted from him by his mother.

Emma vanished, then quickly returned, majestically handing her a large piece of paper.

“I thank you,” said the old woman.

And she threw the power of attorney into the fire.

Emma burst into a strident, harsh laughter that went on and on: she was having an attack of hysterics.

“Oh, my God!” cried Charles. “You’re at fault, too! You come and make trouble for her! …”

His mother, shrugging, claimed
it was all just playacting.

But Charles, rebelling for the first time, took up his wife’s defense, so that the elder Madame Bovary made up her mind to leave. She went off the very next day, and on the doorsill, when he tried to hold her back, she replied:

“No, no! You love her more than me, and you’re right, that’s as it should be. As for the rest, it’s just too bad! You’ll see! … Take care of yourself! … because I’m not about to come back soon, making trouble for her, as you say.”

Charles remained nonetheless very shamefaced with Emma, who did not hide the resentment she still felt against him for his lack of trust; many entreaties were necessary before she consented to take back her power of attorney, and he even went with her to Monsieur Guillaumin to have him draw up a second one, exactly the same.

“I understand,” said the notary; “a man of science can’t be expected to trouble himself with the practical details of life.”

And Charles felt soothed by this unctuous reflection, which gave his weakness the appearance of a preoccupation with higher things.

What an eruption, the following Thursday, at the hotel, in their room, with Léon! She laughed, wept, sang, danced, sent for sorbets, insisted on smoking cigarettes, seemed to him extravagant, but adorable, splendid.

He did not know what reaction was driving her to plunge deeper and deeper, with her whole being, into the pursuit of pleasure. She was becoming irritable, greedy, and voluptuous; and she would walk with him in the streets, her head high—unafraid, she would say, of compromising herself. Sometimes, however, Emma would shudder at the sudden thought of meeting Rodolphe; for it seemed to her, even though they had separated forever, that she was not completely free of his domination.

One evening, she did not return to Yonville at all. Charles grew frantic, and little Berthe, not wanting to go to bed without her mama, was sobbing as though her heart would break. Justin had set off on a haphazard search down the road. Monsieur Homais had left his pharmacy.

Finally, at eleven o’clock, unable to bear it any longer, Charles harnessed his
boc
, leaped into it, whipped up his horse, and arrived toward two o’clock in the morning at the Croix Rouge. No one there. He thought the clerk might have seen her; but where did he live? Charles, fortunately, recalled the address of his employer. He rushed there.

Day was beginning to break. He made out some metal nameplates above a door; he knocked. Someone, without opening, shouted out the information he had asked for, adding a number of insults against people who disturbed others at night.

The house where the clerk lived had no doorbell, no knocker, no porter. Charles pounded with his fist on the shutters. A policeman happened to be passing; then he became afraid and went away.

“I’m crazy,” he was saying to himself; “they probably kept her for dinner at Monsieur Lormeaux’s.”

The Lormeaux family no longer lived in Rouen.

“She must have stayed to look after Madame Dubreuil. Oh! Madame Dubreuil has been dead ten months! … Well, where is she?”

An idea came to him. He asked, in a café, for the
Directory
and searched quickly for the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived in the rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers, at number 74.

As he was entering that street, Emma herself appeared at the other end; he did not so much embrace her as fling himself on her, exclaiming:

“What kept you yesterday?”

“I was taken ill.”

“From what? … Where? … How? …”

She ran her hand over her forehead and answered:

“At Mademoiselle Lempereur’s.”

“I was sure of it! I was on my way there.”

“Oh, it’s not worth the trouble!” said Emma. “She’s just gone out; but in the future, don’t be uneasy. I’m not free, don’t you see, if I know that the slightest delay upsets you like this.”

She was giving herself a kind of permission not to be hampered in her escapades. And, quite freely, she took full advantage of it. Whenever she was seized by a desire to see Léon, she would leave under any pretext at all, and, as he was not expecting her that day, she would go looking for him at his office.

It was a great delight the first few times; but soon he no longer hid the truth, namely, that his employer was complaining loudly about these disruptions.

“Oh, nonsense! Come on,” she would say.

And he would slip out.

She wanted him to dress all in black and grow a little pointed beard on his chin so that he would resemble the portraits of Louis XIII. She wanted to see his rooms, found them mediocre; he blushed at that; she took no notice, then advised him to buy curtains like her own; and when he objected to the expense:

“Oh, you do hold tight to your little ecus, don’t you!” she said, laughing.

Léon would have to tell her, each time, everything he had done since they last met. She asked for verses, verses composed for her,
a love poem
in her honor; he could never manage to find the rhyme for the second line, and in the end he copied a sonnet from a keepsake album.