Madame Bovary

Flaubert, Gustave
(Translator: Eleanor Marx-Aveling)

Published: 1857
Categorie(s): Fiction, Literary
Source: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2413/2413-h/
2413-h.htm

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About Flaubert:
Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880) was a
French novelist who is counted among the greatest Western
novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel,
Madame Bovary (1857), and for his scrupulous devotion to his
art and style, best exemplified by his endless search for "le mot
juste" ("the precise word"). Source: Wikipedia

Also available on Feedbooks for Flaubert:

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Part 1

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Chapter 1
We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a
"new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school ser-
vant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke
up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work.
The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning
to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice—
"Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your
care; he'll be in the second. If his work and conduct are satis-
factory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomes his
age."
The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so
that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fif-
teen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut square on his
forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very
ill at ease. Although he was not broad-shouldered, his short
school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been
tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the opening of the
cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in blue
stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn
tight by braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots.
We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears,
as attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs
or lean on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the
master was obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of
us.
When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throw-
ing our caps on the ground so as to have our hands more free;
we used from the door to toss them under the form, so that
they hit against the wall and made a lot of dust: it was "the
thing."
But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to
attempt it, the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on his

4
knees even after prayers were over. It was one of those head-
gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the
bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-
cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has
depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval, stiffened
with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in
succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a
red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard
polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung,
at the end of a long thin cord, small twisted gold threads in the
manner of a tassel. The cap was new; its peak shone.
"Rise," said the master.
He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He
stooped to pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with
his elbow; he picked it up once more.
"Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a
wag.
There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thor-
oughly put the poor lad out of countenance that he did not
know whether to keep his cap in his hand, leave it on the
ground, or put it on his head. He sat down again and placed it
on his knee.
"Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name."
The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelli-
gible name.
"Again!"
The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the
tittering of the class.
"Louder!" cried the master; "louder!"
The "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an
inordinately large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as
if calling someone in the word "Charbovari."
A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill
voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari!
Charbovari"), then died away into single notes, growing
quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly
recommencing along the line of a form whence rose here and
there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.
However, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-
established in the class; and the master having succeeded in

5
catching the name of "Charles Bovary," having had it dictated
to him, spelt out, and re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to
go and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of the
master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated.
"What are you looking for?" asked the master.
"My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled
looks round him.
"Five hundred lines for all the class!" shouted in a furious
voice stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst. "Silence!"
continued the master indignantly, wiping his brow with his
handkerchief, which he had just taken from his cap. "As to you,
'new boy,' you will conjugate 'ridiculus sum'** twenty times."
Then, in a gentler tone, "Come, you'll find your cap again; it
hasn't been stolen."
*A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat.
**I am ridiculous.
Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fel-
low" remained for two hours in an exemplary attitude, al-
though from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the tip
of a pen came bang in his face. But he wiped his face with one
hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered.
In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from
his desk, arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his
paper. We saw him working conscientiously, looking up every
word in the dictionary, and taking the greatest pains. Thanks,
no doubt, to the willingness he showed, he had not to go down
to the class below. But though he knew his rules passably, he
had little finish in composition. It was the cure of his village
who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from motives of
economy, having sent him to school as late as possible.
His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary,
retired assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in
certain conscription scandals, and forced at this time to leave
the service, had taken advantage of his fine figure to get hold
of a dowry of sixty thousand francs that offered in the person
of a hosier's daughter who had fallen in love with his good
looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his spurs ring as he
walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache, his fin-
gers always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours,

6
he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a com-
mercial traveller.
Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's
fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes,
not coming in at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes.
The father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this,
"went in for the business," lost some money in it, then retired
to the country, where he thought he would make money.
But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he
rode his horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his
cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry
in his farmyard, and greased his hunting-boots with the fat of
his pigs, he was not long in finding out that he would do better
to give up all speculation.
For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the bor-
der of the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half
farm, half private house; and here, soured, eaten up with re-
grets, cursing his luck, jealous of everyone, he shut himself up
at the age of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to
live at peace.
His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him
with a thousand servilities that had only estranged him the
more. Lively once, expansive and affectionate, in growing older
she had become (after the fashion of wine that, exposed to air,
turns to vinegar) ill-tempered, grumbling, irritable. She had
suffered so much without complaint at first, until she had seem
him going after all the village drabs, and until a score of bad
houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking drunk.
Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her
anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death.
She was constantly going about looking after business matters.
She called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when
bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed,
washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while
he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in
sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say dis-
agreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting in-
to the cinders.
When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he
came home, the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His

7
mother stuffed him with jam; his father let him run about bare-
foot, and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well
go about quite naked like the young of animals. As opposed to
the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on
which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought
up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong constitution. He
sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large
draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But,
peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his no-
tions. His mother always kept him near her; she cut out card-
board for him, told him tales, entertained him with endless
monologues full of melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense.
In her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all her
shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of high station;
she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an en-
gineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an
old piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to
all this Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was
not worth while. Would they ever have the means to send him
to a public school, to buy him a practice, or start him in busi-
ness? Besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the world."
Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked about the
village.
He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth
the ravens that were flying about. He ate blackberries along
the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went hay-
making during harvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-
scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and at great
fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might
hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne up-
ward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was
strong on hand, fresh of colour.
When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way;
he began lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons
were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use.
They were given at spare moments in the sacristy, standing up,
hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial; or else the cure, if
he had not to go out, sent for his pupil after the Angelus*. They
went up to his room and settled down; the flies and moths
fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child fell asleep,

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and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his
stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other
occasions, when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after ad-
ministering the viaticum to some sick person in the neighbour-
hood, caught sight of Charles playing about the fields, he
called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour and took ad-
vantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the
foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance
passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even
said the "young man" had a very good memory.
*A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound
of a bell. Here, the evening prayer.
Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took
strong steps. Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary
gave in without a struggle, and they waited one year longer, so
that the lad should take his first communion.
Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was fi-
nally sent to school at Rouen, where his father took him to-
wards the end of October, at the time of the St. Romain fair.
It would now be impossible for any of us to remember any-
thing about him. He was a youth of even temperament, who
played in playtime, worked in school-hours, was attentive in
class, slept well in the dormitory, and ate well in the refectory.
He had in loco parentis* a wholesale ironmonger in the Rue
Ganterie, who took him out once a month on Sundays after his
shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at the
boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock
before supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter
to his mother with red ink and three wafers; then he went over
his history note-books, or read an old volume of "Anarchasis"
that was knocking about the study. When he went for walks he
talked to the servant, who, like himself, came from the country.
*In place of a parent.
By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the
class; once even he got a certificate in natural history. But at
the end of his third year his parents withdrew him from the
school to make him study medicine, convinced that he could
even take his degree by himself.
His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a
dyer's she knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made

9
arrangements for his board, got him furniture, table and two
chairs, sent home for an old cherry-tree bedstead, and bought
besides a small cast-iron stove with the supply of wood that
was to warm the poor child.
Then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand in-
junctions to be good now that he was going to be left to
himself.
The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him;
lectures on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on
physiology, lectures on pharmacy, lectures on botany and clin-
ical medicine, and therapeutics, without counting hygiene and
materia medica—all names of whose etymologies he was ignor-
ant, and that were to him as so many doors to sanctuaries filled
with magnificent darkness.
He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to
listen—he did not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-
books, he attended all the courses, never missed a single lec-
ture. He did his little daily task like a mill-horse, who goes
round and round with his eyes bandaged, not knowing what
work he is doing.
To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the
carrier a piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he
lunched when he came back from the hospital, while he sat
kicking his feet against the wall. After this he had to run off to
lectures, to the operation-room, to the hospital, and return to
his home at the other end of the town. In the evening, after the
poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his room and set
to work again in his wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in
front of the hot stove.
On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close
streets are empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock
at the doors, he opened his window and leaned out. The river,
that makes of this quarter of Rouen a wretched little Venice,
flowed beneath him, between the bridges and the railings, yel-
low, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling on the banks,
washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting from
the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite,
beyond the roots spread the pure heaven with the red sun set-
ting. How pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the

10
beech-tree! And he expanded his nostrils to breathe in the
sweet odours of the country which did not reach him.
He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a
saddened look that made it nearly interesting. Naturally,
through indifference, he abandoned all the resolutions he had
made. Once he missed a lecture; the next day all the lectures;
and, enjoying his idleness, little by little, he gave up work alto-
gether. He got into the habit of going to the public-house, and
had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every evening
in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the
small sheep bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof
of his freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. It was be-
ginning to see life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when
he entered, he put his hand on the door-handle with a joy al-
most sensual. Then many things hidden within him came out;
he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to his boon compan-
ions, became enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to make
punch, and, finally, how to make love.
Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely in
his examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home
the same night to celebrate his success. He started on foot,
stopped at the beginning of the village, sent for his mother,
and told her all. She excused him, threw the blame of his fail-
ure on the injustice of the examiners, encouraged him a little,
and took upon herself to set matters straight. It was only five
years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was old
then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a
man born of him could be a fool.
So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examina-
tion, ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He
passed pretty well. What a happy day for his mother! They
gave a grand dinner.
Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was
only one old doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been
on the look-out for his death, and the old fellow had barely
been packed off when Charles was installed, opposite his place,
as his successor.
But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have
had him taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he
could practice it; he must have a wife. She found him one—the

11
widow of a bailiff at Dieppe—who was forty-five and had an in-
come of twelve hundred francs. Though she was ugly, as dry as
a bone, her face with as many pimples as the spring has buds,
Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her ends Ma-
dame Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in
very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a port-butcher backed up
by the priests.
Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life,
thinking he would be more free to do as he liked with himself
and his money. But his wife was master; he had to say this and
not say that in company, to fast every Friday, dress as she
liked, harass at her bidding those patients who did not pay.
She opened his letter, watched his comings and goings, and
listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him
in his surgery.
She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions
without end. She constantly complained of her nerves, her
chest, her liver. The noise of footsteps made her ill; when
people left her, solitude became odious to her; if they came
back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles returned in
the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from be-
neath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made
him sit down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of
her troubles: he was neglecting her, he loved another. She had
been warned she would be unhappy; and she ended by asking
him for a dose of medicine and a little more love.

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Chapter 2
One night towards eleven o'clock they were awakened by the
noise of a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant
opened the garret-window and parleyed for some time with a
man in the street below. He came for the doctor, had a letter
for him. Natasie came downstairs shivering and undid the bars
and bolts one after the other. The man left his horse, and, fol-
lowing the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He pulled out
from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in a
rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested on his el-
bow on the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed,
held the light. Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and
showed only her back.
This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Mon-
sieur Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to
set a broken leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good
eighteen miles across country by way of Longueville and Saint-
Victor. It was a dark night; Madame Bovary junior was afraid
of accidents for her husband. So it was decided the stable-boy
should go on first; Charles would start three hours later when
the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and show
him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.
Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped
up in his cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the
warmth of his bed, he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of
his horse. When it stopped of its own accord in front of those
holes surrounded with thorns that are dug on the margin of
furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly remembered the
broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures he knew.
The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches
of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feath-
ers bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country
stretched as far as eye could see, and the tufts of trees round

13
the farms at long intervals seemed like dark violet stains on the
cast grey surface, that on the horizon faded into the gloom of
the sky.
Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew
weary, and, sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze
wherein, his recent sensations blending with memories, he be-
came conscious of a double self, at once student and married
man, lying in his bed as but now, and crossing the operation
theatre as of old. The warm smell of poultices mingled in his
brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron rings rat-
tling along the curtain-rods of the bed and saw his wife sleep-
ing. As he passed Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on
the grass at the edge of a ditch.
"Are you the doctor?" asked the child.
And on Charles's answer he took his wooden shoes in his
hands and ran on in front of him.
The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his
guide's talk that Monsieur Rouault must be one of the well-to-
do farmers.
He had broken his leg the evening before on his way home
from a Twelfth-night feast at a neighbour's. His wife had been
dead for two years. There was with him only his daughter, who
helped him to keep house.
The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the
Bertaux.
The little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disap-
peared; then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open
the gate. The horse slipped on the wet grass; Charles had to
stoop to pass under the branches. The watchdogs in their ken-
nels barked, dragging at their chains. As he entered the Ber-
taux, the horse took fright and stumbled.
It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top
of the open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feed-
ing from new racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a
large dunghill, from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst
fowls and turkeys, five or six peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois
farmyards, were foraging on the top of it. The sheepfold was
long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your hand. Under the
cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with their
whips, shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue

14
wool were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the
granaries. The courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees
set out symmetrically, and the chattering noise of a flock of
geese was heard near the pond.
A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces
came to the threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary,
whom she led to the kitchen, where a large fire was blazing.
The servant's breakfast was boiling beside it in small pots of all
sizes. Some damp clothes were drying inside the chimney-
corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle of the bellows, all of
colossal size, shone like polished steel, while along the walls
hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the
hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in
through the window, was mirrored fitfully.
Charles went up the first floor to see the patient. He found
him in his bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown
his cotton nightcap right away from him. He was a fat little
man of fifty, with white skin and blue eyes, the forepart of his
head bald, and he wore earrings. By his side on a chair stood a
large decanter of brandy, whence he poured himself a little
from time to time to keep up his spirits; but as soon as he
caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and instead of
swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours,
began to groan freely.
The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of
complication.
Charles could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling
to mind the devices of his masters at the bedsides of patients,
he comforted the sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks,
those Caresses of the surgeon that are like the oil they put on
bistouries. In order to make some splints a bundle of laths was
brought up from the cart-house. Charles selected one, cut it in-
to two pieces and planed it with a fragment of windowpane,
while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and Ma-
demoiselle Emma tried to sew some pads. As she was a long
time before she found her work-case, her father grew impa-
tient; she did not answer, but as she sewed she pricked her fin-
gers, which she then put to her mouth to suck them. Charles
was surprised at the whiteness of her nails. They were shiny,
delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of Dieppe,

15
and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps
not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it
was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real
beauty was in her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black be-
cause of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a
candid boldness.
The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur
Rouault himself to "pick a bit" before he left.
Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives
and forks and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table
at the foot of a huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton
with figures representing Turks. There was an odour of iris-
root and damp sheets that escaped from a large oak chest op-
posite the window. On the floor in corners were sacks of flour
stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from the neigh-
bouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of dec-
oration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of
the wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the
saltpetre, was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, under-
neath which was written in Gothic letters "To dear Papa."
First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the
great cold, of the wolves that infested the fields at night.
Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, espe-
cially now that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As
the room was chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed
something of her full lips, that she had a habit of biting when
silent.
Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her
hair, whose two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so
smooth were they, was parted in the middle by a delicate line
that curved slightly with the curve of the head; and, just show-
ing the tip of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon,
with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor
saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of her
cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in
between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.
When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, re-
turned to the room before leaving, he found her standing, her
forehead against the window, looking into the garden, where

16
the bean props had been knocked down by the wind. She
turned round. "Are you looking for anything?" she asked.
"My whip, if you please," he answered.
He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under
the chairs. It had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the
wall. Mademoiselle Emma saw it, and bent over the flour
sacks.
Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he
stretched out his arm, at the same moment felt his breast
brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath him.
She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her
shoulder as she handed him his whip.
Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had
promised, he went back the very next day, then regularly twice
a week, without counting the visits he paid now and then as if
by accident.
Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed fa-
vourably; and when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault
was seen trying to walk alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary
began to be looked upon as a man of great capacity. Old Rou-
ault said that he could not have been cured better by the first
doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.
As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a
pleasure to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he
would, no doubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance of
the case, or perhaps to the money he hoped to make by it. Was
it for this, however, that his visits to the farm formed a delight-
ful exception to the meagre occupations of his life? On these
days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on his horse, then
got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black gloves
before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noti-
cing the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the
wall, the lads run to meet him. He liked the granary and the
stables; he liked old Rouault, who pressed his hand and called
him his saviour; he like the small wooden shoes of Mademois-
elle Emma on the scoured flags of the kitchen—her high heels
made her a little taller; and when she walked in front of him,
the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp
sound against the leather of her boots.

17
 She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs.
When his horse had not yet been brought round she stayed
there. They had said "Good-bye"; there was no more talking.
The open air wrapped her round, playing with the soft down on
the back of her neck, or blew to and fro on her hips the apron-
strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once, during a thaw the
bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on the roofs
of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold,
and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of
silk of the colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun
shone, lighted up with shifting hues the white skin of her face.
She smiled under the tender warmth, and drops of water could
be heard falling one by one on the stretched silk.
During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Ma-
dame Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid,
and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system
of double entry a clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But
when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquir-
ies, and she learnt the Mademoiselle Rouault, brought up at
the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called "a good edu-
cation"; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to em-
broider and play the piano. That was the last straw.
"So it is for this," she said to herself, "that his face beams
when he goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat
at the risk of spoiling it with the rain. Ah! that woman! That
woman!"
And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced her-
self by allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casu-
al observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by
open apostrophes to which he knew not what to answer. "Why
did he go back to the Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault was
cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet? Ah! it was because
a young lady was there, some one who know how to talk, to
embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he
wanted town misses." And she went on—
"The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their
grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was
almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is
not worth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at
church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess. Besides, the

18
poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year, would
have had much ado to pay up his arrears."
For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux.
Heloise made him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he
would go there no more after much sobbing and many kisses,
in a great outburst of love. He obeyed then, but the strength of
his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he
thought, with a kind of naive hypocrisy, that his interdict to see
her gave him a sort of right to love her. And then the widow
was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all weathers a little black
shawl, the edge of which hung down between her shoulder-
blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they
were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles
with the laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings.
Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but
after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own
edge on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with
their reflections and observations. It was wrong of him to eat
so much.
Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone
who came? What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring
it came about that a notary at Ingouville, the holder of the wid-
ow Dubuc's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all
the money in his office. Heloise, it is true, still possessed, be-
sides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house
in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all this fortune that had
been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little
furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the household.
The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found
to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had
placed with the notary God only knew, and her share in the
boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the
good lady! In his exasperation, Monsieur Bovary the elder,
smashing a chair on the flags, accused his wife of having
caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such a har-
ridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They came to
Tostes. Explanations followed. There were scenes. Heloise in
tears, throwing her arms about her husband, implored him to
defend her from his parents.

19
 Charles tried to speak up for her. They grew angry and left
the house.
But "the blow had struck home." A week after, as she was
hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with a
spitting of blood, and the next day, while Charles had his back
turned to her drawing the window-curtain, she said, "O God!"
gave a sigh and fainted. She was dead! What a surprise! When
all was over at the cemetery Charles went home. He found no
one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; say
her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning
against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in
a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!

20
Chapter 3
One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for set-
ting his leg—seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a tur-
key. He had heard of his loss, and consoled him as well as he
could.
"I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder;
"I've been through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into
the fields to be quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I
called on God; I talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the
moles that I saw on the branches, their insides swarming with
worms, dead, and an end of it. And when I thought that there
were others at that very moment with their nice little wives
holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on the
earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the
very idea of going to a cafe disgusted me—you wouldn't believe
it. Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a
winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece
by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should
say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as
one would say—a weight here, at one's heart. But since it is the
lot of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and, because
others have died, want to die too. You must pull yourself to-
gether, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see us; my
daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says
you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have
some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit."
Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He
found all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months
ago. The pear trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rou-
ault, on his legs again, came and went, making the farm more
full of life.
Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the
doctor because of his sad position, he begged him not to take

21
his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill,
and even pretended to be angry because nothing rather lighter
had been prepared for him than for the others, such as a little
clotted cream or stewed pears. He told stories. Charles found
himself laughing, but the remembrance of his wife suddenly
coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in; he
thought no more about her.
He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living
alone. The new delight of independence soon made his loneli-
ness bearable. He could now change his meal-times, go in or
out without explanation, and when he was very tired stretch
himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and coddled
himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him.
On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill
in his business, since for a month people had been saying, "The
poor young man! what a loss!" His name had been talked
about, his practice had increased; and moreover, he could go
to the Bertaux just as he liked. He had an aimless hope, and
was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking as he
brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.
One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in
the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch
sight of Emma; the outside shutters were closed. Through the
chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine
rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and
trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawl-
ing up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they
drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that
came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of
the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between
the window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore no
fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare
shoulders.
After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have
something to drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laugh-
ingly offered to have a glass of liqueur with him. So she went
to fetch a bottle of curacao from the cupboard, reached down
two small glasses, filled one to the brim, poured scarcely any-
thing into the other, and, after having clinked glasses, carried
hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent back to

22
drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the
strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of
her tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by
drop the bottom of her glass.
She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton
stocking she was darning. She worked with her head bent
down; she did not speak, nor did Charles. The air coming in un-
der the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it
drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head
and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard.
Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of
her hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge
fire-dogs.
She complained of suffering since the beginning of the sea-
son from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any
good; she began talking of her convent, Charles of his school;
words came to them. They went up into her bedroom. She
showed him her old music-books, the little prizes she had won,
and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a cupboard. She
spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even
showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of
every month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's
tomb. But the gardener they had never knew anything about it;
servants are so stupid! She would have dearly liked, if only for
the winter, to live in town, although the length of the fine days
made the country perhaps even more wearisome in the sum-
mer. And, according to what she was saying, her voice was
clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in modula-
tions that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself,
now joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half
closed, her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.
Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by
one, trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might
piece out the life she had lived before he knew her. But he nev-
er saw her in his thoughts other than he had seen her the first
time, or as he had just left her. Then he asked himself what
would become of her—if she would be married, and to whom!
Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!—so beautiful! But Emma's
face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the
humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry

23
after all! If you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his
throat was parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the
water-bottle and opened the window. The night was covered
with stars, a warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were
barking. He turned his head towards the Bertaux.
Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles
promised himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion
offered, but each time such occasion did offer the fear of not
finding the right words sealed his lips.
Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daugh-
ter, who was of no use to him in the house. In his heart he ex-
cused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a calling under
the ban of Heaven, since one never saw a millionaire in it. Far
from having made a fortune by it, the good man was losing
every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in which he en-
joyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture
properly so called, and the internal management of the farm,
suited him less than most people. He did not willingly take his
hands out of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that
concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to
sleep well. He liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton, glori-
as* well beaten up. He took his meals in the kitchen alone, op-
posite the fire, on a little table brought to him all ready laid as
on the stage.
*A mixture of coffee and spirits.
When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew
red if near his daughter, which meant that he would propose
for her one of these days, he chewed the cud of the matter be-
forehand. He certainly thought him a little meagre, and not
quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he was said to be
well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt would
not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old
Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his
property," as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the
harness-maker, and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted re-
newing, "If he asks for her," he said to himself, "I'll give her to
him."
At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the
Bertaux.

