Madame Bovary (44 page)

Lheureux sat down in his large straw armchair, saying:

“What is it now?”

“Here.”

And she showed him the paper.

“Well, what can I do about it?”

Then she flew into a rage, reminding him of the promise he had given her not to circulate her notes; he admitted it.

“But I was forced to do it. I had a knife at my throat.”

“And what’s going to happen now?” she went on.

“Oh, it’s very simple: a court order, and then seizure … ; no help for it!”

Emma had to restrain herself from striking him. She asked quietly if there was no way to appease Monsieur Vinçart.

“Oh, yes … appease Vinçart. You don’t know him; he’s fiercer than an Arab.”

But Monsieur Lheureux simply had to intervene.

“Listen! It seems to me that, up to now, I’ve been quite good to you.”

And, opening one of his ledgers:

“Here!”

Then, going up the page with his finger:

“Let’s see … let’s see … On August third, two hundred francs … On June seventeenth, one hundred fifty … March twenty-third, forty-six … In April …”

He stopped, as though afraid of doing something foolish.

“And I’m not saying anything about the notes signed by Monsieur, one for seven hundred francs, another for three hundred! As for your little payments on account, and the interest, there’s no end to all of that, it’s a real muddle. I’m not getting mixed up in it anymore!”

She was weeping; she even called him her “good Monsieur Lheureux.” But he kept laying the blame on that “cunning dog Vinçart.” Anyway, he himself didn’t have a centime; no one was paying him at the moment; people were eating the wool off his back; a poor shopkeeper like him couldn’t offer advances.

Emma fell silent; and Monsieur Lheureux, who was nibbling the barbs of a quill pen, probably began to worry about her silence, for he went on:

“Of course, if, one of these days, I were to receive some payments … I could possibly …”

“After all,” she said, “as soon as the balance on Barneville …”

“What? …”

And, learning that Langlois had not yet paid, he seemed very surprised. Then, in a honey-smooth voice:

“And you say we can agree …”

“Oh, whatever you like!”

Then he closed his eyes in order to think, wrote down a few figures, and, declaring that it would be very hard for him, that the thing was risky and that he was
bleeding himself white
, he dictated four notes of 250 francs each, with due dates falling at intervals one month apart.

“Provided Vinçart is willing to listen to me! Anyway, we’re agreed, I’m not trifling with you, I’m straight as an arrow.”

Then he casually showed her several pieces of new merchandise, though not one of them, in his opinion, was worthy of Madame.

“Just think—here’s dress goods for seven sous a meter, and certified dye-fast! And yet they swallow that! They don’t get told different, you may well believe,” wishing, by this confession that he swindled others, to convince her of his utter honesty.

Then he called her back, to show her three ells of point lace he had just picked up “at auction.”

“Isn’t it fine!” said Lheureux; “it’s very much used nowadays, for antimacassars—it’s the style.”

And quicker than a conjurer, he wrapped the lace in blue paper and put it in Emma’s hands.

“At least, could you let me know … ?”

“Ah! Later,” he said, turning on his heels.

That evening, she pressed Bovary to write his mother and ask her to send them the balance of the inheritance at once. Her mother-in-law answered that she had nothing more: the settlement was done, and what was left for them, apart from Barneville, was six hundred livres yearly income, which she would pay out to them punctually.

Then Madame sent bills to two or three clients and soon made liberal use of this expedient, which was successful. She was always careful to add, as a postscript: “Don’t speak of this to my husband, you know how proud he is … My apologies … Your servant …” There were a few complaints; she intercepted them.

To make some money for herself, she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old scrap iron; and she haggled rapaciously, —her peasant blood driving her to make a profit. Then, on her trips to the city, she would trade with secondhand dealers for knickknacks that Monsieur Lheureux, if no one else, would certainly buy from her. She bought herself ostrich feathers, Chinese porcelain, and round-topped chests; she borrowed from Félicité, from Madame Lefrançois, from the landlady of the Croix Rouge, from anyone, anywhere. Out of the money she received at last from Barneville, she paid two notes; the remaining fifteen hundred francs melted away. She signed new notes, and so it went on!