24
 The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from
hour to hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walk-
ing along the road full of ruts; they were about to part. This
was the time. Charles gave himself as far as to the corner of
the hedge, and at last, when past it—
"Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say
something to you."
They stopped. Charles was silent.
"Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old
Rouault, laughing softly.
"Monsieur Rouault—Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles.
"I ask nothing better", the farmer went on. "Although, no
doubt, the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opin-
ion. So you get off—I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't
return because of all the people about, and besides it would
upset her too much. But so that you mayn't be eating your
heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter of the window against
the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over the
hedge."
And he went off.
Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and
waited. Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes
by his watch. Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the
shutter had been thrown back; the hook was still swinging.
The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma
blushed as he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to
keep herself in countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future
son-in-law. The discussion of money matters was put off;
moreover, there was plenty of time before them, as the mar-
riage could not decently take place till Charles was out of
mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.
The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault
was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen,
and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after fashion-
plates that she borrowed. When Charles visited the farmer, the
preparations for the wedding were talked over; they wondered
in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the
number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be
entrees.

25
 Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a mid-
night wedding with torches, but old Rouault could not under-
stand such an idea. So there was a wedding at which forty-
three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen
hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent
on the days following.

26
Chapter 4
The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises,
two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather
hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts,
in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as
not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. Some came from
a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville,
and from Cany.
All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels
between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight
of written to.
From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the
hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up
to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load.
They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching
arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town
fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into
belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down behind with a pin,
and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads, dressed like
their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many
that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their
sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their
first communion lengthened for the occasion were some big
girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt,
rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose pomade, and
very much afraid of dirtying their gloves. As there were not
enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentle-
men turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. Ac-
cording to their different social positions they wore tail-coats,
overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats,
redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the
wardrobe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping
in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting

27
jackets of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-
bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons
in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, and the tails of
which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet.
Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom
of the table), wore their best blouses—that is to say, with col-
lars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into
small plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a
worked belt.
And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses!
Everyone had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the
heads; they had been close-shaved; a few, even, who had had
to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave,
had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a
three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air en route
had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were
mottled here and there with red dabs.
The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they
went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the cere-
mony in the church. The procession, first united like one long
coloured scarf that undulated across the fields, along the nar-
row path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out,
and broke up into different groups that loitered to talk. The fid-
dler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at its
pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all
following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing them-
selves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing
amongst themselves unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a
little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up,
and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the
coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Charles, empty
handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault, with a new
silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to
the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Mon-
sieur Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had
come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of but-
tons—he was passing compliments of the bar to a fair young
peasant. She bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say.
The other wedding guests talked of their business or played
tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another on in

28
advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the
squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields.
When he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take
breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should
sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and
raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. The noise
of the instrument drove away the little birds from afar.
The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sir-
loins, six chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton,
and in the middle a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chit-
terlings with sorrel. At the corners were decanters of brandy.
Sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the
glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand.
Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least
shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the
initials of the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A
confectioner of Yvetot had been intrusted with the tarts and
sweets. As he had only just set up on the place, he had taken a
lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself brought in a set dish
that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin with, at its
base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a
temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all
round, and in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then
on the second stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded
by many fortifications in candied angelica, almonds, raisins,
and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the upper platform a
green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell boats, and a
small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing whose two
uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.
Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sit-
ting, they went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with
corks in the granary, and then returned to table. Some towards
the finish went to sleep and snored. But with the coffee every-
one woke up. Then they began songs, showed off tricks, raised
heavy weights, performed feats with their fingers, then tried
lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad jokes, kissed the
women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed up to the
nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they
kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or
swore; and all night in the light of the moon along country

29
roads there were runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the
ditches, jumping over yard after yard of stones, clambering up
the hills, with women leaning out from the tilt to catch hold of
the reins.
Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in
the kitchen. The children had fallen asleep under the seats.
The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual mar-
riage pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins
(who had even brought a pair of soles for his wedding present),
began to squirt water from his mouth through the keyhole,
when old Rouault came up just in time to stop him, and explain
to him that the distinguished position of his son-in-law would
not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the same did not give
in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused old Rouault
of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in a
corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times
running served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opin-
ion they had been badly used, and were whispering about their
host, and with covered hints hoping he would ruin himself.
Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day.
She had been consulted neither as to the dress of her
daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement of the feast; she
went to bed early. Her husband, instead of following her, sent
to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till daybreak,
drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company.
This added greatly to the consideration in which he was held.
Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the
wedding. He answered feebly to the puns, doubles entendres*,
compliments, and chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him
as soon as the soup appeared.
*Double meanings.
The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It
was he who might rather have been taken for the virgin of the
evening before, whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed
anything. The shrewdest did not know what to make of it, and
they looked at her when she passed near them with an unboun-
ded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed nothing. He
called her "my wife", tutoyed* her, asked for her of everyone,
looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the
yards, where he could be seen from far between the trees,

30
putting his arm around her waist, and walking half-bending
over her, ruffling the chemisette of her bodice with his head.
*Used the familiar form of address.
Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on
account of his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault
had them driven back in his cart, and himself accompanied
them as far as Vassonville. Here he embraced his daughter for
the last time, got down, and went his way. When he had gone
about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the cart dis-
appearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh.
Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first preg-
nancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when
he had taken her from her father to his home, and had carried
her off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it was near
Christmas-time, and the country was all white. She held him by
one arm, her basket hanging from the other; the wind blew the
long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that it sometimes
flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he saw
near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently
under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put
them from time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was!
Their son would have been thirty by now. Then he looked back
and saw nothing on the road. He felt dreary as an empty
house; and tender memories mingling with the sad thoughts in
his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he felt inclined for a
moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was afraid,
however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
right away home.
Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six
o'clock.
The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new
wife.
The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised
for not having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in
the meantime, should look over her house.

31
Chapter 5
The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the
road. Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a
bridle, and a black leather cap, and on the floor, in a corner,
were a pair of leggings, still covered with dry mud. On the
right was the one apartment, that was both dining and sitting
room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at the top by a garland
of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly
stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung
crossways at the length of the window; and on the narrow man-
telpiece a clock with a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent
between two plate candlesticks under oval shades. On the oth-
er side of the passage was Charles's consulting room, a little
room about six paces wide, with a table, three chairs, and an
office chair. Volumes of the "Dictionary of Medical Science,"
uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive
sales through which they had gone, occupied almost along the
six shelves of a deal bookcase.
The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls
when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the
people coughing in the consulting room and recounting their
histories.
Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a
large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-
house, cellar, and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks,
agricultural implements past service, and a mass of dusty
things whose use it was impossible to guess.
The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls
with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it
from the field. In the middle was a slate sundial on a brick ped-
estal; four flower beds with eglantines surrounded symmetric-
ally the more useful kitchen garden bed. Right at the bottom,

32
under the spruce bushes, was a cure in plaster reading his
breviary.
Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in
the second, which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bed-
stead in an alcove with red drapery. A shell box adorned the
chest of drawers, and on the secretary near the window a bou-
quet of orange blossoms tied with white satin ribbons stood in
a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the other one's. She
looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it up to
the attic, while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were put-
ting her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers
packed up in a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would
be done with them if she were to die.
During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about
changes in the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks,
had new wallpaper put up, the staircase repainted, and seats
made in the garden round the sundial; she even inquired how
she could get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes. Finally her
husband, knowing that she liked to drive out, picked up a
second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard
in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.
He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal
together, a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of
her hands over her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging
from the window-fastener, and many another thing in which
Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now made up the end-
less round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by her side,
on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down on
her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap.
Seen thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially
when, on waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many
times. Black in the shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they
had, as it were, depths of different colours, that, darker in the
centre, grew paler towards the surface of the eye. His own
eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in mini-
ature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his
head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the
window to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between
two pots of geranium, clad in her dressing gown hanging
loosely about her. Charles, in the street buckled his spurs, his

33
foot on the mounting stone, while she talked to him from
above, picking with her mouth some scrap of flower or leaf that
she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating, described
semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before it
reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white
mare standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback
threw her a kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the win-
dow, and he set off. And then along the highroad, spreading
out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the trees
bent over as in arbours, along paths where the corn reached to
the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air in his
nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his mind at
rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness,
like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they
are digesting.
Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at
school, when he remained shut up within the high walls, alone,
in the midst of companions richer than he or cleverer at their
work, who laughed at his accent, who jeered at his clothes, and
whose mothers came to the school with cakes in their muffs?
Later on, when he studied medicine, and never had his purse
full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have be-
come his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months
with the widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But
now he had for life this beautiful woman whom he adored. For
him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of
her petticoat, and he reproached himself with not loving her.
He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly, ran up the
stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing;
he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.
He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her
ring, her fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses
with all his mouth on her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row
all along her bare arm from the tip of her fingers up to her
shoulder, and she put him away half-smiling, half-vexed, as you
do a child who hangs about you.
Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happi-
ness that should have followed this love not having come, she
must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to

34
find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity,
passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.

35
Chapter 6
She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the
little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fiddle, but
above all of the sweet friendship of some dear little brother,
who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or
who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest.
When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town
to place her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St.
Gervais quarter, where, at their supper, they used painted
plates that set forth the story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere.
The explanatory legends, chipped here and there by the
scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the tendernesses of
the heart, and the pomps of court.
Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleas-
ure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took
her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a
long corridor. She played very little during recreation hours,
knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered
Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus, without
every leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and
amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass
crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in
the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and
the lights of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she
looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her
book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced
with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross
he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a
whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil.
When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order
that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her
hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whisper-
ing of the priest. The comparisons of betrothed, husband,

36
celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons,
stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness.
In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious
reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of
sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on
Sundays passages from the "Genie du Christianisme," as a re-
creation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations
of its romantic melancholies reechoing through the world and
eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlour of
some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her
heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come
to us only through translation in books. But she knew the coun-
try too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the
ploughs.
Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the con-
trary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the
sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by
ruins.
She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she
rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate
desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental
than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.
At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week
each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, be-
cause she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by
the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the
good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them be-
fore going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from
the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs
of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she
stitched away.
She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town,
and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always
carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady
herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work.
They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies faint-
ing in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses
ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches,
vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightin-
gales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as

37
lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and
weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen
years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending
libraries.
Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical
events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She
would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those
long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches,
spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a
cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from
the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart
and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women.
Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and
Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark im-
mensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and
all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some
cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the
plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the
plates painted in honour of Louis XIV.
In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing
but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes,
gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a
glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the
music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities.
Some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as
new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was
quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delic-
ately handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with
dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had
signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts.
She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the en-
graving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the
page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young
man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a
white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were
nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who looked
at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear
eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding
through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the
equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white

38
breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed
at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a
black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their cheeks, were
kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or, smiling,
their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguer-
ite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked
shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclin-
ing beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turk-
ish sabres, Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of
dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm trees and
firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on
the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and
with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water,
where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-
grey ground, swans are swimming about.
And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above
Emma's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that
passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory,
and to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over
the Boulevards.
When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She
had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and,
in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she
asked to be buried later on in the same grave. The goodman
thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was
secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the
rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She
let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to
harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of
the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice
of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it,
would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was sur-
prised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at
heart than wrinkles on her brow.
The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, per-
ceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault
seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so lav-
ish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had
so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and
given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and

39
the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses;
she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This
nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved
the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words
of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled
against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline,
a thing antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took
her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Su-
perior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irrev-
erent to the community.
Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking
after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and
missed her convent. When Charles came to the Bertaux for the
first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing
more to learn, and nothing more to feel.
But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the dis-
turbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to
make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion
which, till then, like a great bird with rose-coloured wings,
hung in the splendour of the skies of poesy; and now she could
not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness
she had dreamed.

40
Chapter 7
She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest
time of her life—the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste
the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless
to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after
marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind
blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to
the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along
with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at
sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lem-
on trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand
in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It
seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happi-
ness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive else-
where. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets,
or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a hus-
band dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin
shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to
confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefin-
able uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds?
Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage.
If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look
had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden
plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls
from a tree when shaken by a hand. But as the intimacy of
their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that sep-
arated her from him.
Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pave-
ment, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their every-
day garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He
had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to
go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither
swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain

41
some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in
a novel.
A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel
in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion,
the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught noth-
ing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and
she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very
happiness she gave him.
Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to
Charles to stand there bolt upright and watch her bend over
her cardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see her
work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to
the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more
he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from
top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken
up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard
at the other end of the village when the window was open, and
often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-
headed and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper
in his hand.
Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house.
She sent the patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had
no suggestion of a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner
on Sundays, she managed to have some tasty dish—piled up
pyramids of greengages on vine leaves, served up preserves
turned out into plates—and even spoke of buying finger-glasses
for dessert. From all this much consideration was extended to
Bovary.
Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing
such a wife. He showed with pride in the sitting room two
small pencil sketched by her that he had had framed in very
large frames, and hung up against the wallpaper by long green
cords. People returning from mass saw him at his door in his
wool-work slippers.
He came home late—at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes.
Then he asked for something to eat, and as the servant had
gone to bed, Emma waited on him. He took off his coat to dine
more at his ease. He told her, one after the other, the people
he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions
ha had written, and, well pleased with himself, he finished the

42
remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the
cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then
went to bed, and lay on his back and snored.
As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his
handkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so that his
hair in the morning was all tumbled pell-mell about his face
and whitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings
came untied during the night. He always wore thick boots that
had two long creases over the instep running obliquely towards
the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight
line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that "was quite
good enough for the country."
His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see
him as formerly when there had been some violent row at her
place; and yet Madame Bovary senior seemed prejudiced
against her daughter-in-law. She thought "her ways too fine for
their position"; the wood, the sugar, and the candles disap-
peared as "at a grand establishment," and the amount of firing
in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses.
She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught
her to keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat.
Emma put up with these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of
them; and the words "daughter" and "mother" were exchanged
all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the lips, each
one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger.
In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was
still the favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed
to her a desertion from her tenderness, an encroachment upon
what was hers, and she watched her son's happiness in sad si-
lence, as a ruined man looks through the windows at people
dining in his old house. She recalled to him as remembrances
her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with
Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not
reasonable to adore her so exclusively.
Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother,
and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of
the one infallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the other
irreproachable. When Madam Bovary had gone, he tried tim-
idly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of the more
anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma

43
proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him
off to his patients.
And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she
wanted to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the
garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by
heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but
she found herself as calm after as before, and Charles seemed
no more amorous and no more moved.
When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart
without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding
what she did not experience as of believing anything that did
not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself
without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exor-
bitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her at cer-
tain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like
a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner.
A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the
lungs, had given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took
her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order to be
alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes the eternal
garden and the dusty road. She went as far as the beeches of
Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an angle of
the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of
the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you.
She began by looking round her to see if nothing had
changed since last she had been there. She found again in the
same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles
growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along
the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting
away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first,
wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and
round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing
the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a
cornfield.
Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on
the grass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade,
Emma repeated to herself, "Good heavens! Why did I marry?"
She asked herself if by some other chance combination it
would have not been possible to meet another man; and she
tried to imagine what would have been these unrealised

44
events, this different life, this unknown husband. All, surely,
could not be like this one. He might have been handsome,
witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old com-
panions of the convent had married. What were they doing
now? In town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the
theatres and the lights of the ballroom, they were living lives
where the heart expands, the senses bourgeon out. But
she—her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks
on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web
in the darkness in every corner of her heart.
She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform
to receive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her
white frock and open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and
when she went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her
to congratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages;
farewells were called to her through their windows; the music
master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all of
this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her
knees, and smoothed the long delicate head, saying, "Come,
kiss mistress; you have no troubles."
Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who
yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself,
spoke to her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom one is
consoling.
Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea
rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux coun-
try, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The
rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in
a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept
up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl round her shoulders
and rose.
In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the
short moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was
setting; the sky showed red between the branches, and the
trunks of the trees, uniform, and planted in a straight line,
seemed a brown colonnade standing out against a background
of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali, and hurriedly
returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself into an arm-
chair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak.

45
 But towards the end of September something extraordinary
fell upon her life; she was invited by the Marquis
d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.
Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis,
anxious to re-enter political life, set about preparing for his
candidature to the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In
the winter he distributed a great deal of wood, and in the Con-
seil General always enthusiastically demanded new roads for
his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had suffered from
an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by giving
a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes
to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had
seen some superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now
cherry trees did not thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked
Bovary for some slips; made it his business to thank his person-
ally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty figure, and that she
did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not think he was go-
ing beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other
hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.
On Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bo-
vary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a
great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front of
the apron. Besides these Charles held a bandbox between his
knees.
They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were
being lit to show the way for the carriages.

46
Chapter 8
The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two pro-
jecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an
immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing
among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while
large beds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder
roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the
curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge;
through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched
roofs scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping,
well timbered hillocks, and in the background amid the trees
rose in two parallel lines the coach houses and stables, all that
was left of the ruined old chateau.
Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps;
servants appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering
his arm to the doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule.
It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound
of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a
church.
Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery
overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose
door one could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed
it to go to the drawing room, Emma saw standing round the
table men with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats.
They all wore orders, and smiled silently as they made their
strokes.
On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore
at the bottom names written in black letters. She read: "Jean-
Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyes-
sard and Baron de la Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on
the 20th of October, 1857." And on another: "Jean-Antoine-
Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral of
France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded at

47
the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May, 1692;
died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693." One could
hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps
lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the
room. Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against
these in delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish,
and from all these great black squares framed in with gold
stood out here and there some lighter portion of the paint-
ing—a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing
over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a
garter above a well-rounded calf.
The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the
ladies (the Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She
made her sit down by her on an ottoman, and began talking to
her as amicably as if she had known her a long time. She was a
woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook nose, a
drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown
hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A
fair young woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and
gentlemen with flowers in their buttonholes were talking to
ladies round the fire.
At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the ma-
jority, sat down at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at
the second in the dining room with the Marquis and
Marchioness.
Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm
air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen,
of the fumes of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The
silver dish covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the can-
delabra, the cut crystal covered with light steam reflected from
one to the other pale rays; bouquets were placed in a row the
whole length of the table; and in the large-bordered plates
each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop's mitre,
held between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped roll. The
red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open
baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their
plumage; smoke was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-
breeches, white cravat, and frilled shirt, the steward, grave as
a judge, offering ready carved dishes between the shoulders of
the guests, with a touch of the spoon gave you the piece

48
chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with copper
baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed
motionless on the room full of life.
Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their
gloves in their glasses.
But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these
women, bent over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his
neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy
drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a
little queue tied with black ribbon. He was the Marquis's
father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on a time fa-
vourite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil
hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it
was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Mon-
sieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of
noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had
squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant
behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that
he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes turned
involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something
extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of
queens! Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all
over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen
pomegranates nor tasted pineapples. The powdered sugar even
seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere.
The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the
ball.
Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress
on her debut. She did her hair according to the directions of
the hairdresser, and put on the barege dress spread out upon
the bed.
Charles's trousers were tight across the belly.
"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he
said.
"Dancing?" repeated Emma.
"Yes!"
"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep
your place. Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she
added.

49
 Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for
Emma to finish dressing.
He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her
black eyes seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating to-
wards the ears, shone with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon
trembled on its mobile stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tip
of the leaves. She wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with
three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with green.
Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.
"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me."
One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a
horn. She went downstairs restraining herself from running.
Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some
crushing.
She sat down on a form near the door.
The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men
standing up and talking and servants in livery bearing large
trays. Along the line of seated women painted fans were flut-
tering, bouquets half hid smiling faces, and gold stoppered
scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed hands, whose white
gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh at the
wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets
trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare
arms.
The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the
nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of mytosotis, jasmine,
pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly
seated in their places, mothers with forbidding countenances
were wearing red turbans.
Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding
her by the tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with
the dancers, and waited for the first note to start. But her emo-
tion soon vanished, and, swaying to the rhythm of the orches-
tra, she glided forward with slight movements of the neck. A
smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin,
that sometimes played alone while the other instruments were
silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis d'or that were
being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room; then
all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note,

50
feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched
and parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again.
A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty,
scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at the
doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by a cer-
tain air of breeding, whatever their differences in age, dress,
or face.
Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their
hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with
more delicate pomades. They had the complexion of
wealth—that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor
of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture,
and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at
its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their
long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped
their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that
gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to
grow old had an air of youth, while there was something ma-
ture in the faces of the young. In their unconcerned looks was
the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gen-
tleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of
a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised and
vanity amused—the management of thoroughbred horses and
the society of loose women.
A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talk-
ing of Italy with a pale young woman wearing a parure of
pearls.
They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's,
Tivoly, Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of
Genoa, the Coliseum by moonlight. With her other ear Emma
was listening to a conversation full of words she did not under-
stand. A circle gathered round a very young man who the week
before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romolus," and won two
thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained
that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers'
errors that had disfigured the name of his horse.
The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were grow-
ing dim.
Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon
a chair and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass

51
Madame Bovary turned her head and saw in the garden the
faces of peasants pressed against the window looking in at
them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to her. She
saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse un-
der the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly,
skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the
dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so
distinct until then, faded away completely, and she almost
doubted having lived it. She was there; beyond the ball was
only shadow overspreading all the rest. She was just eating a
maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a silver-gilt
cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth.
A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing.
"Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan
that has fallen behind the sofa?"
The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his
arm, Emma saw the hand of a young woman throw something
white, folded in a triangle, into his hat. The gentleman, picking
up the fan, offered it to the lady respectfully; she thanked him
with an inclination of the head, and began smelling her
bouquet.
After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines,
soups a la bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la Trafal-
gar, and all sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the
dishes, the carriages one after the other began to drive off.
Raising the corners of the muslin curtain, one could see the
light of their lanterns glimmering through the darkness. The
seats began to empty, some card-players were still left; the mu-
sicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their tongues.
Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door.
*With almond milk
At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how
to waltz. Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers
herself and the Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle
were still there, about a dozen persons.
One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Vis-
count, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his
chest, came a second time to ask Madame Bovary to dance, as-
suring her that he would guide her, and that she would get
through it very well.

52
 They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all
around them was turning—the lamps, the furniture, the wains-
coting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. On passing near the
doors the bottom of Emma's dress caught against his trousers.
Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised
her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started
again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, drag-
ging her along disappeared with her to the end of the gallery,
where panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her
head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly,
he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the
wall and covered her eyes with her hands.
When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing
room three waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a
stool.
She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.
Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she
with rigid body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same
pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown for-
ward. That woman knew how to waltz! They kept up a long
time, and tired out all the others.
Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the good-
nights, or rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau re-
tired to bed.
Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His "knees
were going up into his body." He had spent five consecutive
hours standing bolt upright at the card tables, watching them
play whist, without understanding anything about it, and it was
with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots.
Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window,
and leant out.
The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She
breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The mu-
sic of the ball was still murmuring in her ears. And she tried to
keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this lux-
urious life that she would soon have to give up.
Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the
chateau, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she
had noticed the evening before. She would fain have known
their lives, have penetrated, blended with them. But she was

53
shivering with cold. She undressed, and cowered down
between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.
There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast las-
ted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the
doctor.
Next, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of
roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the orna-
mental waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where
strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under
hanging vases, whence, as from over-filled nests of serpents,
fell long green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was at
the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the
chateau. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to
see the stables.
Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the
names of the horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall
whisked its tail when anyone went near and said "Tchk! tchk!"
The boards of the harness room shone like the flooring of a
drawing room. The carriage harness was piled up in the middle
against two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the
spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.
Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to.
The dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the
parcels being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to
the Marquis and Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.
Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the
extreme edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide
apart, and the little horse ambled along in the shafts that were
too big for him. The loose reins hanging over his crupper were
wet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the chaise gave
great regular bumps against it.
They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly
some horsemen with cigars between their lips passed laughing.
Emma thought she recognized the Viscount, turned back, and
caught on the horizon only the movement of the heads rising or
falling with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop.
A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string
the traces that had broken.
But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something
on the ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a

54
cigar-case with a green silk border and beblazoned in the
centre like the door of a carriage.
"There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this
evening after dinner."
"Why, do you smoke?" she asked.
"Sometimes, when I get a chance."
He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.
When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame
lost her temper. Nastasie answered rudely.
"Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I
give you warning."
For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with
sorrel.
Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.
"How good it is to be at home again!"
Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the
poor girl. She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his
widowhood, kept him company many an evening. She had been
his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place.
"Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last.
"Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied.
Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their
room was being made ready. Charles began to smoke. He
smoked with lips protruding, spitting every moment, recoiling
at every puff.
"You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully.
He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold wa-
ter at the pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it
quickly to the back of the cupboard.
The next day was a long one. She walked about her little
garden, up and down the same walks, stopping before the
beds, before the espalier, before the plaster curate, looking
with amazement at all these things of once-on-a-time that she
knew so well. How far off the ball seemed already! What was it
that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before yes-
terday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard
had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices
that a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains.
Still she was resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers
her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were

55
yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart
was like these. In its friction against wealth something had
come over it that could not be effaced.
The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for
Emma.
Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as
she awoke, "Ah! I was there a week—a fortnight—three weeks
ago."
And little by little the faces grew confused in her
remembrance.
She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the
liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped
her, but the regret remained with her.

56
Chapter 9
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 mis-
tress. 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 morn-
ing 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, tra-
versing 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

57
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 peri-
styles of theatres.
She took in "La Corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "Sylphe
des Salons." She devoured, without skipping a word, all the ac-
counts 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 descrip-
tions 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 al-
ways 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 human-
ity. 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 heav-
en and earth, in the midst of storms, having something of the
sublime. For the rest of the world it was lost, with no particular

58
place and as if non-existent. The nearer things were, moreover,
the more her thoughts turned away from them. All her immedi-
ate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class im-
beciles, 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 delic-
acy of sentiment. Did not love, like Indian plants, need a spe-
cial 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 separ-
ated 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 side-
board, Felicite 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 dress-
ing gown that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice
a pleated chamisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a

59
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-hold-
er, 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 om-
elettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, re-
ceived 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 un-
derstood these refinements the more they seduced him. They
added something to the pleasure of the senses and to the com-
fort 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

60
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 Med-
icale," 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 col-
league. 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 fan-
cied, 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 an-
ecdote of the "upper ten" that she had seen in a feuilleton; for,

61
after all, Charles was something, an ever-open ear, and ever-
ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her grey-
hound. 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, to-
wards 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 recom-
menced. 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 ad-
venture 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 practi-
cing. 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.

62
 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 sum. 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 chil-
dren 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 hear, one saw the many-footed
woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the
curie 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 police-
man, 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

63
hairdresser, lamented his wasted calling, his hopeless future,
and dreaming of some shop in a big town—at Rouen, for ex-
ample, 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 in-
strument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder; and now, dole-
ful 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 sad-
ness 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

64
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, Ma-
dame 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 per-
sisted in not going out, then, stifling, threw open the windows
and put on light dresses. After she had well scolded her ser-
vant 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 access-
ible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people,
who always retain in their souls something of the horny hard-
ness 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, find-
ing fault with that which others approved, and approving
things perverse and immoral, all of which made her husband
open his eyes widely.

65
 Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue from
it? Yet she was as good as all the women who were living hap-
pily. 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 fan-
cied 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 Neufchatel arrondissement there was a con-
siderable 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 wed-
ding 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.

66
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 least flew up the
chimney.
When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bo-
vary was pregnant.

67
Part 2

68
Chapter 1
Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of
which not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four
miles from Rouen, between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads,
at the foot of a valley watered by the Rieule, a little river that
runs into the Andelle after turning three water-mills near its
mouth, where there are a few trout that the lads amuse them-
selves by fishing for on Sundays.
We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on
to the top of the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river
that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions with
distinct physiognomies—all on the left is pasture land, all of the
right arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge of low hills
to join at the back with the pasture land of the Bray country,
while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising, broadens
out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. The
water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the colour
of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great
unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a
fringe of silver.
Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the
forest of Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred
from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain
tracks, and these brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks
against the grey colour of the mountain are due to the quantity
of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country.
Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the
Ile-de-France, a bastard land whose language is without accent
and its landscape is without character. It is there that they
make the worst Neufchatel cheeses of all the arrondissement;
and, on the other hand, farming is costly because so much ma-
nure is needed to enrich this friable soil full of sand and flints.

69
 Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yon-
ville, but about this time a cross-road was made which joins
that of Abbeville to that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by
the Rouen wagoners on their way to Flanders. Yonville-
l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of its "new outlet."
Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the
pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and
the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally
spread riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along the
banks like a cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side.
At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway,
planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the
first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the
middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses,
cart-sheds and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with lad-
ders, poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. The thatched
roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a
third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have
knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the
plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-
tree sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door
a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering
crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But the
courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the
fences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window
from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and
then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts outside that
partly block the way. Then across an open space appears a
white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his
finger on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of
steps; scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary's
house, and the finest in the place.
*The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of
notaries.
The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces
farther down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery
that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of
graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a con-
tinuous pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out
regular green squares. The church was rebuilt during the last

70
years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof is beginning
to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows in its
blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft
for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under
their wooden shoes.
The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls
obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are ad-
orned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the
words in large letters, "Mr. So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a
spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a
pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe,
coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red
cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a
copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the In-
terior," overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks,
closes in the perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have
been left unpainted.
The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some
twenty posts, occupies of itself about half the public square of
Yonville. The town hall, constructed "from the designs of a Par-
is architect," is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner
next to the chemist's shop. On the ground-floor are three Ionic
columns and on the first floor a semicircular gallery, while the
dome that crowns it is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one
foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other the scales of
Justice.
But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or
inn, the chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening es-
pecially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars
that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their
two streams of colour; then across them as if in Bengal lights is
seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. His
house from top to bottom is placarded with inscriptions written
in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy, Seltzer,
Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabi-
an racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths,
hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all
the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chem-
ist." Then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed
to the counter, the word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll

71
above a glass door, which about half-way up once more repeats
"Homais" in gold letters on a black ground.
Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street
(the only one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops
on either side stops short at the turn of the highroad. If it is
left on the right hand and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills fol-
lowed the cemetery is soon reached.
At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of
wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side pur-
chased; but all the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs,
as heretofore, continue to crowd together towards the gate.
The keeper, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle
(thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has
taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes
there. From year to year, however, his small field grows smal-
ler, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether
to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.
"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curie at last said to
him one day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked
him for some time; but to this day he carries on the cultivation
of his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow
naturally.
Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has
changed at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top
of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in
the wind from the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like
lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alco-
hol, and above the big door of the inn the old golden lion, faded
by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane.
On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville,
Widow Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy
that she sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-
morrow was market-day. The meat had to be cut beforehand,
the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made. Moreover, she had
the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife,
and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of
laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for
brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and
on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton,

72
rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on
which spinach was being chopped.
From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls
whom the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.
A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slip-
pers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming
his back at the chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-
satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the gold-
finch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this was the
chemist.
"Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the
water bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew
what dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! Good heav-
ens! Those furniture-movers are beginning their racket in the
billiard-room again; and their van has been left before the front
door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when it draws up. Call
Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur Homais,
that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and
drunk eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me,"
she went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in
her hand.
"That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais.
"You would buy another."
"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow.
"Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I
tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And
besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues.
Hazards aren't played now; everything is changed! One must
keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!"
The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on—
"You may say what you like; his table is better than yours;
and if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic
pool for Poland or the sufferers from the Lyons floods—"
"It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the
landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur
Homais; as long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it.
We've feathered our nest; while one of these days you'll find
the 'Cafe Francais' closed with a big placard on the shutters.
Change my billiard-table!" she went on, speaking to herself,
"the table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and

73
on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six visitors! But
that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!"
"Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?"
"Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock
strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under
the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the
small parlour. He'd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so
squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like
Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-
past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. Such a
nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!"
"Well, you see, there's a great difference between an edu-
cated man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector."
Six o'clock struck. Binet came in.
He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his
thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the
top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a
bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet.
He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers,
and, all the year round, well-blacked boots, that had two paral-
lel swellings due to the sticking out of his big-toes. Not a hair
stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which, encirc-
ling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border, his
long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose hooked.
Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine
hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning
napkin rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jeal-
ousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois.
He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be
got out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying
the cloth, Binet remained silent in his place near the stove.
Then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way.
"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his
tongue," said the chemist, as soon as he was along with the
landlady.
"He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers
in the cloth line were here—such clever chaps who told such
jokes in the evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he
stood there like a dab fish and never said a word."

74
 "Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies,
nothing that makes the society-man."
"Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady.
"Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he, parts! In his own line
it is possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on—
"Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a juriscon-
sult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that
they should become whimsical or even peevish, I can under-
stand; such cases are cited in history. But at least it is because
they are thinking of something. Myself, for example, how often
has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to
write a label, and to find, after all, that I had put it behind my
ear!"
Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the
"Hirondelle" were not coming. She started. A man dressed in
black suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last gleam of the
twilight one could see that his face was rubicund and his form
athletic.
"What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?" asked the land-
lady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper
candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. "Will you take
something? A thimbleful of Cassis*? A glass of wine?"
*Black currant liqueur.
The priest declined very politely. He had come for his um-
brella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont
convent, and after asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to
him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church,
from which the Angelus was ringing.
When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots
along the square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now
very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed
to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly,
and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe.
The landlady took up the defence of her curie.
"Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee.
Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he car-
ried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong."
"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to
confess to fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the
Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes,

75
Madame Lefrancois, every month—a good phlebotomy, in the
interests of the police and morals."
"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no
religion."
The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I
even have more than all these others with their mummeries
and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in
the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care
little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as cit-
izens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to
kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-
for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know Him
as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal
vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of
Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession
of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of
'89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in
his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in
the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the
end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely
opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by
the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignor-
ance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them."
He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling
over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst
of the town council. But the landlady no longer heeded him;
she was listening to a distant rolling. One could distinguish the
noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of loose horse-
shoes that beat against the ground, and at last the "Hirondelle"
stopped at the door.
It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the
tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their
shoulders. The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in
their sashes when the coach was closed, and retained here and
there patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, that not even
storms of rain had altogether washed away. It was drawn by
three horses, the first a leader, and when it came down-hill its
bottom jolted against the ground.
Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square;
they all spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for

76
hampers. Hivert did not know whom to answer. It was he who
did the errands of the place in town. He went to the shops and
brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for
the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps from the
milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and all along the road
on his return journey he distributed his parcels, which he
threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of
his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.
An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound
had run across the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of
an hour; Hivert had even gone back a mile and a half expecting
every moment to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary
to go on.
Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of
this misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened
to be in the coach with her, had tried to console her by a num-
ber of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the
end of long years. One, he said had been told of, who had come
back to Paris from Constantinople. Another had gone one hun-
dred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four rivers;
and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve
years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the
street as he was going to dine in town.

77
Chapter 2
Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a
nurse, and they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he
had slept soundly since night set in.
Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to ma-
dame and his respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to
have been able to render them some slight service, and added
with a cordial air that he had ventured to invite himself, his
wife being away.
When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the
chimney.
With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee,
and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in
its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The
flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the
woof of her gowns, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her
eyelids, which she blinked now and again. A great red glow
passed over her with the blowing of the wind through the half-
open door.
On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair
watched her silently.
As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a
clerk at the notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon
Dupuis (it was he who was the second habitue of the "Lion
d'Or") frequently put back his dinner-hour in hope that some
traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the
evening. On the days when his work was done early, he had,
for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and en-
dure from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was there-
fore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion
that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they
passed into the large parlour where Madame Lefrancois, for
the purpose of showing off, had had the table laid for four.

78
 Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear
of coryza; then, turning to his neighbour—
"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so ab-
ominably in our 'Hirondelle.'"
"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always
amuses me. I like change of place."
"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to
the same places."
"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be
in the saddle"—
"But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary,
"nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant—when one can," he
added.
"Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is
not very hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our
roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers
are prosperous, they pay pretty well. We have, medically
speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis,
bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent fevers
at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a serious nature,
nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of scrofula,
due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our
peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to com-
bat, Monsieur Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which
all the efforts of your science will daily come into collision; for
people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest,
rather than come straight to the doctor or the chemist. The cli-
mate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a
few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I have
made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centi-
grade at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as
the maximum, or otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English
scale), not more. And, as a matter of fact, we are sheltered
from the north winds by the forest of Argueil on the one side,
from the west winds by the St. Jean range on the other; and
this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapours
given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle in
the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is
to say, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydro-
gen alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus from

79
the ground, mixing together all those different emanations,
unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the
electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any,
might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalu-
brious miasmata—this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly
tempered on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it
should come—that is to say, the southern side—by the south-
eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves passing over
the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like breezes from
Russia."
"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?"
continued Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man.
"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La
Pature, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Some-
times, on Sundays, I go and stay there with a book, watching
the sunset."
"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she re-
sumed; "but especially by the side of the sea."
"Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon.
"And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bo-
vary, "that the mind travels more freely on this limitless ex-
panse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives
ideas of the infinite, the ideal?"
"It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued
Leon. "A cousin of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year
told me that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the
lakes, the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the
glaciers. One sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cot-
tages suspended over precipices, and, a thousand feet below
one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must
stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I no longer
marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire
his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before
some imposing site."
"You play?" she asked.
"No, but I am very fond of music," he replied.
"Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted
Homais, bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why,
my dear fellow, the other day in your room you were singing

80
'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I heard you from the laboratory.
You gave it like an actor."
Leon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's where he had a small
room on the second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at
the compliment of his landlord, who had already turned to the
doctor, and was enumerating to him, one after the other, all
the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He was telling anecdotes,
giving information; the fortune of the notary was not known ex-
actly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a
good deal of show.
Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?"
"Oh, German music; that which makes you dream."
"Have you been to the opera?"
"Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to
finish reading for the bar."
"As I had the honour of putting it to your husband," said the
chemist, "with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away,
you will find yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the pos-
session of one of the most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its
greatest convenience for a doctor is a door giving on the Walk,
where one can go in and out unseen. Moreover, it contains
everything that is agreeable in a household—a laundry, kitchen
with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He was a gay
dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden,
by the side of the water, he had an arbour built just for the pur-
pose of drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of
gardening she will be able—"
"My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she
has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in
her room reading."
"Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to
sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind
beats against the window and the lamp is burning?"
"What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide
open upon him.
"One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Mo-
tionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your
thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, fol-
lows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the

81
characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating be-
neath their costumes."
"That is true! That is true?" she said.
"Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come
across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim im-
age that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest
expression of your own slightest sentiment?"
"I have experienced it," she replied.
"That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think
verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more eas-
ily to tears."
"Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on
the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that
frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate senti-
ments, such as there are in nature."
"In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the
heart, miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet,
amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in
thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of
happiness. For myself, living here far from the world, this is my
one distraction; but Yonville affords so few resources."
"Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always sub-
scribed to a lending library."
"If madame will do me the honour of making use of it", said
the chemist, who had just caught the last words, "I have at her
disposal a library composed of the best authors, Voltaire,
Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons'; and
in addition I receive various periodicals, among them the
'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage to be its corres-
pondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel, Yon-
ville, and vicinity."
For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the ser-
vant Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the
flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and
constantly left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it
beat against the wall with its hooks.
Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on
one of the bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sit-
ting. She wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff
a gauffered cambric collar, and with the movements of her

82
head the lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or
came out from it. Thus side by side, while Charles and the
chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague conver-
sations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to
the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres,
titles of novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not
know; Tostes, where she had lived, and Yonville, where they
were; they examined all, talked of everything till to the end of
dinner.
When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the
room in the new house, and the guests soon raised the siege.
Madame Lefrancois was asleep near the cinders, while the
stable-boy, lantern in hand, was waiting to show Monsieur and
Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw stuck in his red
hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had taken in his
other hand the cure's umbrella, they started.
The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great
shadows; the earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as
the doctor's house was only some fifty paces from the inn, they
had to say good-night almost immediately, and the company
dispersed.
As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of
the plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls
were new and the wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on
the first floor, a whitish light passed through the curtainless
windows.
She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields,
half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along
the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell,
were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with
mattresses on the chairs and basins on the ground—the two
men who had brought the furniture had left everything about
carelessly.
This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange
place.
The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second,
of her arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was
the fourth. And each one had marked, as it were, the inaugura-
tion of a new phase in her life. She did not believe that things
could present themselves in the same way in different places,

83
and since the portion of her life lived had been bad, no doubt
that which remained to be lived would be better.

84
Chapter 3
The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the
Place. She had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed.
She nodded quickly and reclosed the window.
Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come,
but on going to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet,
already at table. The dinner of the evening before had been a
considerable event for him; he had never till then talked for
two hours consecutively to a "lady." How then had he been
able to explain, and in such language, the number of things
that he could not have said so well before? He was usually shy,
and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty
and dissimulation.
At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to the
arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about
politics—a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had
some accomplishments; he painted in water-colours, could
read the key of G, and readily talked literature after dinner
when he did not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him
for his education; Madame Homais liked him for his good-
nature, for he often took the little Homais into the
garden—little brats who were always dirty, very much spoilt,
and somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. Besides the ser-
vant to look after them, they had Justin, the chemist's appren-
tice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been taken
into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same
time as a servant.
The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Ma-
dame Bovary information as to the trades-people, sent ex-
pressly for his own cider merchant, tasted the drink himself,
and saw that the casks were properly placed in the cellar; he
explained how to set about getting in a supply of butter cheap,
and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the sacristan,

85
who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked after
the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year, ac-
cording to the taste of the customers.
The need of looking after others was not the only thing that
urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a
plan underneath it all.
He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article
I, which forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise
medicine; so that, after certain anonymous denunciations, Ho-
mais had been summoned to Rouen to see the procurer of the
king in his own private room; the magistrate receiving him
standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in the
morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard
the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-
off noise great locks that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled
as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the
depths of dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the
jars dispersed; and he was obliged to enter a cafe and take a
glass of rum and seltzer to recover his spirits.
Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter,
and he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations
in his back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues
were jealous, everything was to be feared; gaining over Mon-
sieur Bovary by his attentions was to earn his gratitude, and
prevent his speaking out later on, should he notice anything.
So every morning Homais brought him "the paper," and often
in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to have a chat
with the Doctor.
Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated
for hours without speaking, went into his consulting room to
sleep, or watched his wife sewing. Then for diversion he em-
ployed himself at home as a workman; he even tried to do up
the attic with some paint which had been left behind by the
painters. But money matters worried him. He had spent so
much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the
moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns,
had slipped away in two years.
Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their
carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster
cure, who falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had

86
been dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavements of
Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came to distract him,
namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her confine-
ment approached he cherished her the more. It was another
bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a contin-
ued sentiment of a more complex union. When from afar he
saw her languid walk, and her figure without stays turning
softly on her hips; when opposite one another he looked at her
at his ease, while she took tired poses in her armchair, then his
happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her, passed
his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to
make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all
kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The
idea of having begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted
nothing. He knew human life from end to end, and he sat down
to it with serenity.
Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to
be delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother.
But not being able to spend as much as she would have liked,
to have a swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and em-
broidered caps, in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after
the trousseau, and ordered the whole of it from a village nee-
dlewoman, without choosing or discussing anything. Thus she
did not amuse herself with those preparations that stimulate
the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the
very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated.
As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she
soon began to think of him more consecutively.
She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would
call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like
an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man,
at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over coun-
tries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures.
But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible,
she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal de-
pendence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string,
flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws
her, some conventionality that restrains.
She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun
was rising.

87
 "It is a girl!" said Charles.
She turned her head away and fainted.
Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion
d'Or, almost immediately came running in to embrace her. The
chemist, as man of discretion, only offered a few provincial feli-
citations through the half-opened door. He wished to see the
child and thought it well made.
Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in
seeking a name for her daughter. First she went over all those
that have Italian endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda,
Atala; she liked Galsuinde pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie
still better.
Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother;
Emma opposed this. They ran over the calendar from end to
end, and then consulted outsiders.
"Monsieur Leon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking
about it the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It
is very much in fashion just now."
But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this
name of a sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference
for all those that recalled some great man, an illustrious fact,
or a generous idea, and it was on this system that he had bap-
tized his four children. Thus Napoleon represented glory and
Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to romanti-
cism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of
the French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not in-
terfere with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle
the man of sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allow-
ances for imagination and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for ex-
ample, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the style; he
detested the conception, but applauded all the details, and
loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic over their
dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported,
but when he thought that mummers would get something out
of them for their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confu-
sion of sentiments in which he was involved he would have
liked at once to crown Racine with both his hands and discuss
with him for a good quarter of an hour.
At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyes-
sard she had heard the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe;

88
from that moment this name was chosen; and as old Rouault
could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested to stand god-
father. His gifts were all products from his establishment, to
wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of
marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bar-
gain that he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of
the ceremony there was a grand dinner; the cure was present;
there was much excitement. Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-
time began singing "Le Dieu des bonnes gens." Monsieur Leon
sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary, senior, who was god-
mother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Bo-
vary, senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and
began baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured
over its head. This mockery of the first of the sacraments made
the Abbe Bournisien angry; old Bovary replied by a quotation
from "La Guerre des Dieux"; the cure wanted to leave; the
ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they succeeded in
making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on with
the half-finished coffee in his saucer.
Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling
the natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that
he wore in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square.
Being also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he of-
ten sent the servant to the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which
was put down to his son's account, and to perfume his
handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law's whole supply of
eau-de-cologne.
The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked
about the world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Stras-
bourg, of his soldier times, of the mistresses he had had, the
grand luncheons of which he had partaken; then he was ami-
able, and sometimes even, either on the stairs, or in the
garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look
out for yourself."
Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's
happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long-run
have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman,
took care to hurry their departure. Perhaps she had more seri-
ous reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was not the man
to respect anything.