Sometimes, it is true, she would attempt some calculations; but she would discover things so exorbitant that she could not believe them. So she would begin again, quickly become muddled, drop it all at that point, and think no more about it.

The house was certainly dismal now! Tradesmen could be seen leaving with furious looks on their faces. Handkerchiefs were draped over the stoves; and little Berthe, to the great indignation of Madame Homais, wore stockings with holes in them. If Charles timidly ventured a comment, she would answer roughly that it was not her fault!

Why these fits of anger? He blamed it all on her old nervous complaint; and, reproaching himself for having mistaken her infirmities for defects of character, he would accuse himself of selfishness, and would want to rush over and take her in his arms.

“Oh, no!” he would say to himself. “I would only annoy her!”

And he would stay where he was.

After dinner, he would walk alone in the garden; he would take little Berthe on his knees, and, spreading out his medical journal, try to teach her to read. The child, who had never been given any schooling, would soon open wide her large, sad eyes and begin to cry. Then he would comfort her; he would go get some water for her in the watering can to make rivers in the sand, or break off branches of the privet hedge to plant trees in the flower beds, which hardly spoiled the garden, choked as it was with tall grass; they owed so many days’ pay to Lestiboudois! Then the child would feel chilly and ask for her mother.

“Call your nanny, my dearest,” Charles would say. “You know very well your mama doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

Autumn was beginning and already the leaves were falling, like two years ago, when she was so ill! When would it end! … And he would go on walking, his hands behind his back.

Madame was in her room. One did not go upstairs. She would remain there all day long, listless, half dressed, and, from time to time, burning pastilles of incense that she had bought in Rouen in a shop belonging to an Algerian. So as not to have that man lying there next to her at night asleep, she managed, by the unpleasant faces she made, to relegate him to the third floor; and till morning she would read lurid books full of orgies and scenes of bloodshed. Often she would become terrified, she would cry out, Charles would come running.

“Oh, go away!” she would say.

Or, at other times, burning more hotly with that secret flame that adultery had revived, breathless, agitated, consumed by desire, she would open her window, breathe in the cold air, toss her too-heavy mane of hair in the wind, and, looking at the stars, long for princely loves. She would think of him, of Léon. At such moments she would have given anything for a single one of those meetings with him, which so satiated her.

Those were her gala days. She wanted them to be splendid! And when he could not pay all the expenses himself, she would liberally make up the difference, which happened almost every time. He tried to persuade her that they would be just as happy elsewhere, in a more modest hotel; but she found objections.

One day, she drew from her bag six little silver-plated spoons (they were
Père Rouault’s wedding present) and asked him to take them immediately to the pawnbroker for her; and Léon complied, though he did not like doing it. He was afraid of compromising himself.

Then, as he thought about it afterward, he felt that his mistress was behaving strangely and that people were perhaps not wrong to want to separate him from her.

Indeed, someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter, warning her that he was
ruining himself with a married woman;
and right away the good lady, having visions of that eternal bogey of family life, that ill-defined, pernicious creature, that siren, that fantastic monster inhabiting the depths of love, wrote to Maître Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in this matter. He detained him for three-quarters of an hour, trying to unseal his eyes, to warn him of the chasm before him. Such an intrigue would later hurt his chances of establishing himself. He entreated him to break it off, and, if he would not make the sacrifice in his own interest, at least to do it for him, Dubocage!

In the end, Léon had sworn not to see Emma again; and he reproached himself for not having kept his word, considering all that this woman might still draw down upon him in the way of trouble and talk, not to mention the jokes his fellow clerks traded around the stove every morning. Besides, he was about to be made head clerk: the time had come to be serious. And so he gave up the flute, exalted sentiments, and the fancies of the imagination; —for in the heat of his youth, every bourgeois man has believed, if only for a day, for a minute, that he is capable of boundless passions, lofty enterprises. The most halfhearted libertine has dreamed of sultans’ wives; every notary carries within him the remains of a poet.