89
 One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see
her little girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's
wife, and, without looking at the calendar to see whether the
six weeks of the Virgin were yet passed, she set out for the Rol-
lets' house, situated at the extreme end of the village, between
the highroad and the fields.
It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and
the slate roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue
sky seemed to strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A
heavy wind was blowing; Emma felt weak as she walked; the
stones of the pavement hurt her; she was doubtful whether she
would not go home again, or go in somewhere to rest.
At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighbour-
ing door with a bundle of papers under his arm. He came to
greet her, and stood in the shade in front of the Lheureux's
shop under the projecting grey awning.
Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that
she was beginning to grow tired.
"If—" said Leon, not daring to go on.
"Have you any business to attend to?" she asked.
And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany
her. That same evening this was known in Yonville, and Ma-
dame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, declared in the presence of
her servant that "Madame Bovary was compromising herself."
To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on
leaving the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow
between little houses and yards a small path bordered with
privet hedges. They were in bloom, and so were the speed-
wells, eglantines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up
from the thickets. Through openings in the hedges one could
see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or tethered cows
rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two, side by
side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining
his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm
of midges fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.
They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which
shaded it.
Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, be-
neath the dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Fag-
gots upright against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce,

90
a few square feet of lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks.
Dirty water was running here and there on the grass, and all
round were several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red
calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the
hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby
she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was
pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with
scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too
taken up with their business, left in the country.
"Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep."
The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling,
had at its farther end, against the wall, a large bed without
curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the side by the win-
dow, one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue pa-
per. In the corner behind the door, shining hob-nailed shoes
stood in a row under the slab of the washstand, near a bottle of
oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu Laensberg lay
on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and bits
of amadou.
Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame" blow-
ing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some
perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden
shoe-pegs.
Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in
the wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she
rocked herself to and fro.
Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to
him to see this beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the
midst of all this poverty. Madam Bovary reddened; he turned
away, thinking perhaps there had been an impertinent look in
his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who had just been
sick over her collar.
The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it
wouldn't show.
"She gives me other doses," she said: "I am always a-washing
of her. If you would have the goodness to order Camus, the
grocer, to let me have a little soap, it would really be more con-
venient for you, as I needn't trouble you then."
"Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame
Rollet," and she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.

91
 The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden,
talking all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.
"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair.
I'm sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground cof-
fee; that'd last me a month, and I'd take it of a morning with
some milk."
After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left.
She had gone a little way down the path when, at the sound of
wooden shoes, she turned round. It was the nurse.
"What is it?"
Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm
tree, began talking to her of her husband, who with his trade
and six francs a year that the captain—
"Oh, be quick!" said Emma.
"Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word,
"I'm afraid he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you
know men—"
"But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you
some. You bother me!"
"Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his
wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that
cider weakens him."
"Do make haste, Mere Rollet!"
"Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't
asking too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you
would"—and her eyes begged—"a jar of brandy," she said at
last, "and I'd rub your little one's feet with it; they're as tender
as one's tongue."
Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's
arm. She walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and
looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder
of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvety collar.
His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She
noticed his nails which were longer than one wore them at
Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to trim
them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing
desk.
They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm sea-
son the bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot
the garden walls whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed

92
noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses
huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread
themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; some-
times at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an in-
sect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced with a
ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, fol-
lowed each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey
backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed
empty. It was the dinner-hour at the farms, and the young wo-
man and her companion heard nothing as they walked but the
fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they
spoke, and the sound of Emma's dress rustling round her.
The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping
were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers
had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open
sunshade Madame Bovary, as she passed, made some of their
faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of over-
hanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and
dangled for a moment over the silk.
They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were
expected shortly at the Rouen theatre.
"Are you going?" she asked.
"If I can," he answered.
Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes
were full of more serious speech, and while they forced them-
selves to find trivial phrases, they felt the same languor steal-
ing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, con-
tinuous, dominating that of their voices. Surprised with wonder
at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the
sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like tropical
shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn
softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxica-
tion without a thought of the horizon that we do not even
know.
In one place the ground had been trodden down by the
cattle; they had to step on large green stones put here and
there in the mud.
She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot,
and tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her

93
form bent forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh,
afraid of falling into the puddles of water.
When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary
opened the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.
Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just
glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took
up his hat and went out.
He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the be-
ginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under
the pines and watched the sky through his fingers.
"How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!"
He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with
Homais for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master. The
latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed
spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood
nothing of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff
English manner, which in the beginning had impressed the
clerk.
As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Nor-
mandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her
mother, her cousins, weeping for other's woes, letting
everything go in her household, and detesting corsets; but so
slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common in ap-
pearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although
she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms
next each other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought
that she might be a woman for another, or that she possessed
anything else of her sex than the gown.
And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or
three publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the
mayor, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who
farmed their own lands and had feasts among themselves, big-
oted to boot, and quite unbearable companions.
But from the general background of all these human faces
Emma's stood out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her
and him he seemed to see a vague abyss.
In the beginning he had called on her several times along
with the druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly
anxious to see him again, and Leon did not know what to do

94
between his fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an in-
timacy that seemed almost impossible.

95
Chapter 4
When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the
sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which
there was on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out
against the looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the
window, she could see the villagers pass along the pavement.
Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion d'Or.
Emma could hear him coming from afar; she leant forward
listening, and the young man glided past the curtain, always
dressed in the same way, and without turning his head. But in
the twilight, when, her chin resting on her left hand, she let the
embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she often
shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding
past. She would get up and order the table to be laid.
Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he
came in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating
the same phrase, "Good evening, everybody." Then, when he
had taken his seat at the table between the pair, he asked the
doctor about his patients, and the latter consulted his as to the
probability of their payment. Next they talked of "what was in
the paper."
Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he re-
peated it from end to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-
liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes that had
occurred in France or abroad. But the subject becoming ex-
hausted, he was not slow in throwing out some remarks on the
dishes before him.
Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to ma-
dame the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her
some advice on the manipulation of stews and the hygiene of
seasoning.
He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewil-
dering manner. Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of

96
recipes than his shop of jars, excelled in making all kinds of
preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew also all the
latest inventions in economic stoves, together with the art of
preserving cheese and of curing sick wines.
At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop.
Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Feli-
cite was there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond
of the doctor's house.
"The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and
the devil take me if I don't believe he's in love with your
servant!"
But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was
his constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for ex-
ample, one could not get him out of the drawing-room, whither
Madame Homais had called him to fetch the children, who
were falling asleep in the arm-chairs, and dragging down with
their backs calico chair-covers that were too large.
Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his
scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully
alienated various respectable persons from him. The clerk nev-
er failed to be there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to
meet Madame Bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the
shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots
when there was snow.
First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur
Homais played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her
advice.
Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw
the teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon. With every
movement that she made to throw her cards the right side of
her dress was drawn up. From her turned-up hair a dark colour
fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost itself little
by little in the shade. Then her dress fell on both sides of her
chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the ground. When
Leon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew
back as if he had trodden upon some one.
When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doc-
tor played dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her
elbow on the table, turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration".
She had brought her ladies' journal with her. Leon sat down

97
near her; they looked at the engravings together, and waited
for one another at the bottom of the pages. She often begged
him to read her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a languid
voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love pas-
sages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur
Homais was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and
give him a double-six. Then the three hundred finished, they
both stretched themselves out in front of the fire, and were
soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the cinders; the teapot
was empty, Leon was still reading.
Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the
lampshade, on the gauze of which were painted clowns in car-
riages, and tight-rope dances with their balancing-poles. Leon
stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then
they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed the
more sweet to them because it was unheard.
Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a con-
stant commerce of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary,
little given to jealousy, did not trouble himself about it.
On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head,
all marked with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This
was an attention of the clerk's. He showed him many others,
even to doing errands for him at Rouen; and the book of a nov-
elist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, Leon
bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on his
knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers on their hard
hairs.
She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window
to hold the pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden;
they saw each other tending their flowers at their windows.
Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often
occupied; for on Sundays from morning to night, and every
morning when the weather was bright, one could see at the
dormer-window of the garret the profile of Monsieur Binet
bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be
heard at the Lion d'Or.
One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug
in velvet and wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Ma-
dame Homais, Monsieur Homais, Justin, the children, the cook;
he spoke of it to his chief; every one wanted to see this rug.

98
Why did the doctor's wife give the clerk presents? It looked
queer. They decided that she must be his lover.
He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her
charms and of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly
answered him—
"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?"
He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declar-
ation to her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing
her and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with dis-
couragement and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions,
wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again
deferred.
Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this
resolution soon deserted him in Emma's presence, and when
Charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into his chaise to go
with him to see some patient in the neighbourhood, he at once
accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her husband, was
he not something belonging to her? As to Emma, she did not
ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come
suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings—a hurricane of
the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the
will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She
did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when
the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her
security when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it.

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Chapter 5
It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was
falling.
They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and
Monsieur Leon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in
the valley a mile and a half from Yonville. The druggist had
taken Napoleon and Athalie to give them some exercise, and
Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas on his
shoulder.
Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A
great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass
of sand and stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty,
surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of
little windows. The building was unfinished; the sky could be
seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached to the stop-
plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears
fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind.
Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future
importance of this establishment, computed the strength of the
floorings, the thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely
not having a yard-stick such as Monsieur Binet possessed for
his own special use.
Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his
shoulder, and she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar
through the mist his pale splendour. She turned. Charles was
there. His cap was drawn down over his eyebrows, and his two
thick lips were trembling, which added a look of stupidity to
his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to behold,
and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the
bearer.
While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation
a sort of depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The
cold that made him pale seemed to add a more gentle languor

100
to his face; between his cravat and his neck the somewhat
loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear
looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes,
raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more
beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are
mirrored.
"Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist.
And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into
a heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches
with which he was being overwhelmed Napoleon began to
roar, while Justin dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a
knife was wanted; Charles offered his.
"Ah!" she said to herself, "he carried a knife in his pocket like
a peasant."
The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.
In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour's,
and when Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the
comparison re-began with the clearness of a sensation almost
actual, and with that lengthening of perspective which memory
gives to things. Looking from her bed at the clean fire that was
burning, she still saw, as she had down there, Leon standing
up with one hand behind his cane, and with the other holding
Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She thought
him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she
recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had
spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she re-
peated, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss—
"Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked her-
self; "but with whom? With me?"
All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The
flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she
turned on her back, stretching out her arms.
Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had out
willed it! And why not? What prevented it?"
When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have
just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she com-
plained of a headache, then asked carelessly what had
happened that evening.
"Monsieur Leon," he said, "went to his room early."

101
 She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled
with a new delight.
The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur
Lherueux, the draper. He was a man of ability, was this shop-
keeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted upon his
southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby,
beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his
white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his
small black eyes. No one knew what he had been formerly; a
pedlar said some, a banker at Routot according to others. What
was certain was that he made complex calculations in his head
that would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequious-
ness, he always held himself with his back bent in the position
of one who bows or who invites.
After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he
put down a green bandbox on the table, and began by com-
plaining to madame, with many civilities, that he should have
remained till that day without gaining her confidence. A poor
shop like his was not made to attract a "fashionable lady"; he
emphasized the words; yet she had only to command, and he
would undertake to provide her with anything she might wish,
either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he
went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected
with the best houses. You could speak of him at the "Trois
Freres," at the "Barbe d'Or," or at the "Grand Sauvage"; all
these gentlemen knew him as well as the insides of their
pockets. To-day, then he had come to show madame, in
passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the
most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen em-
broidered collars from the box.
Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything,"
she said.
Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian
scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of straw
slippers, and finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in
open work by convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his
neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he
watched Emma's look, who was walking up and down unde-
cided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove
some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves

102
spread out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise,
making in the green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue
scintillate like little stars.
"How much are they?"
"A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no
hurry; whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews."
She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declin-
ing Monsieur Lheureux's offer. He replied quite
unconcernedly—
"Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I
have always got on with ladies—if I didn't with my own!"
Emma smiled.
"I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his
joke, "that it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I
could give you some, if need be."
She made a gesture of surprise.
"Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to
go far to find you some, rely on that."
And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the
"Cafe Francais," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.
"What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he
shakes his whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal
covering rather than a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a
young man! Those sort of people, madame, have not the least
regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. Still it's sad, all the
same, to see an acquaintance go off."
And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the
doctor's patients.
"It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at
the floor, "that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the
thing. One of these days I shall even have to consult the doctor
for a pain I have in my back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary.
At your service; your very humble servant." And he closed the
door gently.
Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the
fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with
her.
"How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the
scarves.

103
 She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Leon. She got up
and took from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to
be hemmed. When he came in she seemed very busy.
The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up
every few minutes, whilst he himself seemed quite embar-
rassed. Seated on a low chair near the fire, he turned round in
his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She stitched on, or from
time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with her nail.
She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as
he would have been by her speech.
"Poor fellow!" she thought.
"How have I displeased her?" he asked himself.
At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these
days, to go to Rouen on some office business.
"Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?"
"No," she replied.
"Why?"
"Because—"
And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey
thread.
This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen the ends of
her fingers. A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not
risk it.
"Then you are giving it up?" he went on.
"What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my
house to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand
things, in fact, many duties that must be considered first?"
She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected
anxiety. Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!"
The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness
on his behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he
took up on his praises, which he said everyone was singing, es-
pecially the chemist.
"Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma.
"Certainly," replied the clerk.
And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy
appearance generally made them laugh.
"What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife
does not trouble about her appearance."
Then she relapsed into silence.

104
 It was the same on the following days; her talks, her man-
ners, everything changed. She took interest in the housework,
went to church regularly, and looked after her servant with
more severity.
She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite
brought her in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off
her limbs. She declared she adored children; this was her con-
solation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her
caresses with lyrical outburst which would have reminded any-
one but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Notre Dame de
Paris."
When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm
near the fire. His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his
shirt buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cup-
board the night-caps arranged in piles of the same height. She
no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden;
what he proposed was always done, although she did not un-
derstand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur;
and when Leon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two
hands on his stomach, his two feet on the fender, his two
cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness, the
child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with the
slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his fore-
head: "What madness!" he said to himself. "And how to reach
her!"
And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that
he lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he
placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood out-
side those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to ob-
tain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became farther re-
moved from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis
that is taking wing. It was one of those pure feelings that do
not interfere with life, that are cultivated because they are
rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion
rejoices.
Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With
her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike
walk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing
through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the
vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so

105
calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt
oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at
the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the
marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction.
The chemist said—
"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in
a sub-prefecture."
The housewives admired her economy, the patients her po-
liteness, the poor her charity.
But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That
dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose tor-
ment those chaste lips said nothing. She was in love with Leon,
and sought solitude that she might with the more ease delight
in his image. The sight of his form troubled the voluptuousness
of this mediation. Emma thrilled at the sound of his step; then
in his presence the emotion subsided, and afterwards there re-
mained to her only an immense astonishment that ended in
sorrow.
Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose
after he had gone to see him in the street. She concerned her-
self about his comings and goings; she watched his face; she
invented quite a history to find an excuse for going to his room.
The chemist's wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the
same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon this
house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip
their red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more
Emma recognised her love, the more she crushed it down, that
it might not be evident, that she might make it less. She would
have liked Leon to guess it, and she imagined chances, cata-
strophes that should facilitate this.
What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a
sense of shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too
much, that the time was past, that all was lost. Then, pride,
and joy of being able to say to herself, "I am virtuous," and to
look at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her
a little for the sacrifice she believed she was making.
Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the
melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffer-
ing, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it
the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere

106
occasion for it. She was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a
half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness
she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home.
What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to no-
tice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy
seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point
ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not
for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and,
as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that bucked
her in on all sides.
On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds
that resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish
only augmented it; for this useless trouble was added to the
other reasons for despair, and contributed still more to the
separation between them. Her own gentleness to herself made
her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd
fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires. She would
have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better
right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was sur-
prised sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into
her thoughts, and she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to
her at all hours that she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to
let it be believed.
Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with
the temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life;
but at once a vague chasm full of darkness opened within her
soul.
"Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to
become of me? What help is to be hoped for, what consolation,
what solace?"
She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice,
with flowing tears.
"Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she
came in during these crises.
"It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it
would worry him."
"Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine,
Pere Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to
know at Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad,
to see her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she

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seemed to you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door.
Her illness, it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her
head, and the doctors could not do anything, nor the priest
either. When she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to
the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his rounds, of-
ten found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle.
Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say."
"But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it
began."

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Chapter 6
One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it,
had been watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box,
she suddenly heard the Angelus ringing.
It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in
bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly
turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready
for the summer fetes. Through the bars of the arbour and away
beyond, the river seen in the fields, meandering through the
grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between
the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint,
paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught
athwart their branches. In the distance cattle moved about;
neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the
bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful
lamentation.
With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman
lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days.
She remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the
vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its
small columns. She would have liked to be once more lost in
the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the
stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-
Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the
gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising in-
cense. Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite
deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it
was unconsciously that she went towards the church, included
to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and
all existence lost in it.
On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in or-
der not to shorten his day's labour, he preferred interrupting
his work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus

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to suit his own convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little
earlier warned the lads of catechism hour.
Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the
stones of the cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their
legs, kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing
between the little enclosure and the newest graves. This was
the only green spot. All the rest was but stones, always covered
with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom.
The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an en-
closure made for them. The shouts of their voices could be
heard through the humming of the bell. This grew less and less
with the swinging of the great rope that, hanging from the top
of the belfry, dragged its end on the ground. Swallows flitted to
and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with the edge of their
wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow nests under the tiles
of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was burning, the
wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a dis-
tance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray
of the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower
sides and the corners.
"Where is the cure?" asked Madame Bovary of one of the
lads, who was amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole
too large for it.
"He is just coming," he answered.
And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbe Bournisi-
en appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.
"These young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the
same!"
Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck
with is foot, "They respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught
sight of Madame Bovary, "Excuse me," he said; "I did not re-
cognise you."
He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short,
balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.
The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled
the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at
the hem. Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad
chest the lines of the buttons, and grew more numerous the
farther they were from his neckcloth, in which the massive
folds of his red chin rested; this was dotted with yellow spots,

110
that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of his greyish beard.
He had just dined and was breathing noisily.
"How are you?" he added.
"Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill."
"Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These first warm
days weaken one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all,
we are born to suffer, as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur
Bovary think of it?"
"He!" she said with a gesture of contempt.
"What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he
prescribe something for you?"
"Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I need."
But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where
the kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling
over like packs of cards.
"I should like to know—" she went on.
"You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice;
"I'll warm your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma, "He's
Boudet the carpenter's son; his parents are well off, and let
him do just as he pleases. Yet he could learn quickly if he
would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes for a joke I call
him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to Maromme) and I
even say 'Mon Riboudet.' Ha! Ha! 'Mont Riboudet.' The other
day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he
condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?"
She seemed not to hear him. And he went on—
"Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the
busiest people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he
added with a thick laugh, "and I of the soul."
She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said,
"you solace all sorrows."
"Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I
had to go to Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it
was under a spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is—But
pardon me! Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! Will you leave
off?"
And with a bound he ran into the church.
The boys were just then clustering round the large desk,
climbing over the precentor's footstool, opening the missal;
and others on tiptoe were just about to venture into the

111
confessional. But the priest suddenly distributed a shower of
cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of their coats,
he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their
knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting
them there.
"Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his
large cotton handkerchief, one corner of which he put between
his teeth, "farmers are much to be pitied."
"Others, too," she replied.
"Assuredly. Town-labourers, for example."
"It is not they—"
"Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous
women, I assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread."
"But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth
twitched as she spoke, "those, Monsieur le Cure, who have
bread and have no—"
"Fire in the winter," said the priest.
"Oh, what does that matter?"
"What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one
has firing and food—for, after all—"
"My God! my God!" she sighed.
"It is indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bo-
vary; drink a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass
of fresh water with a little moist sugar."
"Why?" And she looked like one awaking from a dream.
"Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead.
I thought you felt faint." Then, bethinking himself, "But you
were asking me something? What was it? I really don't
remember."
"I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma.
And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old
man in the cassock. They looked at one another face to face
without speaking.
"Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty
first, you know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The
first communion will soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be
behind after all. So after Ascension Day I keep them recta* an
extra hour every Wednesday. Poor children! One cannot lead
them too soon into the path of the Lord, as, moreover, he has

112
himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his Divine Son.
Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband."
*On the straight and narrow path.
And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as
he reached the door.
Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms,
walking with a heavy tread, his head a little bent over his
shoulder, and with his two hands half-open behind him.
Then she turned on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on
a pivot, and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest,
the clear voices of the boys still reached her ears, and went on
behind her.
"Are you a Christian?"
"Yes, I am a Christian."
"What is a Christian?"
"He who, being baptized-baptized-baptized—"
She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the ban-
isters, and when she was in her room threw herself into an
arm-chair.
The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft
undulations.
The furniture in its place seemed to have become more im-
mobile, and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of dark-
ness. The fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and Emma
vaguely marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself
was such tumult. But little Berthe was there, between the win-
dow and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, and
trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her
apron-strings.
"Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with
her hand.
The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and
leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large
blue eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her
lips on to the silk apron.
"Leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably.
Her face frightened the child, who began to scream.
"Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her
elbow.

113
 Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass
handle, cutting her cheek, which began to bleed, against it.
Madame Bovary sprang to lift her up, broke the bell-rope,
called for the servant with all her might, and she was just go-
ing to curse herself when Charles appeared. It was the dinner-
hour; he had come home.
"Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell
down while she was playing, and has hurt herself."
Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and
he went for some sticking plaster.
Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room;
she wished to remain alone to look after the child. Then watch-
ing her sleep, the little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and
she seemed very stupid to herself, and very good to have been
so worried just now at so little. Berthe, in fact, no longer
sobbed.
Her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering.
Big tears lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through
whose lashes one could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster
stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely.
"It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly this child is!"
When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from the
chemist's shop, whither he had gone after dinner to return the
remainder of the sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by
the cradle.
"I assure you it's nothing." he said, kissing her on the fore-
head. "Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself
ill."
He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had
not seemed much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted
himself to buoy him up, to "keep up his spirits." Then they had
talked of the various dangers that threaten childhood, of the
carelessness of servants. Madame Homais knew something of
it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin full of
soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and
her good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives
were not sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron
gratings to the windows and strong bars across the fireplace;
the little Homais, in spite of their spirit, could not stir without
someone watching them; at the slightest cold their father

114
stuffed them with pectorals; and until they were turned four
they all, without pity, had to wear wadded head-protectors.
This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais'; her husband
was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences
of such compression to the intellectual organs. He even went
so far as to say to her, "Do you want to make Caribs or Bo-
tocudos of them?"
Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the
conversation. "I should like to speak to you," he had whispered
in the clerk's ear, who went upstairs in front of him.
"Can he suspect anything?" Leon asked himself. His heart
beat, and he racked his brain with surmises.
At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see him-
self what would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotypes.
It was a sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delic-
ate attention—his portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first
to know "how much it would be." The inquiries would not put
Monsieur Leon out, since he went to town almost every week.
Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some "young man's affair"
at the bottom of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Leon was
after no love-making. He was sadder than ever, as Madame Le-
francois saw from the amount of food he left on his plate. To
find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector. Binet
answered roughly that he "wasn't paid by the police."
All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for
Leon often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out
his arms. Complained vaguely of life.
"It's because you don't take enough recreation," said the
collector.
"What recreation?"
"If I were you I'd have a lathe."
"But I don't know how to turn," answered the clerk.
"Ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air
of mingled contempt and satisfaction.
Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he
was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition
of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope
sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants,
that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated
him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he

115
was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the pro-
spect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it se-
duced him.
This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then
Paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the
laugh of grisettes. As he was to finish reading there, why not
set out at once? What prevented him? And he began making
home-preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand.
He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an
artist's life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He
would have a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slip-
pers! He even already was admiring two crossed foils over his
chimney-piece, with a death's head on the guitar above them.
The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing,
however, seemed more reasonable. Even his employer advised
him to go to some other chambers where he could advance
more rapidly. Taking a middle course, then, Leon looked for
some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none, and at last
wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he set
forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately. She
consented.
He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried
boxes, valises, parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from
Rouen to Yonville; and when Leon had packed up his wardrobe,
had his three arm-chairs restuffed, bought a stock of neckties,
in a word, had made more preparations than for a voyage
around the world, he put it off from week to week, until he re-
ceived a second letter from his mother urging him to leave,
since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation.
When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Ho-
mais wept, Justin sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, con-
cealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend's overcoat
himself as far as the gate of the notary, who was taking Leon to
Rouen in his carriage.
The latter had just time to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary.
When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he was
so out of breath. As he came in, Madame Bovary arose
hurriedly.
"It is I again!" said Leon.
"I was sure of it!"

116
 She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin
made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar.
She remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the
wainscot.
"The doctor is not here?" he went on.
"He is out." She repeated, "He is out."
Then there was silence. They looked at one another and their
thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together
like two throbbing breasts.
"I should like to kiss Berthe," said Leon.
Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite.
He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the
decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry
away everything. But she returned, and the servant brought
Berthe, who was swinging a windmill roof downwards at the
end of a string. Leon kissed her several times on the neck.
"Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!"
And he gave her back to her mother.
"Take her away," she said.
They remained alone—Madame Bovary, her back turned, her
face pressed against a window-pane; Leon held his cap in his
hand, knocking it softly against his thigh.
"It is going to rain," said Emma.
"I have a cloak," he answered.
"Ah!"
She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent
forward.
The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the
eyebrows, without one's being able to guess what Emma was
seeing on the horizon or what she was thinking within herself.
"Well, good-bye," he sighed.
She raised her head with a quick movement.
"Yes, good-bye—go!"
They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she
hesitated.
"In the English fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand
wholly to him, and forcing a laugh.
Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all
his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he
opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared.

117
 When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid be-
hind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with
the four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow behind the
window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as
though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique
folds that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung
straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Leon set off running.
From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a
man in a coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur
Guillaumin were talking. They were waiting for him.
"Embrace me," said the druggist with tears in his eyes. "Here
is your coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of your-
self; look after yourself."
"Come, Leon, jump in," said the notary.
Homais bend over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by
sobs uttered these three sad words—
"A pleasant journey!"
"Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give him his head."
They set out, and Homais went back.
Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the
garden and watched the clouds. They gathered around the sun-
set on the side of Rouen and then swiftly rolled back their
black columns, behind which the great rays of the sun looked
out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy, while the
rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust of
wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered
against the green leaves.
Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook
their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the
gravel as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an
acacia.
"Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought.
Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during
dinner.
"Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!"
"So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair;
"Any news at home?"
"Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this after-
noon. You know women—a nothing upsets them, especially my

118
wife. And we should be wrong to object to that, since their
nervous organization is much more malleable than ours."
"Poor Leon!" said Charles. "How will he live at Paris? Will he
get used to it?"
Madame Bovary sighed.
"Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "The outings
at restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne—all that'll be
jolly enough, I assure you."
"I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary.
"Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although he'll
have to do like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you
don't know what a life those dogs lead in the Latin quarter with
actresses. Besides, students are thought a great deal of in Par-
is. Provided they have a few accomplishments, they are re-
ceived in the best society; there are even ladies of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which sub-
sequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good
matches."
"But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down there—"
"You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse
of the medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand
in one's pocket there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public
garden. An individual presents himself, well dressed, even
wearing an order, and whom one would take for a diplomatist.
He approaches you, he insinuates himself; offers you a pinch of
snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more intimate; he
takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house, introduces
you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three-
fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you
into some pernicious step.
"That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking especially of
illnesses—of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students
from the provinces."
Emma shuddered.
"Because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist,
"and of the perturbation that results therefrom in the whole
system. And then the water at Paris, don't you know! The
dishes at restaurants, all the spiced food, end by heating the
blood, and are not worth, whatever people may say of them, a
good soup. For my own part, I have always preferred plain

119
living; it is more healthy. So when I was studying pharmacy at
Rouen, I boarded in a boarding house; I dined with the
professors."
And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and
his personal likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled
egg that was wanted.
"Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! I can't go
out for a minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moil-
ing and toiling. What drudgery!" Then, when he was at the
door, "By the way, do you know the news?"
"What news?"
"That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising his eyebrows
and assuming one of his most serious expression, "that the ag-
ricultural meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this year
at Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumour, at all events, is going the
round. This morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the
utmost importance for our district. But we'll talk it over later
on. I can see, thank you; Justin has the lantern."

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Chapter 7
The next day was a dreary one for Emma. Everything seemed
to her enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly
over the exterior of things, and sorrow was engulfed within her
soul with soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined
castles. It was that reverie which we give to things that will not
return, the lassitude that seizes you after everything was done;
that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted move-
ment, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings
on.
As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were
running in her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a
numb despair. Leon reappeared, taller, handsomer, more
charming, more vague. Though separated from her, he had not
left her; he was there, and the walls of the house seemed to
hold his shadow.
She could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he had
walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. The river
still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the slippery
banks.
They had often walked there to the murmur of the waves
over the moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had been!
What happy afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the
end of the garden! He read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a
footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of the meadow set trem-
bling the leaves of the book and the nasturtiums of the arbour.
Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life, the only possible
hope of joy. Why had she not seized this happiness when it
came to her? Why not have kept hold of it with both hands,
with both knees, when it was about to flee from her? And she
cursed herself for not having loved Leon. She thirsted for his
lips. The wish took possession of her to run after and rejoin
him, throw herself into his arms and say to him, "It is I; I am

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yours." But Emma recoiled beforehand at the difficulties of the
enterprise, and her desires, increased by regret, became only
the more acute.
Henceforth the memory of Leon was the centre of her bore-
dom; it burnt there more brightly than the fire travellers have
left on the snow of a Russian steppe. She sprang towards him,
she pressed against him, she stirred carefully the dying em-
bers, sought all around her anything that could revive it; and
the most distant reminiscences, like the most immediate occa-
sions, what she experienced as well as what she imagined, her
voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied, her projects of happi-
ness that crackled in the wind like dead boughs, her sterile vir-
tue, her lost hopes, the domestic tete-a-tete—she gathered it
all up, took everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her
melancholy.
The flames, however, subsided, either because the supply
had exhausted itself, or because it had been piled up too much.
Love, little by little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled be-
neath habit; and this incendiary light that had empurpled her
pale sky was overspread and faded by degrees. In the supine-
ness of her conscience she even took her repugnance towards
her husband for aspirations towards her lover, the burning of
hate for the warmth of tenderness; but as the tempest still
raged, and as passion burnt itself down to the very cinders,
and no help came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides,
and she was lost in the terrible cold that pierced her.
Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought herself
now far more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief,
with the certainty that it would not end.
A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well
allow herself certain whims. She bought a Gothic prie-dieu,
and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons for polishing
her nails; she wrote to Rouen for a blue cashmere gown; she
chose one of Lheureux's finest scarves, and wore it knotted
around her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with closed
blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch
in this garb.
She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair a la
Chinoise, in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted in on one
side and rolled it under like a man's.

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 She wanted to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a gram-
mar, and a supply of white paper. She tried serious reading,
history, and philosophy. Sometimes in the night Charles woke
up with a start, thinking he was being called to a patient. "I'm
coming," he stammered; and it was the noise of a match Emma
had struck to relight the lamp. But her reading fared like her
piece of embroidery, all of which, only just begun, filled her
cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to other books.
She had attacks in which she could easily have been driven
to commit any folly. She maintained one day, in opposition to
her husband, that she could drink off a large glass of brandy,
and, as Charles was stupid enough to dare her to, she swal-
lowed the brandy to the last drop.
In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville
called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usu-
ally she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contrac-
tion that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men
whose ambition has failed. She was pale all over, white as a
sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes
looked at you vaguely. After discovering three grey hairs on
her temples, she talked much of her old age.
She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as
Charles fussed around her showing his anxiety—
"Bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?"
Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on
the table, sitting in an arm-chair at his bureau under the
phrenological head.
Then he wrote to his mother begging her to come, and they
had many long consultations together on the subject of Emma.
What should they decide? What was to be done since she re-
jected all medical treatment? "Do you know what your wife
wants?" replied Madame Bovary senior.
"She wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual
work. If she were obliged, like so many others, to earn her liv-
ing, she wouldn't have these vapours, that come to her from a
lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the idleness in
which she lives."
"Yet she is always busy," said Charles.
"Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books, works
against religion, and in which they mock at priests in speeches

123
taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far astray, my poor
child. Anyone who has no religion always ends by turning out
badly."
So it was decided to stop Emma reading novels. The enter-
prise did not seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She was,
when she passed through Rouen, to go herself to the lending-
library and represent that Emma had discontinued her sub-
scription. Would they not have a right to apply to the police if
the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous trade? The
farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During the
three weeks that they had been together they had not
exchanged half-a-dozen words apart from the inquiries and
phrases when they met at table and in the evening before go-
ing to bed.
Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day at
Yonville.
The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts,
which, on end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the
line of houses from the church to the inn. On the other side
there were canvas booths, where cotton checks, blankets, and
woollen stockings were sold, together with harness for horses,
and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends fluttered in the wind.
The coarse hardware was spread out on the ground between
pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky
straw stuck out.
Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks
through the bars of flat cages. The people, crowding in the
same place and unwilling to move thence, sometimes
threatened to smash the shop front of the chemist. On Wednes-
days his shop was never empty, and the people pushed in less
to buy drugs than for consultations. So great was Homais'
reputation in the neighbouring villages. His robust aplomb had
fascinated the rustics. They considered him a greater doctor
than all the doctors.
Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there.
The window in the provinces replaces the theatre and the
promenade, she was amusing herself with watching the crowd
of boors when she saw a gentleman in a green velvet coat. He
had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy gaiters; he was

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coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant
walking with a bent head and quite a thoughtful air.
"Can I see the doctor?" he asked Justin, who was talking on
the doorsteps with Felicite, and, taking him for a servant of the
house—"Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La
Huchette is here."
It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added
"of La Huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better
known.
La Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, where he
had just bought the chateau and two farms that he cultivated
himself, without, however, troubling very much about them. He
lived as a bachelor, and was supposed to have "at least fifteen
thousand francs a year."
Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger introduced
his man, who wanted to be bled because he felt "a tingling all
over."
"That'll purge me," he urged as an objection to all reasoning.
So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked Justin
to hold it. Then addressing the peasant, who was already
pale—
"Don't be afraid, my lad."
"No, no, sir," said the other; "get on."
And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. At the
prick of the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the
looking-glass.
"Hold the basin nearer," exclaimed Charles.
"Lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it was a little foun-
tain flowing. How red my blood is! That's a good sign, isn't it?"
"Sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels nothing at
first, and then syncope sets in, and more especially with people
of strong constitution like this man."
At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twist-
ing between his fingers. A shudder of his shoulders made the
chair-back creak. His hat fell off.
"I thought as much," said Bovary, pressing his finger on the
vein.
The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin's hands; his
knees shook, he turned pale.
"Emma! Emma!" called Charles.

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 With one bound she came down the staircase.
"Some vinegar," he cried. "O dear! two at once!"
And in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress.
"It is nothing," said Monsieur Boulanger quietly, taking Justin
in his arms. He seated him on the table with his back resting
against the wall.
Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The strings of
his shirt had got into a knot, and she was for some minutes
moving her light fingers about the young fellow's neck. Then
she poured some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; she
moistened his temples with little dabs, and then blew upon
them softly. The ploughman revived, but Justin's syncope still
lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in the pale sclerotics like
blue flowers in milk.
"We must hide this from him," said Charles.
Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. With
the movement she made in bending down, her dress (it was a
summer dress with four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and
wide in the skirt) spread out around her on the flags of the
room; and as Emma stooping, staggered a little as she
stretched out her arms.
The stuff here and there gave with the inflections of her bust.
Then she went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was melt-
ing some pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived. The ser-
vant had been to fetch him in the tumult. Seeing his pupil's
eyes staring he drew a long breath; then going around him he
looked at him from head to foot.
"Fool!" he said, "really a little fool! A fool in four letters! A
phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! And a fellow who isn't afraid
of anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to verti-
ginous heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk to
me, boast about yourself! Here's a fine fitness for practising
pharmacy later on; for under serious circumstances you may
be called before the tribunals in order to enlighten the minds
of the magistrates, and you would have to keep your head then,
to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an imbecile."
Justin did not answer. The chemist went on—
"Who asked you to come? You are always pestering the doc-
tor and madame. On Wednesday, moreover, your presence is
indispensable to me. There are now twenty people in the shop.

126
I left everything because of the interest I take in you. Come,
get along! Sharp! Wait for me, and keep an eye on the jars."
When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they
talked for a little while about fainting-fits. Madame Bovary had
never fainted.
"That is extraordinary for a lady," said Monsieur Boulanger;
"but some people are very susceptible. Thus in a duel, I have
seen a second lose consciousness at the mere sound of the
loading of pistols."
"For my part," said the chemist, "the sight of other people's
blood doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own
flowing would make me faint if I reflected upon it too much."
Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, ad-
vising him to calm himself, since his fancy was over.
"It procured me the advantage of making your acquaint-
ance," he added, and he looked at Emma as he said this. Then
he put three francs on the corner of the table, bowed negli-
gently, and went out.
He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way
back to La Huchette), and Emma saw him in the meadow,
walking under the poplars, slackening his pace now and then
as one who reflects.
"She is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty,
this doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure
like a Parisienne's. Where the devil does she come from?
Wherever did that fat fellow pick her up?"
Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was of bru-
tal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having,
moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing them
well. This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking
about her and her husband.
"I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt. He
has dirty nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. While he is
trotting after his patients, she sits there botching socks. And
she gets bored! She would like to live in town and dance polkas
every evening. Poor little woman! She is gaping after love like
a carp after water on a kitchen-table. With three words of gal-
lantry she'd adore one, I'm sure of it. She'd be tender, charm-
ing. Yes; but how to get rid of her afterwards?"

127
 Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance
made him by contrast think of his mistress. She was an actress
at Rouen, whom he kept; and when he had pondered over this
image, with which, even in remembrance, he was satiated—
"Ah! Madame Bovary," he thought, "is much prettier, espe-
cially fresher. Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. She
is so finiky about her pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania
for prawns."
The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe only heard
the regular beating of the grass striking against his boots, with
a cry of the grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats.
He again saw Emma in her room, dressed as he had seen her,
and he undressed her.
"Oh, I will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick
at a clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the
political part of the enterprise. He asked himself—
"Where shall we meet? By what means? We shall always be
having the brat on our hands, and the servant, the neighbours,
and husband, all sorts of worries. Pshaw! one would lose too
much time over it."
Then he resumed, "She really has eyes that pierce one's
heart like a gimlet. And that pale complexion! I adore pale
women!"
When he reached the top of the Arguiel hills he had made up
his mind. "It's only finding the opportunities. Well, I will call in
now and then. I'll send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself
bled, if need be. We shall become friends; I'll invite them to my
place. By Jove!" added he, "there's the agricultural show com-
ing on. She'll be there. I shall see her. We'll begin boldly, for
that's the surest way."

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Chapter 8
At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning
of the solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting
over the preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been
hung with garlands of ivy; a tent had been erected in a mead-
ow for the banquet; and in the middle of the Place, in front of
the church, a kind of bombarde was to announce the arrival of
the prefect and the names of the successful farmers who had
obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was none
at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom
Binet was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher
than usual; and, tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so
stiff and motionless that the whole vital portion of his person
seemed to have descended into his legs, which rose in a ca-
dence of set steps with a single movement. As there was some
rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel, both, to show
off their talents, drilled their men separately. One saw the red
epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and re-pass altern-
ately; there was no end to it, and it constantly began again.
There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens
had scoured their houses the evening before; tri-coloured flags
hung from half-open windows; all the public-houses were full;
and in the lovely weather the starched caps, the golden
crosses, and the coloured neckerchiefs seemed whiter than
snow, shone in the sun, and relieved with the motley colours
the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue smocks. The
neighbouring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses,
pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their
dresses, turned up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their
part, in order to save their hats, kept their handkerchiefs
around them, holding one corner between their teeth.
The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the
village. People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses;

129
and from time to time one heard knockers banging against
doors closing behind women with their gloves, who were going
out to see the fete. What was most admired were two long
lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a platform on
which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were
against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles,
each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished
with inscriptions in gold letters.
On one was written, "To Commerce"; on the other, "To Agri-
culture"; on the third, "To Industry"; and on the fourth, "To the
Fine Arts."
But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken
that of Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her
kitchen-steps she muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what
rubbish! With their canvas booth! Do they think the prefect will
be glad to dine down there under a tent like a gipsy? They call
all this fussing doing good to the place! Then it wasn't worth
while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a cookshop! And
for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!"
The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen
trousers, beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low
crown.
"Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat
widow asked where he was going—
"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, I who am always more
cooped up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese."
"What cheese?" asked the landlady.
"Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished
to convey to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at
home like a recluse. To-day, however, considering the circum-
stances, it is necessary—"
"Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously.
"Yes, I am going," replied the druggist, astonished. "Am I not
a member of the consulting commission?"
Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended
by saying with a smile—
"That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture mat-
ter to you? Do you understand anything about it?"
"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist—that is to
say, a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame

130
Lefrancois, being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecu-
lar action of all natural bodies, it follows that agriculture is
comprised within its domain. And, in fact, the composition of
the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses of gases,
and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is all this, if it
isn't chemistry, pure and simple?"
The landlady did not answer. Homais went on—
"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to
have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary
rather to know the composition of the substances in ques-
tion—the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality
of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different
bodies, their capillarity, and what not. And one must be master
of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct, criticize the
construction of buildings, the feeding of animals, the diet of do-
mestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know
botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand,
which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which
are unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them
up here and re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy
others; in brief, one must keep pace with science by means of
pamphlets and public papers, be always on the alert to find out
improvements."
The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francois" and
the chemist went on—
"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at
least they would pay more attention to the counsels of science.
Thus lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of
over seventy-two pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and
its Effects, together with some New Reflections on the Sub-
ject,' that I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen, and
which even procured me the honour of being received among
its members—Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if
my work had been given to the public—" But the druggist
stopped, Madame Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.
"Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such
a cookshop as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that
stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice,
she pointed with both hands at her rival's inn, whence songs

131
were heard issuing. "Well, it won't last long," she added. "It'll
be over before a week."
Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three
steps and whispered in his ear—
"What! you didn't know it? There is to be an execution in
next week. It's Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed
him with bills."
"What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the druggist, who always
found expressions in harmony with all imaginable
circumstances.
Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had
heard from Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and al-
though she detested Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a
wheedler, a sneak."
"There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is
bowing to Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why,
she's taking Monsieur Boulanger's arm."
"Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and
pay her my respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat
in the enclosure under the peristyle." And, without heeding
Madame Lefrancois, who was calling him back to tell him more
about it, the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile on his
lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously to right and left,
and taking up much room with the large tails of his frock-coat
that fluttered behind him in the wind.
Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on,
but Madame Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly,
and, smiling at her, said in a rough tone—
"It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the
druggist." She pressed his elbow.
"What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he
looked at her out of the corner of his eyes.
Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it.
It stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale
ribbons on it like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long
curved lashes looked straight before her, and though wide
open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheek-bones, be-
cause of the blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin. A
pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils. Her head

132
was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white
teeth were seen between her lips.
"Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe.
Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warn-
ing; for Monsieur Lheureux was accompanying them, and
spoke now and again as if to enter into the conversation.
"What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!"
And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him,
whilst at the slightest movement made by them he drew near,
saying, "I beg your pardon!" and raised his hat.
When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following
the road up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a
path, drawing with him Madame Bovary. He called out—
"Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again
presently."
"How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing.
"Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by oth-
ers? And as to-day I have the happiness of being with you—"
Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he
talked of the fine weather and of the pleasure of walking on the
grass. A few daisies had sprung up again.
"Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough
of them to furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the
place."
He added, "Shall I pick some? What do you think?"
"Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little.
"H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe.
The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you
with their great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One
had often to get out of the way of a long file of country folk,
servant-maids with blue stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and
who smelt of milk, when one passed close to them. They
walked along holding one another by the hand, and thus they
spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to the
banquet tent.
But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after
the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord
supported on sticks.
The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and
making a confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs

133
were burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves were
bleating, lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, were
stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud,
and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round
them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by the halter
prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils looking to-
wards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their
heads and flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shad-
ow, or now and then came and sucked them. And above the
long undulation of these crowded animals one saw some white
mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some sharp horns stick-
ing out, and the heads of men running about. Apart, outside
the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull,
muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and who moved no
more than if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding
him by a rope.
Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with
heavy steps, examining each animal, then consulting one an-
other in a low voice. One who seemed of more importance now
and then took notes in a book as he walked along. This was the
president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de la Panville. As
soon as he recognised Rodolphe he came forward quickly, and
smiling amiably, said—
"What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?"
Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the
president had disappeared—
"Ma foi!*" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better
than his."
*Upon my word!
And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about
more easily, showed the gendarme his blue card, and even
stopped now and then in front of some fine beast, which Ma-
dame Bovary did not at all admire. He noticed this, and began
jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses; then he apolo-
gised for the negligence of his own. He had that incongruity of
common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they
see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturba-
tions of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain
contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates
them. Thus his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out

134
by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of grey ticking, and
his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the ankle nankeen boots
with patent leather gaiters.
These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He
trampled on horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket
of his jacket and his straw hat on one side.
"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country—"
"It's waste of time," said Emma.
"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of
these people is capable of understanding even the cut of a
coat!"
Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it
crushed, the illusions lost there.
"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."
"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-
hearted."
"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know
how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how
many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not
asked myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping
there!"
"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them."
"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?"
And he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of
the lips.
But they were obliged to separate from each other because
of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them.
He was so overladen with them that one could only see the tips
of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms.
It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the
church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to all that con-
cerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the
show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer
knew which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot,
quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and
they leant against the thick backs, stained with the wax of
candles, with a certain veneration.
Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if
speaking to himself—

135
 "Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I
had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found
someone! Oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which I
am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!"
"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be
pitied."
"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.
"For, after all," she went on, "you are free—" she hesitated,
"rich—"
"Do not mock me," he replied.
And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the
report of a cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling
one another pell-mell towards the village.
It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming,
and the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not know-
ing if they ought to begin the meeting or still wait.
At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared,
drawn by two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat
was whipping lustily. Binet had only just time to shout,
"Present arms!" and the colonel to imitate him. All ran towards
the enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A few even forgot
their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticip-
ate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their har-
ness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the
town hall at the very moment when the National Guard and
firemen deployed, beating drums and marking time.
"Present!" shouted Binet.
"Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march."
And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the
band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling down-
stairs, all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping
down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver
braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back
of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign ap-
pearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were
half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he
raised his sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken
mouth. He recognised the mayor by his scarf, and explained to
him that the prefect was not able to come. He himself was a
councillor at the prefecture; then he added a few apologies.