He became bored, now, when Emma suddenly burst into sobs on his chest; and, like people who cannot endure more than a certain dose of music, his heart would grow drowsy with indifference at the din raised by a love whose refinements he could no longer see.

They knew each other too well to experience, in their mutual possession, that wonder which multiplies the joy of it a hundred times over. She was as weary of him as he was tired of her. Emma was rediscovering in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.

But how could she get rid of him? And then, though she might feel humiliated at the baseness of such a happiness, she clung to it out of habit or depravity; and every day, she pursued it more eagerly, exhausting all
pleasure by wanting it to be too great. She blamed Léon for her disappointed hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would cause them to separate, since she did not have the courage to resolve to do it herself.

Yet she continued to write him loving letters, believing in the principle that a woman must always write to her lover.

But as she wrote, she saw a different man, a phantom created out of her most ardent memories, the most beautiful things she had read, her strongest desires; and in the end he became so real, and so accessible, that she would tremble, marveling, and yet be unable to imagine him clearly, so lost was he, like a god, under the abundance of his attributes. He inhabited that blue-tinted land where silken ladders sway from balconies, amid the breath of flowers, in the moonlight. She would sense him near her; he was going to come and sweep her away in a single kiss. Then she would fall back, shattered; for these transports of vague love tired her more than prolonged debauchery.

She was experiencing, now, a general and constant aching exhaustion. Often, Emma would receive summonses, official stamped documents that she would scarcely look at. She wished she could stop living, or sleep all the time.

On Mid-Lent Day, she did not return to Yonville; in the evening she went to a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches and red stockings, a wig with a queue, and a cocked hat over one ear. She leaped about all night to the frenetic sounds of the trombones; people gathered around her in a circle; and in the morning she found herself in the portico of the theater with five or six masqueraders, stevedores and sailors, friends of Léon’s, who were talking about going somewhere for supper.

The cafés in the neighborhood were full. Down by the harbor, they spotted a very mediocre restaurant whose proprietor opened a small room for them on the fifth floor.

The men whispered in a corner, doubtless conferring about the cost. There were a clerk, two medical students, and a shop assistant: what company for her! As for the women, Emma quickly realized from the quality of their voices that they had to be, almost all of them, of the lowest class. She felt frightened, then, pushed back her chair and lowered her eyes.

The others began to eat. She did not eat; her forehead was burning, her eyelids were tingling, and her skin was icy cold. In her head she could still feel the dance floor rebounding under the rhythmic pulsation of the thousand dancing feet. Then she grew dizzy from the smell of the punch and the smoke from the cigars. She fainted; they carried her to the window.

Day was beginning to break, and a large patch of crimson was widening in the pale sky toward Sainte-Catherine hill. The livid surface of the river was shivering in the wind; the bridges were deserted; the streetlights were going out.

She revived, however, and by chance thought of Berthe, asleep back there in her nanny’s room. But a cart full of long strips of iron went by, casting a deafening metallic vibration against the walls of the houses.

She abruptly slipped away from the place, got rid of her costume, told Léon she had to go home, and was at last alone in the Hôtel de Boulogne. Everything seemed unbearable to her, even herself. She wished she could escape like a bird, go recapture her youth somewhere far, far away, in the immaculate reaches of space.

She went out, she crossed the boulevard, the place Cauchoise, and the outskirts of the city, coming to a street in the open that overlooked some gardens. She was walking quickly; the fresh air quieted her; and gradually the faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the chandeliers, the meal afterward, those women—everything disappeared like mist blown off by the wind. Then, back at the Croix Rouge, she threw herself on her bed, in the little room on the third floor with the prints of
The Tower of Nesle
. At four o’clock in the afternoon, Hivert woke her.