136
Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the other
confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to
face, their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the
jury all round, the municipal council, the notable personages,
the National Guard and the crowd. The councillor pressing his
little cocked hat to his breast repeated his bows, while Tu-
vache, bent like a bow, also smiled, stammered, tried to say
something, protested his devotion to the monarchy and the
honour that was being done to Yonville.
Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the
horses from the coachman, and, limping along with his club-
foot, led them to the door of the "Lion d'Or", where a number
of peasants collected to look at the carriage. The drum beat,
the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one by one moun-
ted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet
arm-chairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.
All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, some-
what tanned by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and
their puffy whiskers emerged from stiff collars, kept up by
white cravats with broad bows. All the waist-coats were of
velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had, at the end of a
long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone rested his two
hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of their
trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly
than the leather of their heavy boots.
The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vesti-
bule between the pillars while the common herd was opposite,
standing up or sitting on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestibou-
dois had brought thither all those that he had moved from the
field, and he even kept running back every minute to fetch oth-
ers from the church. He caused such confusion with this piece
of business that one had great difficulty in getting to the small
steps of the platform.
"I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was
passing to his place, "that they ought to have put up two Vene-
tian masts with something rather severe and rich for orna-
ments; it would have been a very pretty effect."
"To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The
mayor took everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much

137
taste. Poor Tuvache! and he is even completely destitute of
what is called the genius of art."
Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to
the first floor of the town hall, to the "council-room," and, as it
was empty, he declared that they could enjoy the sight there
more comfortably. He fetched three stools from the round
table under the bust of the monarch, and having carried them
to one of the windows, they sat down by each other.
There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings,
much parleying. At last the councillor got up. They knew now
that his name was Lieuvain, and in the crowd the name was
passed from one to the other. After he had collated a few
pages, and bent over them to see better, he began—
"Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before address-
ing you on the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment
will, I am sure, be shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say,
to pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the govern-
ment to the monarch, gentle men, our sovereign, to that be-
loved king, to whom no branch of public or private prosperity
is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at once
so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant
perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace
respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and
the fine arts?"
"I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further."
"Why?" said Emma.
But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an ex-
traordinary pitch. He declaimed—
"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord en-
sanguined our public places, when the landlord, the business-
man, the working-man himself, falling asleep at night, lying
down to peaceful sleep, trembled lest he should be awakened
suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins, when the most
subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations."
"Well, someone down there might see me," Rodolphe re-
sumed, "then I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight;
and with my bad reputation—"
"Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma.
"No! It is dreadful, I assure you."

138
 "But, gentlemen," continued the councillor, "if, banishing
from my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I
carry my eyes back to the actual situation of our dear country,
what do I see there? Everywhere commerce and the arts are
flourishing; everywhere new means of communication, like so
many new arteries in the body of the state, establish within it
new relations. Our great industrial centres have recovered all
their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all hearts;
our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France
breathes once more!"
"Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point
of view they are right."
"How so?" she asked.
"What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls con-
stantly tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the
purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they
fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies."
Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has
voyaged over strange lands, and went on—
"We have not even this distraction, we poor women!"
"A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it."
"But is it ever found?" she asked.
"Yes; one day it comes," he answered.
"And this is what you have understood," said the councillor.
"You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of
a work that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress
and morality, you have understood, I say, that political storms
are even more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!"
"It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly,
and when one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it
is as if a voice cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding
the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing
everything to this being. There is no need for explanations;
they understand one another. They have seen each other in
dreams!"
(And he looked at her.) "In fine, here it is, this treasure so
sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one still
doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one
went out iron darkness into light."

139
 And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He
passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness.
Then he let it fall on Emma's. She took hers away.
"And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who
is so blind, so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in
the prejudices of another age as still to misunderstand the spir-
it of agricultural populations. Where, indeed, is to be found
more patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the
public welfare, more intelligence, in a word? And, gentlemen, I
do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle
minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that
applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus contributing
to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the sup-
port of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of
duty—"
"Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the
word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of
old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly
drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to
feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the
conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon
us."
"Yet—yet—" objected Madame Bovary.
"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the
one beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of en-
thusiasm, of poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?"
"But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opin-
ion of the world and accept its moral code."
"Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conven-
tional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that brays
out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below, of the
earth earthly, like the mass of imbeciles you see down there.
But the other, the eternal, that is about us and above, like the
landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens that give us
light."
Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-
handkerchief. He continued—
"And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you
the uses of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides
our means of subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The

140
agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the
fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, be-
ing ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious ma-
chinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from
there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the
baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again,
is it not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his
abundant flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe
ourselves, how nourish ourselves, without the agriculturist?
And, gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far for examples?
Who has not frequently reflected on all the momentous things
that we get out of that modest animal, the ornament of poultry-
yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow for our bed,
with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should nev-
er end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the differ-
ent products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous
mother, lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, else-
where the apple tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses
and flax. Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made
such great strides of late years, and to which I will more partic-
ularly call your attention."
He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude
were wide open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side
listened to him with staring eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from
time to time softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chem-
ist, with his son Napoleon between his knees, put his hand be-
hind his ear in order not to lose a syllable. The chins of the oth-
er members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waist-
coats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the plat-
form rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood
with out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Per-
haps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, be-
cause of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose. His
lieutenant, the youngest son of Monsieur Tuvache, had a big-
ger one, for his was enormous, and shook on his head, and
from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled be-
neath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little
face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoy-
ment and sleepiness.

141
 The square as far as the houses was crowded with people.
One saw folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others
standing at doors, and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop,
seemed quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at.
In spite of the silence Monsieur Lieuvain's voice was lost in the
air. It reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted
here and there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd; then you
suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleating
of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In
fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus
far, and these lowed from time to time, while with their
tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung above
their mouths.
Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a
low voice, speaking rapidly—
"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a
single sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts,
the purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at
length two poor souls do meet, all is so organised that they
cannot blend together. Yet they will make the attempt; they
will flutter their wings; they will call upon each other. Oh! no
matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will
come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they are
born one for the other."
His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his
face towards Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She
noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pu-
pils; she even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his
hair glossy.
Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount
who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard ex-
haled like this air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanic-
ally she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. But in
making this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw
in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old dili-
gence, the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of
Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow
carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this
route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she
saw him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused;

142
clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in
the waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Vis-
count, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming;
and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of
Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation
pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand
under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of
the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened wide her nos-
trils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the
capitals. She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then
fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the
throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd
and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He
said—"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of
routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism.
"Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil,
to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine,
ovine, and porcine races. Let these shows be to you pacific
arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to
the vanquished, and will fraternise with him in the hope of bet-
ter success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose
hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into con-
sideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent vir-
tues, and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye
upon you; that it encourages you, protects you; that it will ac-
cede to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies
the burden of your painful sacrifices."
Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got
up, beginning another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as
that of the councillor, but it recommended itself by a more dir-
ect style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more
elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the Government
took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more. He
showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had al-
ways contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Bo-
vary was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going
back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce
times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods. Then
they had left off the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the
soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and in this discovery

143
was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur Derozer-
ays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little
Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was
citing Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his cab-
bages, and the Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the
sowing of seed, the young man was explaining to the young
woman that these irresistible attractions find their cause in
some previous state of existence.
"Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another?
What chance willed it? It was because across the infinite, like
two streams that flow but to unite; our special bents of mind
had driven us towards each other."
And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.
"For good farming generally!" cried the president.
"Just now, for example, when I went to your house."
"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."
"Did I know I should accompany you?"
"Seventy francs."
"A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you—I
remained."
"Manures!"
"And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my
life!"
"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"
"For I have never in the society of any other person found so
complete a charm."
"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."
"And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you."
"For a merino ram!"
"But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow."
"To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame."
"Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life,
shall I not?"
"Porcine race; prizes—equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Culle-
mbourg, sixty francs!"
Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and
quivering like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but,
whether she was trying to take it away or whether she was an-
swering his pressure; she made a movement with her fingers.
He exclaimed—

144
 "Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You
understand that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contem-
plate you!"
A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on
the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the
peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white but-
terflies fluttering.
"Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying
on: "Flemish manure-flax-growing-drainage-long leases-do-
mestic service."
Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one anoth-
er. A supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily,
without an effort, their fingers intertwined.
"Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerri-
ere, for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver
medal—value, twenty-five francs!"
"Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councillor.
She did not present herself, and one could hear voices
whispering—
"Go up!"
"Don't be afraid!"
"Oh, how stupid she is!"
"Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache.
"Yes; here she is."
"Then let her come up!"
Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman
with timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor
clothes. On her feet she wore heavy wooden clogs, and from
her hips hung a large blue apron. Her pale face framed in a
borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered russet
apple. And from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two
large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of
washing the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened,
hardened these that they seemed dirty, although they had been
rinsed in clear water; and by dint of long service they remained
half open, as if to bear humble witness for themselves of so
much suffering endured. Something of monastic rigidity digni-
fied her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion weakened that
pale look. In her constant living with animals she had caught
their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she

145
found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly
scared by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats,
and the order of the councillor, she stood motionless, not
knowing whether to advance or run away, nor why the crowd
was pushing her and the jury were smiling at her.
Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century
of servitude.
"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!"
said the councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners
from the president; and, looking at the piece of paper and the
old woman by turns, he repeated in a fatherly
tone—"Approach! approach!"
"Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and
he began shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A sil-
ver medal! Twenty-five francs! For you!"
Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile
of beatitude spread over her face; and as she walked away they
could hear her muttering "I'll give it to our cure up home, to
say some masses for me!"
"What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to
the notary.
The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that
the speeches had been read, each one fell back into his place
again, and everything into the old grooves; the masters bullied
the servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors, go-
ing back to the stalls, a green-crown on their horns.
The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor
of the town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the
drummer of the battalion carried a basket with bottles. Ma-
dame Bovary took Rodolphe's arm; he saw her home; they sep-
arated at her door; then he walked about alone in the meadow
while he waited for the time of the banquet.
The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so
crowded that they could hardly move their elbows; and the nar-
row planks used for forms almost broke down under their
weight. They ate hugely. Each one stuffed himself on his own
account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish steam, like
the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated above
the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning
against the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of

146
Emma that he heard nothing. Behind him on the grass the ser-
vants were piling up the dirty plates, his neighbours were talk-
ing; he did not answer them; they filled his glass, and there
was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing noise. He
was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips; her
face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos,
the folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love un-
rolled to all infinity before him in the vistas of the future.
He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but
she was with her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist,
who was worrying about the danger of stray rockets, and every
moment he left the company to go and give some advice to
Binet.
The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had,
through an excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so
the damp powder would not light, and the principal set piece,
that was to represent a dragon biting his tail, failed com-
pletely. Now and then a meagre Roman-candle went off; then
the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the cry of
the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the dark-
ness. Emma silently nestled against Charles's shoulder; then,
raising her chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets
against the dark sky. Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the
burning lanterns.
They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops
of rain began to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare
head.
At this moment the councillor's carriage came out from the
inn.
His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one
could see from the distance, above the hood, between the two
lanterns, the mass of his body, that swayed from right to left
with the giving of the traces.
"Truly," said the druggist, "one ought to proceed most rigor-
ously against drunkenness! I should like to see written up
weekly at the door of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the
names of all those who during the week got intoxicated on al-
cohol. Besides, with regard to statistics, one would thus have,
as it were, public records that one could refer to in case of
need. But excuse me!"

147
 *Specifically for that.
And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going
back to see his lathe again.
"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send
one of your men, or to go yourself—"
"Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!"
"Do not be uneasy," said the druggist, when he returned to
his friends. "Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precau-
tions have been taken. No sparks have fallen; the pumps are
full. Let us go to rest."
"Ma foi! I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large.
"But never mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fete."
Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look,
"Oh, yes! very beautiful!"
And having bowed to one another, they separated.
Two days later, in the "Final de Rouen," there was a long art-
icle on the show. Homais had composed it with verve the very
next morning.
"Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither
hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the tor-
rents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon our heads?"
Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the
Government was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he
cried to it; "a thousand reforms are indispensable; let us ac-
complish them!" Then touching on the entry of the councillor,
he did not forget "the martial air of our militia;" nor "our most
merry village maidens;" nor the "bald-headed old men like pat-
riarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of
our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of
the drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of
the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that
Monsieur Homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the
agricultural society.
When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted
the joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The fath-
er embraced the son, the brother the brother, the husband his
consort. More than one showed his humble medal with pride;
and no doubt when he got home to his good housewife, he
hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.

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 "About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of
Monsieur Leigeard brought together the principal personages
of the fete. The greatest cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts
were proposed: Monsieur Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tu-
vache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays, Agriculture; Mon-
sieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin sisters;
Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant
fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called
it a veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a mo-
ment our little locality might have thought itself transported in-
to the midst of a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' Let
us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting."
And he added "Only the absence of the clergy was remarked.
No doubt the priests understand progress in another fashion.
Just as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!"

149
Chapter 9
Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one
evening he appeared.
The day after the show he had said to himself—"We mustn't
go back too soon; that would be a mistake."
And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the
hunting he had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned
thus—
"If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience
to see me again love me more. Let's go on with it!"
And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on en-
tering the room, he saw Emma turn pale.
She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin
curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the gild-
ing of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in
the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral.
Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his
first conventional phrases.
"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."
"Seriously?" she cried.
"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool,
"no; it was because I did not want to come back."
"Why?"
"Can you not guess?"
He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her
head, blushing. He went on—
"Emma!"
"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.
"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was
right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my
whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Ma-
dame Bovary! why all the world calls you thus! Besides, it is
not your name; it is the name of another!"

150
 He repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands.
"Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me
to despair. Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go
far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and
yet—to-day—I know not what force impelled me towards you.
For one does not struggle against Heaven; one cannot resist
the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is beauti-
ful, charming, adorable."
It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken
to herself, and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in
warmth, expanded softly and fully at this glowing language.
"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you,
at least I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night-
every night-I arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its
glimmering in the moon, the trees in the garden swaying be-
fore your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining through
the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never knew that
there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!"
She turned towards him with a sob.
"Oh, you are good!" she said.
"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell
me—one word—only one word!"
And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the
ground; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen,
and he noticed the door of the room was not closed.
"How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you
would humour a whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he
wanted to know it; and Madame Bovary seeing no objection to
this, they both rose, when Charles came in.
"Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him.
The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out
into obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to
pull himself together a little.
"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her
health."
Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties;
his wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then
Rodolphe asked if riding would not be good.
"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You
ought to follow it up."

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 And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodol-
phe offered one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then
to explain his visit he said that his ploughman, the man of the
blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness.
"I'll call around," said Bovary.
"No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more
convenient for you."
"Ah! very good! I thank you."
And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Mon-
sieur Boulanger's kind offer?"
She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and fi-
nally declared that perhaps it would look odd.
"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, mak-
ing a pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong."
"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?"
"You must order one," he answered.
The riding-habit decided her.
When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur
Boulanger that his wife was at his command, and that they
counted on his good-nature.
The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door
with two saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a
deerskin side-saddle.
Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that
no doubt she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma
was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in
his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. She was
ready; she was waiting for him.
Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the
chemist also came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a
little good advice.
"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses per-
haps are mettlesome."
She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the
windowpanes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss;
her mother answered with a wave of her whip.
"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above
all, prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw
them disappear.

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 As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a
gallop.
Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they ex-
changed a word. Her figure slightly bent, her hand well up,
and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the ca-
dence of the movement that rocked her in her saddle. At the
bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head; they star-
ted together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses
stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.
It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy
clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills;
others, rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes
through a rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed
from afar the roots of Yonville, with the gardens at the water's
edge, the yards, the walls and the church steeple. Emma half
closed her eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor
village where she lived appeared so small. From the height on
which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale
lake sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here
and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the
poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by
the wind.
By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light
shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the
powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with
the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the
fallen fir cones in front of them.
Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood.
She turned away from time to time to avoid his look, and then
she saw only the pine trunks in lines, whose monotonous suc-
cession made her a little giddy. The horses were panting; the
leather of the saddles creaked.
Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.
"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.
"Do you think so?" she said.
"Forward! forward!" he continued.
He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot.
Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup.
Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode
along. At other times, to turn aside the branches, he passed

153
close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing against her leg.
The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred. There were
spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated
with the confused patches of the trees that were grey, fawn, or
golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves. Often
in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the
hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks.
They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She
walked on in front on the moss between the paths. But her long
habit got in her way, although she held it up by the skirt; and
Rodolphe, walking behind her, saw between the black cloth
and the black shoe the fineness of her white stocking, that
seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.
She stopped. "I am tired," she said.
"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"
Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and
through her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her
hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were
floating under azure waves.
"But where are we going?"
He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe
looked round him biting his moustache. They came to a larger
space where the coppice had been cut. They sat down on the
trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe began speaking to her of
his love. He did not begin by frightening her with compliments.
He was calm, serious, melancholy.
Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits
of wood on the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the
words, "Are not our destinies now one?"
"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!"
She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then,
having gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and
humid look, she said hurriedly—
"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us
go back."
He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:
"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"
Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he
advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She
stammered:

154
 "Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!"
"If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again
became respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm.
They went back. He said—
"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand.
You were mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna
on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need
you to live! I must have your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be
my friend, my sister, my angel!"
And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to
disengage herself. He supported her thus as they walked
along.
But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.
"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!"
He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds
made a greenness on the water. Faded water lilies lay motion-
less between the reeds. At the noise of their steps in the grass,
frogs jumped away to hide themselves.
"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to
you!"
"Why? Emma! Emma!"
"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his
shoulder.
The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat.
She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and fal-
tering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she
gave herself up to him—
The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing
between the branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around
her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous
patches, as it hummingbirds flying about had scattered their
feathers. Silence was everywhere; something sweet seemed to
come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose beating
had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like
a stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other
hills, she heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered,
and in silence she heard it mingling like music with the last
pulsations of her throbbing nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between
his lips, was mending with his penknife one of the two broken
bridles.

155
 They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they
saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the same
thickets, the same stones to the grass; nothing around them
seemed changed; and yet for her something had happened
more stupendous than if the mountains had moved in their
places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her
hand to kiss it.
She was charming on horseback—upright, with her slender
waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face some-
what flushed by the fresh air in the red of the evening.
On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road.
People looked at her from the windows.
At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pre-
tended not to hear him when he inquired about her ride, and
she remained sitting there with her elbow at the side of her
plate between the two lighted candles.
"Emma!" he said.
"What?"
"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has
an old cob, still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that
could be bought; I am sure, for a hundred crowns." He added,
"And thinking it might please you, I have bespoken it—bought
it. Have I done right? Do tell me?"
She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour
later—
"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.
"Yes. Why?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"
And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut
herself up in her room.
At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the
ditches, Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm,
while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled.
But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her
face. Never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so pro-
found a depth. Something subtle about her being transfigured
her. She repeated, "I have a lover! a lover!" delighting at the
idea as if a second puberty had come to her. So at last she was
to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she
had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all would

156
be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed
her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and
ordinary existence appeared only afar off, down below in the
shade, through the interspaces of these heights.
Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had
read, and the lyric legion of these adulterous women began to
sing in her memory with the voice of sisters that charmed her.
She became herself, as it were, an actual part of these imagin-
ings, and realised the love-dream of her youth as she saw her-
self in this type of amorous women whom she had so envied.
Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not
suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long
pent up burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it
without remorse, without anxiety, without trouble.
The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made
vows to one another She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe in-
terrupted her with kisses; and she looking at him through half-
closed eyes, asked him to call her again by her name—to say
that he loved her They were in the forest, as yesterday, in the
shed of some woodenshoe maker. The walls were of straw, and
the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated side by
side on a bed of dry leaves.
From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly
every evening. Emma placed her letter at the end of the
garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to
fetch it, and put another there, that she always found fault with
as too short.
One morning, when Charles had gone out before day break,
she was seized with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She
would go quickly to La Huchette, stay there an hour, and be
back again at Yonville while everyone was still asleep. This
idea made her pant with desire, and she soon found herself in
the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps, without look-
ing behind her.
Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognised her
lover's house. Its two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black
against the pale dawn.
Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she
thought must be the chateau She entered—it was if the doors
at her approach had opened wide of their own accord. A large

157
straight staircase led up to the corridor. Emma raised the latch
of a door, and suddenly at the end of the room she saw a man
sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry.
"You here? You here?" he repeated. "How did you manage to
come? Ah! your dress is damp."
"I love you," she answered, throwing her arms about his
neck.
This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles
went out early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe
down the steps that led to the waterside.
But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go
by the walls alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in or-
der not to fall she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers.
Then she went across ploughed fields, in which she sank, stum-
bling; and clogging her thin shoes. Her scarf, knotted round
her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. She was afraid
of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out of breath, with
rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a fresh
perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodol-
phe still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his
room.
The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish
light enter softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her
eyes, while the drops of dew hanging from her hair formed, as
it were, a topaz aureole around her face. Rodolphe, laughing,
drew her to him, and pressed her to his breast.
Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of
the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked at her-
self in his shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth
the big pipe that lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons
and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water.
It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then
Emma cried. She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe.
Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so,
that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one
put out.
"What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell
me!"
At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were be-
coming imprudent—that she was compromising herself.

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Chapter 10
Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love
had intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond.
But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to
lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. When
she came back from his house she looked all about her,
anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and
every village window from which she could be seen. She
listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she
stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen
leaves swaying overhead.
One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly
thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be
aimed at her. It stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub
half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch. Emma, half-
fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man
stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had gaiters
buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes,
trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in
ambush for wild ducks.
"You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed;
"When one sees a gun, one should always give warning."
The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had
had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting ex-
cept in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws,
was infringing them, and so he every moment expected to see
the rural guard turn up. But this anxiety whetted his pleasure,
and, all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his luck
and on his cuteness. At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from
a great weight, and at once entered upon a conversation.
"It isn't warm; it's nipping."
Emma answered nothing. He went on—
"And you're out so early?"

159
 "Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse
where my child is."
"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you
see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that
unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun—"
"Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turn-
ing on her heel.
"Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back
into his tub.
Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No
doubt he would form unfavourable conjectures. The story
about the nurse was the worst possible excuse, everyone at
Yonville knowing that the little Bovary had been at home with
her parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direc-
tion; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet, then, would
guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he
would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening rack-
ing her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had
constantly before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.
Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of
distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person
she caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again. He
was standing in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the
red bottle, and was saying—
"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol."
"Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid."
Then to Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room,
"No, stay here; it isn't worth while going up; she is just coming
down. Warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. Excuse me.
Good-day, doctor," (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing
the word "doctor," as if addressing another by it reflected on
himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now, take
care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs
from the little room; you know very well that the arm-chairs
are not to be taken out of the drawing-room."
And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting
away from the counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce
of sugar acid.

160
 "Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know
it; I'm ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is ox-
alic acid, isn't it?"
Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself
some copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting
things.
Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying—
"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the
damp."
"Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look,
"there are people who like it."
She was stifling.
"And give me—"
"Will he never go?" thought she.
"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow
wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to
clean the varnished leather of my togs."
The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame
Homais appeared, Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and
Athalie following. She sat down on the velvet seat by the win-
dow, and the lad squatted down on a footstool, while his eldest
sister hovered round the jujube box near her papa. The latter
was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels, mak-
ing up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time to
time, were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few
low words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil.
"And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame
Homais.
"Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down
some figures in his waste-book.
"Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice.
"Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the
druggist.
But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had prob-
ably heard nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved,
uttered a deep sigh.
"How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais.
"Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied.
So the next day they talked over how to arrange their ren-
dezvous. Emma wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but

161
it would be better to find some safe house at Yonville. Rodol-
phe promised to look for one.
All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the
dead of night he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose
taken away the key of the gate, which Charles thought lost.
To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shut-
ters. She jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait,
for Charles had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he
would not stop. She was wild with impatience; if her eyes could
have done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. At
last she would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go
on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But Charles,
who was in bed, called to her to come too.
"Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time."
"Yes, I am coming," she answered.
Then, as the candles dazzled him; he turned to the wall and
fell asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed.
Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting
his arm round her waist, he drew her without a word to the
end of the garden.
It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where
formerly Leon had looked at her so amorously on the summer
evenings. She never thought of him now.
The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Be-
hind them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on
the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here
and there loomed out in the darkness, and sometimes, vibrat-
ing with one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense
black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The cold of the
nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips seemed
to them deeper; their eyes that they could hardly see, larger;
and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell
on their souls sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in
multiplied vibrations.
When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-
room between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of
the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books.
Rodolphe settled down there as if at home. The sight of the lib-
rary, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his
merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about

162
Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have
liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dra-
matic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of
approaching steps in the alley.
"Someone is coming!" she said.
He blew out the light.
"Have you your pistols?"
"Why?"
"Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma.
"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished
his sentence with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a
flip of my finger."
She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in
it a sort of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised
her.
Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If
she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought,
even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not
being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject
Emma had taken a great vow that he did not think in the best
of taste.
Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted
on exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair,
and now she was asking for a ring—a real wedding-ring, in sign
of an eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening
chimes, of the voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her
mother—hers! and of his mother—his! Rodolphe had lost his
twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled him with
caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she
sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon—
"I am sure that above there together they approve of our
love."
But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of
such ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new
experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits,
caressed at once his pride and his sensuality. Emma's enthusi-
asm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him
in his heart of hearts charming, since it was lavished on him.
Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up appearances,
and insensibly his ways changed.

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 He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they
made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so
that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to
lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its
channel, and she could see the bed of it. She would not believe
it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed his in-
difference less and less.
She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or
whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the
more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to
rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not af-
fection; it was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her;
she almost feared him.
Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe
having succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own
fancy; and at the end of six months, when the spring-time
came, they were to one another like a married couple, tran-
quilly keeping up a domestic flame.
It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in
remembrance of the setting of his leg. The present always ar-
rived with a letter. Emma cut the string that tied it to the bas-
ket, and read the following lines:—
"My Dear Children—I hope this will find you well, and that
this one will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a
little more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But
next time, for a change, I'll give you a turkeycock, unless you
have a preference for some dabs; and send me back the
hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I have had an ac-
cident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy
night among the trees. The harvest has not been overgood
either. Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you. It is
so difficult now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor
Emma."
Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had
dropped his pen to dream a little while.
"For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the
other day at the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shep-
herd, having turned away mine because he was too dainty.
How we are to be pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he
was also rude. I heard from a pedlar, who, travelling through

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your part of the country this winter, had a tooth drawn, that
Bovary was as usual working hard. That doesn't surprise me;
and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. I
asked him if he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had
seen two horses in the stables, from which I conclude that
business is looking up. So much the better, my dear children,
and may God send you every imaginable happiness! It grieves
me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter, Berthe
Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for her in the
garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it
is to have jam made for her by and bye, that I will keep in the
cupboard for her when she comes.
"Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my
son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best
compliments, your loving father.
"Theodore Rouault."
She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes.
The spelling mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and
Emma followed the kindly thought that cackled right through it
like a hen half hidden in the hedge of thorns. The writing had
been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder
slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought
she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the
tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the
footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the
end of a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! She
remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The
colts neighed when anyone passed by, and galloped, galloped.
Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the
bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window
like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been
at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of
illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of
them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions of
life, maidenhood, her marriage, and her love—thus constantly
losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves
something of his wealth at every inn along his road.
But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the ex-
traordinary catastrophe that had transformed her? And she

165
raised her head, looking round as if to seek the cause of that
which made her suffer.
An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot; the
fire burned; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the
carpet; the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her
child shouting with laughter.
In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the
midst of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on
her stomach at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her
by her skirt. Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every
time he came near she lent forward, beating the air with both
her arms.
"Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her.
"How I love you, my poor child! How I love you!"
Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she
rang at once for warm water, and washed her, changed her lin-
en, her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about
her health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally,
kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the
servant, who stood quite thunderstricken at this excess of
tenderness.
That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual.
"That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim:"
And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come,
she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous.
"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!"
And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the
handkerchief she took out.
Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she de-
tested Charles; if it had not been better to have been able to
love him? But he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of
sentiment, so that she was much embarrassed by her desire for
sacrifice, when the druggist came just in time to provide her
with an opportunity.

166
Chapter 11
He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing
club-foot, and as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived
the patriotic idea that Yonville, in order to keep to the fore,
ought to have some operations for strephopody or club-foot.
"For," said he to Emma, "what risk is there? See—" (and he
enumerated on his fingers the advantages of the attempt),
"success, almost certain relief and beautifying of the patient,
celebrity acquired by the operator. Why, for example, should
not your husband relieve poor Hippolyte of the 'Lion d'Or'?
Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all the trav-
ellers, and then" (Homais lowered his voice and looked round
him) "who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on
the subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets
about; it is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who
knows? who knows?"
In fact, Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to Emma that
he was not clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have
urged him to a step by which his reputation and fortune would
be increased! She only wished to lean on something more solid
than love.
Charles, urged by the druggist and by her, allowed himself to
be persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume, and
every evening, holding his head between both hands, plunged
into the reading of it.
While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to
say, katastrephopody, endostrephopody, and exostrephopody
(or better, the various turnings of the foot downwards, in-
wards, and outwards, with the hypostrephopody and anastrep-
hopody), otherwise torsion downwards and upwards, Monsier
Homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the lad at
the inn to submit to the operation.

167
 "You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple
prick, like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of cer-
tain corns."
Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.
"However," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me.
It's for your sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you,
my friend, rid of your hideous caudication, together with that
waddling of the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must
considerably interfere with you in the exercise of your calling."
Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and
brisker he would feel afterwards, and even gave him to under-
stand that he would be more likely to please the women; and
the stable-boy began to smile heavily. Then he attacked him
through his vanity:
"Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you
had had to go into the army, to go and fight beneath the stand-
ard? Ah! Hippolyte!"
And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand
this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of
science.
The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet,
who never interfered with other people's business, Madame
Lefrancois, Artemise, the neighbours, even the mayor, Mon-
sieur Tuvache—everyone persuaded him, lectured him, shamed
him; but what finally decided him was that it would cost him
nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the machine for the
operation. This generosity was an idea of Emma's, and Charles
consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was
an angel.
So by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts,
he had a kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the
locksmith, that weighed about eight pounds, and in which iron,
wood, sheer-iron, leather, screws, and nuts had not been
spared.
But to know which of Hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was ne-
cessary first of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had.
He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg,
which, however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so
that it was an equinus together with something of a varus, or
else a slight varus with a strong tendency to equinus. But with

168
this equinus, wide in foot like a horse's hoof, with rugose skin,
dry tendons, and large toes, on which the black nails looked as
if made of iron, the clubfoot ran about like a deer from morn
till night. He was constantly to be seen on the Place, jumping
round the carts, thrusting his limping foot forwards. He
seemed even stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of
hard service it had acquired, as it were, moral qualities of pa-
tience and energy; and when he was given some heavy work,
he stood on it in preference to its fellow.
Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendon
of Achilles, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could
be seen to afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doc-
tor did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was even
trembling already for fear of injuring some important region
that he did not know.
Neither Ambrose Pare, applying for the first time since
Celsus, after an interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an
artery, nor Dupuytren, about to open an abscess in the brain,
nor Gensoul when he first took away the superior maxilla, had
hearts that trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as
Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, his tenotome
between his fingers. And as at hospitals, near by on a table lay
a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages—a pyramid
of bandages—every bandage to be found at the druggist's. It
was Monsieur Homais who since morning had been organising
all these preparations, as much to dazzle the multitude as to
keep up his illusions. Charles pierced the skin; a dry crackling
was heard. The tendon was cut, the operation over. Hippolyte
could not get over his surprise, but bent over Bovary's hands to
cover them with kisses.
"Come, be calm," said the druggist; "later on you will show
your gratitude to your benefactor."
And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers
who were waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Hippolyte
would reappear walking properly. Then Charles, having
buckled his patient into the machine, went home, where
Emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door. She threw herself
on his neck; they sat down to table; he ate much, and at
dessert he even wanted to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he
only permitted himself on Sundays when there was company.

169
 The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams togeth-
er. They talked about their future fortune, of the improvements
to be made in their house; he saw people's estimation of him
growing, his comforts increasing, his wife always loving him;
and she was happy to refresh herself with a new sentiment,
healthier, better, to feel at last some tenderness for this poor
fellow who adored her. The thought of Rodolphe for one mo-
ment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to
Charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad
teeth.
They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the ser-
vant, suddenly entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of
paper just written. It was the paragraph he intended for the
"Fanal de Rouen." He brought it for them to read.
"Read it yourself," said Bovary.
He read—
"'Despite the prejudices that still invest a part of the face of
Europe like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate
our country places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville
found itself the scene of a surgical operation which is at the
same time an act of loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one
of our most distinguished practitioners—'"
"Oh, that is too much! too much!" said Charles, choking with
emotion.
"No, no! not at all! What next!"
"'—Performed an operation on a club-footed man.' I have not
used the scientific term, because you know in a newspaper
everyone would not perhaps understand. The masses must—'"
"No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!"
"I proceed," said the chemist. "'Monsieur Bovary, one of our
most distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a
club-footed man called Hippolyte Tautain, stableman for the
last twenty-five years at the hotel of the "Lion d'Or," kept by
Widow Lefrancois, at the Place d'Armes. The novelty of the at-
tempt, and the interest incident to the subject, had attracted
such a concourse of persons that there was a veritable obstruc-
tion on the threshold of the establishment. The operation,
moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few
drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though to say that the
rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of

170
art. The patient, strangely enough—we affirm it as an eye-wit-
ness—complained of no pain. His condition up to the present
time leaves nothing to be desired. Everything tends to show
that his convelescence will be brief; and who knows even if at
our next village festivity we shall not see our good Hippolyte
figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of joyous
boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and
his capers his complete cure? Honour, then, to the generous
savants! Honour to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate
their vigils to the amelioration or to the alleviation of their
kind! Honour, thrice honour! Is it not time to cry that the blind
shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that which fanat-
icism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes
for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to the suc-
cessive phases of this remarkable cure.'"
This did not prevent Mere Lefrancois, from coming five days
after, scared, and crying out—
"Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!"
Charles rushed to the "Lion d'Or," and the chemist, who
caught sight of him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned
his shop. He appeared himself breathless, red, anxious, and
asking everyone who was going up the stairs—
"Why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?"
The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that
the machine in which his leg was enclosed was knocked
against the wall enough to break it.
With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of
the limb, the box was removed, and an awful sight presented
itself. The outlines of the foot disappeared in such a swelling
that the entire skin seemed about to burst, and it was covered
with ecchymosis, caused by the famous machine. Hippolyte
had already complained of suffering from it. No attention had
been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not
been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But,
hardly had the oedema gone down to some extent, than the
two savants thought fit to put back the limb in the apparatus,
strapping it tighter to hasten matters. At last, three days after,
Hippolyte being unable to endure it any longer, they once more
removed the machine, and were much surprised at the result
they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with

171
blisters here and there, whence there oozed a black liquid.
Matters were taking a serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry
himself, and Mere Lefrancois, had him installed in the little
room near the kitchen, so that he might at least have some
distraction.
But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained
bitterly of such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed
to the billiard-room. He lay there moaning under his heavy cov-
erings, pale with long beard, sunken eyes, and from time to
time turning his perspiring head on the dirty pillow, where the
flies alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him. She brought
him linen for his poultices; she comforted, and encouraged
him. Besides, he did not want for company, especially on
market-days, when the peasants were knocking about the
billiard-balls round him, fenced with the cues, smoked, drank,
sang, and brawled.
"How are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Ah!
you're not up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. You
should do this! do that!" And then they told him stories of
people who had all been cured by other remedies than his.
Then by way of consolation they added—
"You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a
king! All the same, old chap, you don't smell nice!"
Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary
himself turned sick at it. He came every hour, every moment.
Hippolyte looked at him with eyes full of terror, sobbing—
"When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am!
How unfortunate I am!"
And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet
himself.
"Don't listen to him, my lad," said Mere Lefrancois, "Haven't
they tortured you enough already? You'll grow still weaker.
Here! swallow this."
And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a
piece of bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he
had not the strength to put to his lips.
Abbe Bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked
to see him. He began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the
same time that he ought to rejoice at them since it was the will

172
of the Lord, and take advantage of the occasion to reconcile
himself to Heaven.
"For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather
neglected your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship.
How many years is it since you approached the holy table? I
understand that your work, that the whirl of the world may
have kept you from care for your salvation. But now is the time
to reflect. Yet don't despair. I have known great sinners, who,
about to appear before God (you are not yet at this point I
know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in the
best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us
a good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you
from saying morning and evening a 'Hail Mary, full of grace,'
and 'Our Father which art in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my
sake, to oblige me. That won't cost you anything. Will you
promise me?"
The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day.
He chatted with the landlady; and even told anecdotes inter-
spersed with jokes and puns that Hippolyte did not understand.
Then, as soon as he could, he fell back upon matters of reli-
gion, putting on an appropriate expression of face.
His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested
a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured;
to which Monsieur Bournisien replied that he saw no objection;
two precautions were better than one; it was no risk anyhow.
The druggist was indignant at what he called the man-
oeuvres of the priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to
Hippolyte's convalescence, and he kept repeating to Madame
Lefrancois, "Leave him alone! leave him alone! You perturb his
morals with your mysticism." But the good woman would no
longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. From a spirit of
contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a
basin filled with holy-water and a branch of box.
Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than
surgery, and the invincible gangrene still spread from the ex-
tremities towards the stomach. It was all very well to vary the
potions and change the poultices; the muscles each day rotted
more and more; and at last Charles replied by an affirmative
nod of the head when Mere Lefrancois, asked him if she could

173
not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet of Neufcha-
tel, who was a celebrity.
A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good posi-
tion and self-possessed, Charles's colleague did not refrain
from laughing disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg,
mortified to the knee. Then having flatly declared that it must
be amputated, he went off to the chemist's to rail at the asses
who could have reduced a poor man to such a state. Shaking
Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted out in
the shop—
"These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of
those gentry of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, li-
thotrity, a heap of monstrosities that the Government ought to
prohibit. But they want to do the clever, and they cram you
with remedies without, troubling about the consequences. We
are not so clever, not we! We are not savants, coxcombs, fops!
We are practitioners; we cure people, and we should not dream
of operating on anyone who is in perfect health. Straighten
club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one
wished, for example, to make a hunchback straight!"
Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he con-
cealed his discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he needed
to humour Monsier Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes
came as far as Yonville. So he did not take up the defence of
Bovary; he did not even make a single remark, and, renouncing
his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the more serious in-
terests of his business.
This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great
event in the village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earli-
er, and the Grande Rue, although full of people, had something
lugubrious about it, as if an execution had been expected. At
the grocer's they discussed Hippolyte's illness; the shops did
no business, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, did not
stir from her window, such was her impatience to see the oper-
ator arrive.
He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs
of the right side having at length given way beneath the weight
of his corpulence, it happened that the carriage as it rolled
along leaned over a little, and on the other cushion near him

174
could be seen a large box covered in red sheep-leather, whose
three brass clasps shone grandly.
After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "Lion
d'Or," the doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unhar-
ness his horse. Then he went into the stable to see that he was
eating his oats all right; for on arriving at a patient's he first of
all looked after his mare and his gig. People even said about
this—
"Ah! Monsieur Canivet's a character!"
And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable cool-
ness. The universe to the last man might have died, and he
would not have missed the smallest of his habits.
Homais presented himself.
"I count on you," said the doctor. "Are we ready? Come
along!"
But the druggist, turning red, confessed that he was too
sensitive to assist at such an operation.
"When one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination,
you know, is impressed. And then I have such a nervous
system!"
"Pshaw!" interrupted Canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to
me inclined to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn't astonish me, for
you chemist fellows are always poking about your kitchens,
which must end by spoiling your constitutions. Now just look at
me. I get up every day at four o'clock; I shave with cold water
(and am never cold). I don't wear flannels, and I never catch
cold; my carcass is good enough! I live now in one way, now in
another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I am
not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a
Christian as the first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will
say, habit! habit!"
Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was
sweating with agony between his sheets, these gentlemen
entered into a conversation, in which the druggist compared
the coolness of a surgeon to that of a general; and this compar-
ison was pleasing to Canivet, who launched out on the exigen-
cies of his art. He looked upon, it as a sacred office, although
the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At last, coming back
to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Homais,
the same that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for

175
someone to hold the limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for,
and Monsieur Canivet having turned up his sleeves, passed in-
to the billiard-room, while the druggist stayed with Artemise
and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons, and with ears
strained towards the door.
Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house.
He kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fire-
less chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes
staring. "What a mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" Per-
haps, after all, he had made some slip. He thought it over, but
could hit upon nothing. But the most famous surgeons also
made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever believe!
People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would spread as
far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could
say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics
would ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte
might even prosecute him. He saw himself dishonoured,
ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a world of hypo-
theses, tossed amongst them like an empty cask borne by the
sea and floating upon the waves.
Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humili-
ation; she felt another—that of having supposed such a man
was worth anything. As if twenty times already she had not suf-
ficiently perceived his mediocrity.
Charles was walking up and down the room; his boots
creaked on the floor.
"Sit down," she said; "you fidget me."
He sat down again.
How was it that she—she, who was so intelligent—could have
allowed herself to be deceived again? and through what de-
plorable madness had she thus ruined her life by continual sac-
rifices? She recalled all her instincts of luxury, all the priva-
tions of her soul, the sordidness of marriage, of the household,
her dream sinking into the mire like wounded swallows; all
that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself, all that
she might have had! And for what? for what?
In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-
rending cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to fainting.
She knit her brows with a nervous gesture, then went on. And
it was for him, for this creature, for this man, who understood

176
nothing, who felt nothing! For he was there quite quiet, not
even suspecting that the ridicule of his name would henceforth
sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to love him, and
she had repented with tears for having yielded to another!
"But it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed Bovary,
who was meditating.
At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought
like a leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma, shuddering, raised
her head in order to find out what he meant to say; and they
looked at the other in silence, almost amazed to see each oth-
er, so far sundered were they by their inner thoughts. Charles
gazed at her with the dull look of a drunken man, while he
listened motionless to the last cries of the sufferer, that fol-
lowed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by sharp
spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being
slaughtered. Emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her
fingers a piece of coral that she had broken, fixed on Charles
the burning glance of her eyes like two arrows of fire about to
dart forth. Everything in him irritated her now; his face, his
dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his existence, in
fine. She repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and what
still remained of it rumbled away beneath the furious blows of
her pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant
adultery. The memory of her lover came back to her with
dazzling attractions; she threw her whole soul into it, borne
away towards this image with a fresh enthusiasm; and Charles
seemed to her as much removed from her life, as absent
forever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about
to die and were passing under her eyes.
There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Charles looked
up, and through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the
market in the broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his
brow with his handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying
a large red box in his hand, and both were going towards the
chemist's.
Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discourage-
ment Charles turned to his wife saying to her—
"Oh, kiss me, my own!"
"Leave me!" she said, red with anger.

177
 "What is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "Be calm; com-
pose yourself. You know well enough that I love you. Come!"
"Enough!" she cried with a terrible look.
And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so viol-
ently that the barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the
floor.
Charles sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to
discover what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous
illness, weeping, and vaguely feeling something fatal and in-
comprehensible whirling round him.
When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found
his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the low-
est stair. They threw their arms round one another, and all
their rancour melted like snow beneath the warmth of that
kiss.

178
Chapter 12
They began to love one another again. Often, even in the
middle of the day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the
window made a sign to Justin, who, taking his apron off,
quickly ran to La Huchette. Rodolphe would come; she had
sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that her husband
was odious, her life frightful.
"But what can I do?" he cried one day impatiently.
"Ah! if you would—"
She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair
loose, her look lost.
"Why, what?" said Rodolphe.
She sighed.
"We would go and live elsewhere—somewhere!"
"You are really mad!" he said laughing. "How could that be
possible?"
She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand,
and turned the conversation.
What he did not understand was all this worry about so
simple an affair as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it
were, a pendant to her affection.
Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to
her husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the
more she loathed the other. Never had Charles seemed to her
so disagreeable, to have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways,
to be so dull as when they found themselves together after her
meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing the spouse and vir-
tue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose black
hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once
so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such ex-
perience in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was
for him that she filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and
that there was never enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of

179
patchouli for her handkerchiefs. She loaded herself with brace-
lets, rings, and necklaces. When he was coming she filled the
two large blue glass vases with roses, and prepared her room
and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince. The ser-
vant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Felicite
did not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept
her company, watched her at work.
With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing,
he greedily watched all these women's clothes spread about
him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the draw-
ers with running strings, wide at the hips and growing narrow-
er below.
"What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand
over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes.
"Why, haven't you ever seen anything?" Felicite answered
laughing. "As if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn't wear
the same."
"Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!" And he added with a med-
itative air, "As if she were a lady like madame!"
But Felicite grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her.
She was six years older than he, and Theodore, Monsieur
Guillaumin's servant, was beginning to pay court to her.
"Let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "You'd
better be off and pound almonds; you are always dangling
about women. Before you meddle with such things, bad boy,
wait till you've got a beard to your chin."
"Oh, don't be cross! I'll go and clean her boots."
And he at once took down from the shelf Emma's boots, all
coated with mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled in-
to powder beneath his fingers, and that he watched as it gently
rose in a ray of sunlight.
"How afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who
wasn't so particular when she cleaned them herself, because as
soon as the stuff of the boots was no longer fresh madame
handed them over to her.
Emma had a number in her cupboard that she squandered
one after the other, without Charles allowing himself the
slightest observation. So also he disbursed three hundred
francs for a wooden leg that she thought proper to make a
present of to Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork, and it

180
had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by
black trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte,
not daring to use such a handsome leg every day, begged Ma-
dame Bovary to get him another more convenient one. The doc-
tor, of course, had again to defray the expense of this
purchase.
So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One
saw him running about the village as before, and when Charles
heard from afar the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once
went in another direction.
It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had under-
taken the order; this provided him with an excuse for visiting
Emma. He chatted with her about the new goods from Paris,
about a thousand feminine trifles, made himself very obliging,
and never asked for his money. Emma yielded to this lazy mode
of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have a very
handsome ridding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at
Rouen to give to Rodolphe. The week after Monsieur Lheureux
placed it on her table.
But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred
and seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was
much embarrassed; all the drawers of the writing-table were
empty; they owed over a fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two
quarters to the servant, for any quantity of other things, and
Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur Derozeray's ac-
count, which he was in the habit of paying every year about
Midsummer.
She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost
patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he
got some in he should be forced to take back all the goods she
had received.
"Oh, very well, take them!" said Emma.
"I was only joking," he replied; "the only thing I regret is the
whip. My word! I'll ask monsieur to return it to me."
"No, no!" she said.
"Ah! I've got you!" thought Lheureux.
And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to him-
self in an undertone, and with his usual low whistle—
"Good! we shall see! we shall see!"

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 She was thinking how to get out of this when the servant
coming in put on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper
"from Monsieur Derozeray's." Emma pounced upon and opened
it. It contained fifteen napoleons; it was the account. She heard
Charles on the stairs; threw the gold to the back of her drawer,
and took out the key.
Three days after Lheureux reappeared.
"I have an arrangement to suggest to you," he said. "If, in-
stead of the sum agreed on, you would take—"
"Here it is," she said placing fourteen napoleons in his hand.
The tradesman was dumfounded. Then, to conceal his disap-
pointment, he was profuse in apologies and proffers of service,
all of which Emma declined; then she remained a few moments
fingering in the pocket of her apron the two five-franc pieces
that he had given her in change. She promised herself she
would economise in order to pay back later on. "Pshaw!" she
thought, "he won't think about it again."
Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Rodolphe
had received a seal with the motto Amor nel cor* furthermore,
a scarf for a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the
Viscount's, that Charles had formerly picked up in the road,
and that Emma had kept. These presents, however, humiliated
him; he refused several; she insisted, and he ended by obeying,
thinking her tyrannical and overexacting.
*A loving heart.
Then she had strange ideas.
"When midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me."
And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there
were floods of reproaches that always ended with the eternal
question—
"Do you love me?"
"Why, of course I love you," he answered.
"A great deal?"
"Certainly!"
"You haven't loved any others?"
"Did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing.
Emma cried, and he tried to console her, adorning his prot-
estations with puns.
"Oh," she went on, "I love you! I love you so that I could not
live without you, do you see? There are times when I long to

182
see you again, when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask
myself, Where is he? Perhaps he is talking to other women.
They smile upon him; he approaches. Oh no; no one else
pleases you. There are some more beautiful, but I love you
best. I know how to love best. I am your servant, your concu-
bine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are beauti-
ful, you are clever, you are strong!"
He had so often heard these things said that they did not
strike him as original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and
the charm of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment,
laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the
same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish,
this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment
beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and
venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little
in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre
affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did
not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no
one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his
conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like
a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make
bears dance when we long to move the stars.
But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him
who, in no matter what circumstance, holds back, Rodolphe
saw other delights to be got out of this love. He thought all
modesty in the way. He treated her quite sans facon.* He made
of her something supple and corrupt. Hers was an idiotic sort
of attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for
her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this
drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in his
butt of Malmsey.
*Off-handedly.
By the mere effect of her love Madame Bovary's manners
changed. Her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she
even committed the impropriety of walking out with Monsieur
Rodolphe, a cigarette in her mouth, "as if to defy the people."
At last, those who still doubted doubted no longer when one
day they saw her getting out of the "Hirondelle," her waist
squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and Madame Bovary
senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken

183
refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalised of the
women-folk. Many other things displeased her. First, Charles
had not attended to her advice about the forbidding of novels;
then the "ways of the house" annoyed her; she allowed herself
to make some remarks, and there were quarrels, especially one
on account of Felicite.
Madame Bovary senior, the evening before, passing along
the passage, had surprised her in company of a man—a man
with a brown collar, about forty years old, who, at the sound of
her step, had quickly escaped through the kitchen. Then Emma
began to laugh, but the good lady grew angry, declaring that
unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to look after
those of one's servants.
"Where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law,
with so impertinent a look that Madame Bovary asked her if
she were not perhaps defending her own case.
"Leave the room!" said the young woman, springing up with
a bound.
"Emma! Mamma!" cried Charles, trying to reconcile them.
But both had fled in their exasperation. Emma was stamping
her feet as she repeated—
"Oh! what manners! What a peasant!"
He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She stammered
"She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!"
And she was for leaving at once if the other did not apolo-
gise. So Charles went back again to his wife and implored her
to give way; he knelt to her; she ended by saying—
"Very well! I'll go to her."
And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with
the dignity of a marchioness as she said—
"Excuse me, madame."
Then, having gone up again to her room, she threw herself
flat on her bed and cried there like a child, her face buried in
the pillow.
She and Rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything
extraordinary occurring, she should fasten a small piece of
white paper to the blind, so that if by chance he happened to
be in Yonville, he could hurry to the lane behind the house.
Emma made the signal; she had been waiting three-quarters of
an hour when she suddenly caught sight of Rodolphe at the

184
corner of the market. She felt tempted to open the window and
call him, but he had already disappeared. She fell back in
despair.
Soon, however, it seemed to her that someone was walking
on the pavement. It was he, no doubt. She went downstairs,
crossed the yard. He was there outside. She threw herself into
his arms.
"Do take care!" he said.
"Ah! if you knew!" she replied.
And she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly,
exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of par-
entheses that he understood nothing of it.
"Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted! be patient!"
"But I have been patient; I have suffered for four years. A
love like ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. They
torture me! I can bear it no longer! Save me!"
She clung to Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears, flashed like
flames beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved
her so much, so that he lost his head and said "What is, it?
What do you wish?"
"Take me away," she cried, "carry me off! Oh, I pray you!"
And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the
unexpected consent if breathed forth in a kiss.
"But—" Rodolphe resumed.
"What?"
"Your little girl!"
She reflected a few moments, then replied—
"We will take her! It can't be helped!"
"What a woman!" he said to himself, watching her as she
went. For she had run into the garden. Someone was calling
her.
On the following days Madame Bovary senior was much sur-
prised at the change in her daughter-in-law. Emma, in fact,
was showing herself more docile, and even carried her defer-
ence so far as to ask for a recipe for pickling gherkins.
Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she wish by a
sort of voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bit-
terness of the things she was about to leave?
But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as
lost in the anticipated delight of her coming happiness.

185
 It was an eternal subject for conversation with Rodolphe. She
leant on his shoulder murmuring—
"Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you think about it?
Can it be? It seems to me that the moment I feel the carriage
start, it will be as if we were rising in a balloon, as if we were
setting out for the clouds. Do you know that I count the hours?
And you?"
Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this peri-
od; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from
enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of tem-
perament with circumstances. Her desires, her sorrows, the
experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had,
as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers grow,
gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in
all the plenitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled
expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disap-
peared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nos-
trils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light
by a little black down. One would have thought that an artist
apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair upon her neck;
they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the changing
chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. Her
voice now took more mellow infections, her figure also;
something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds
of her gown and from the line of her foot. Charles, as when
they were first married, thought her delicious and quite
irresistible.
When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not
dare to wake her. The porcelain night-light threw a round
trembling gleam upon the ceiling, and the drawn curtains of
the little cot formed as it were a white hut standing out in the
shade, and by the bedside Charles looked at them. He seemed
to hear the light breathing of his child. She would grow big
now; every season would bring rapid progress. He already saw
her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-
stains on her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. Then
she would have to be sent to the boarding-school; that would
cost much; how was it to be done? Then he reflected. He
thought of hiring a small farm in the neighbourhood, that he
would superintend every morning on his way to his patients.

186
He would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the
savings-bank. Then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter
where; besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon
that, for he wanted Berthe to be well-educated, to be accom-
plished, to learn to play the piano. Ah! how pretty she would be
later on when she was fifteen, when, resembling her mother,
she would, like her, wear large straw hats in the summer-time;
from a distance they would be taken for two sisters. He pic-
tured her to himself working in the evening by their side be-
neath the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers;
she would look after the house; she would fill all the home with
her charm and her gaiety. At last, they would think of her mar-
riage; they would find her some good young fellow with a
steady business; he would make her happy; this would last for
ever.
Emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he
dozed off by her side she awakened to other dreams.
To the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week
towards a new land, whence they would return no more. They
went on and on, their arms entwined, without a word. Often
from the top of a mountain there suddenly glimpsed some
splendid city with domes, and bridges, and ships, forests of cit-
ron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose pointed
steeples were storks' nests. They went at a walking-pace be-
cause of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were
bouquets of flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bod-
ices. They heard the chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, to-
gether with the murmur of guitars and the noise of fountains,
whose rising spray refreshed heaps of fruit arranged like a pyr-
amid at the foot of pale statues that smiled beneath playing
waters. And then, one night they came to a fishing village,
where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and
in front of the huts. It was there that they would stay; they
would live in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in
the heart of a gulf, by the sea. They would row in gondolas,
swing in hammocks, and their existence would be easy and
large as their silk gowns, warm and star-spangled as the nights
they would contemplate. However, in the immensity of this fu-
ture that she conjured up, nothing special stood forth; the
days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and it

187
swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonised, azure, and bathed
in sunshine. But the child began to cough in her cot or Bovary
snored more loudly, and Emma did not fall asleep till morning,
when the dawn whitened the windows, and when little Justin
was already in the square taking down the shutters of the
chemist's shop.
She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said to him—
"I want a cloak—a large lined cloak with a deep collar."
"You are going on a journey?" he asked.
"No; but—never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and
quickly?"
He bowed.
"Besides, I shall want," she went on, "a trunk—not too
heavy—handy."
"Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half,
as they are being made just now."
"And a travelling bag."
"Decidedly," thought Lheureux, "there's a row on here."
"And," said Madame Bovary, taking her watch from her belt,
"take this; you can pay yourself out of it."
But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew
one another; did he doubt her? What childishness!
She insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and
Lheureux had already put it in his pocket and was going, when
she called him back.
"You will leave everything at your place. As to the
cloak"—she seemed to be reflecting—"do not bring it either;
you can give me the maker's address, and tell him to have it
ready for me."
It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to
leave Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen.
Rodolphe would have booked the seats, procured the pass-
ports, and even have written to Paris in order to have the
whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as Marseilles, where
they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without stopping
to Genoa. She would take care to send her luggage to
Lheureux whence it would be taken direct to the "Hirondelle,"
so that no one would have any suspicion. And in all this there
never was any allusion to the child. Rodolphe avoided speaking
of her; perhaps he no longer thought about it.

188
 He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange
some affairs; then at the end of a week he wanted two more;
then he said he was ill; next he went on a journey. The month
of August passed, and, after all these delays, they decided that
it was to be irrevocably fixed for the 4th September—a
Monday.
At length the Saturday before arrived.
Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual.
"Everything is ready?" she asked him.
"Yes."
Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down
near the terrace on the kerb-stone of the wall.
"You are sad," said Emma.
"No; why?"
And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion.
"It is because you are going away?" she went on; "because
you are leaving what is dear to you—your life? Ah! I under-
stand. I have nothing in the world! you are all to me; so shall I
be to you. I will be your people, your country; I will tend, I will
love you!"
"How sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms.
"Really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "Do you love me?
Swear it then!"
"Do I love you—love you? I adore you, my love."
The moon, full and purple-coloured, was rising right out of
the earth at the end of the meadow. She rose quickly between
the branches of the poplars, that hid her here and there like a
black curtain pierced with holes. Then she appeared dazzling
with whiteness in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now
sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the river a great stain
that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the silver sheen
seemed to writhe through the very depths like a heedless ser-
pent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some
monster candelabra all along which sparkled drops of dia-
monds running together. The soft night was about them;
masses of shadow filled the branches. Emma, her eyes half
closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind that was
blowing. They did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of
their reverie. The tenderness of the old days came back to
their hearts, full and silent as the flowing river, with the

189
softness of the perfume of the syringas, and threw across their
memories shadows more immense and more sombre than those
of the still willows that lengthened out over the grass. Often
some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on the
hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe
peach falling all alone from the espalier.
"Ah! what a lovely night!" said Rodolphe.
"We shall have others," replied Emma; and, as if speaking to
herself: "Yet, it will be good to travel. And yet, why should my
heart be so heavy? Is it dread of the unknown? The effect of
habits left? Or rather—? No; it is the excess of happiness. How
weak I am, am I not? Forgive me!"
"There is still time!" he cried. "Reflect! perhaps you may
repent!"
"Never!" she cried impetuously. And coming closer to him:
"What ill could come to me? There is no desert, no precipice,
no ocean I would not traverse with you. The longer we live to-
gether the more it will be like an embrace, every day closer,
more heart to heart. There will be nothing to trouble us, no
cares, no obstacle. We shall be alone, all to ourselves eternally.
Oh, speak! Answer me!"
At regular intervals he answered, "Yes—Yes—" She had
passed her hands through his hair, and she repeated in a child-
like voice, despite the big tears which were falling, "Rodolphe!
Rodolphe! Ah! Rodolphe! dear little Rodolphe!"
Midnight struck.
"Midnight!" said she. "Come, it is to-morrow. One day more!"
He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the
signal for their flight, Emma said, suddenly assuming a gay
air—
"You have the passports?"
"Yes."
"You are forgetting nothing?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Certainly."
"It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for
me at midday?"
He nodded.

190
 "Till to-morrow then!" said Emma in a last caress; and she
watched him go.
He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over
the water's edge between the bulrushes—
"To-morrow!" she cried.
He was already on the other side of the river and walking
fast across the meadow.
After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw
her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like
a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart that he
leant against a tree lest he should fall.
"What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No
matter! She was a pretty mistress!"
And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of
their love, came back to him. For a moment he softened; then
he rebelled against her.
"For, after all," he exclaimed, gesticulating, "I can't exile my-
self—have a child on my hands."
He was saying these things to give himself firmness.
"And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a
thousand times no! That would be too stupid."

191
Chapter 13
No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at
his bureau under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the
wall. But when he had the pen between his fingers, he could
think of nothing, so that, resting on his elbows, he began to re-
flect. Emma seemed to him to have receded into a far-off past,
as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly placed a dis-
tance between them.
To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard
at the bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually
kept his letters from women, and from it came an odour of dry
dust and withered roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale
little spots. It was a handkerchief of hers. Once when they
were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten it. Near it,
chipped at all the corners, was a miniature given him by
Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her lan-
guishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at
this image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma's
features little by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if
the living and the painted face, rubbing one against the other,
had effaced each other. Finally, he read some of her letters;
they were full of explanations relating to their journey, short,
technical, and urgent, like business notes. He wanted to see
the long ones again, those of old times. In order to find them at
the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the others, and
mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and
things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins,
and hair—hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the
hinges of the box, broke when it was opened.
Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing
and the style of the letters, as varied as their orthography.
They were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were
some that asked for love, others that asked for money. A word

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recalled faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice;
sometimes, however, he remembered nothing at all.
In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts,
cramped each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform
level of love that equalised them all. So taking handfuls of the
mixed-up letters, he amused himself for some moments with
letting them fall in cascades from his right into his left hand. At
last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to the cup-
board, saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!" Which
summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a
school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green
thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heed-
less than children, did not even, like them, leave a name
carved upon the wall.
"Come," said he, "let's begin."
He wrote—
"Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into
your life."
"After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her
interest; I am honest."
"Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to
what an abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not,
do you? You were coming confident and fearless, believing in
happiness in the future. Ah! unhappy that we are—insensate!"
Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.
"If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would
stop nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on.
As if one could make women like that listen to reason!" He re-
flected, then went on—
"I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a
profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this
ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown
less, no doubt. Lassitude would have come to us, and who
knows if I should not even have had the atrocious pain of wit-
nessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since I should have
been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come to
you tortures me, Emma. Forget me! Why did I ever know you?
Why were you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no!
Accuse only fate."
"That's a word that always tells," he said to himself.

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 "Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one
sees, certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experi-
ment, in that case without danger for you. But that delicious
exaltation, at once your charm and your torment, has preven-
ted you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the
falseness of our future position. Nor had I reflected upon this
at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as be-
neath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the
consequences."
"Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well!
so much the worse; it must be stopped!"
"The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it
would have persecuted us. You would have had to put up with
indiscreet questions, calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult
to you! Oh! And I, who would place you on a throne! I who bear
with me your memory as a talisman! For I am going to punish
myself by exile for all the ill I have done you. I am going away.
Whither I know not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always. Pre-
serve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach
my name to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers."
The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to, shut
the window, and when he had sat down again—
"I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come
and hunt me up."
"I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have
wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of
seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps
later on we shall talk together very coldly of our old love.
Adieu!"
And there was a last "adieu" divided into two words! "A
Dieu!" which he thought in very excellent taste.
"Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself. "'Yours de-
votedly?' No! 'Your friend?' Yes, that's it."
"Your friend."
He re-read his letter. He considered it very good.
"Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "She'll think
me harder than a rock. There ought to have been some tears
on this; but I can't cry; it isn't my fault." Then, having emptied
some water into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and
let a big drop fall on the paper, that made a pale stain on the

194
ink. Then looking for a seal, he came upon the one "Amor nel
cor."
"That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! nev-
er mind!"
After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.
The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock—he had
slept late), Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put
his letter at the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once
ordered Girard, his ploughman, to take it with care to Madame
Bovary. He made use of this means for corresponding with her,
sending according to the season fruits or game.
"If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that I have
gone on a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into
her own hands. Get along and take care!"
Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round
the apricots, and walking with great heavy steps in his thick
iron-bound galoshes, made his way to Yonville.
Madame Bovary, when he got to her house, was arranging a
bundle of linen on the kitchen-table with Felicite.
"Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you—from the
master."
She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her
pocket for some coppers, she looked at the peasant with hag-
gard eyes, while he himself looked at her with amazement, not
understanding how such a present could so move anyone. At
last he went out. Felicite remained. She could bear it no
longer; she ran into the sitting room as if to take the apricots
there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found the
letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her,
Emma flew to her room terrified.
Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard
nothing, and she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, dis-
traught, dumb, and ever holding this horrible piece of paper,
that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On
the second floor she stopped before the attic door, which was
closed.
Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she
must finish it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would
be seen! "Ah, no! here," she thought, "I shall be all right."
Emma pushed open the door and went in.

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 The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her
temples, stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-
window. She drew back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in
with a leap.
Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it
was lost to sight. Down below, underneath her, the village
square was empty; the stones of the pavement glittered, the
weathercocks on the houses were motionless. At the corner of
the street, from a lower storey, rose a kind of humming with
strident modulations. It was Binet turning.
She leant against the embrasure of the window, and reread
the letter with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her atten-
tion upon it, the more confused were her ideas. She saw him
again, heard him, encircled him with her arms, and throbs of
her heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a sledge-
hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven intervals. She
looked about her with the wish that the earth might crumble
into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was
free. She advanced, looking at the paving-stones, saying to her-
self, "Come! come!"
The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the
weight of her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the
ground of the oscillating square went up the walls and that the
floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the
edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of
the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow
head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the hum-
ming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her.
"Emma! Emma!" cried Charles.
She stopped.
"Wherever are you? Come!"
The thought that she had just escaped from death almost
made her faint with terror. She closed her eyes; then she
shivered at the touch of a hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite.
"Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the
table."
And she had to go down to sit at table.
She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her
napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of ap-
plying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen.

196
Suddenly the remembrance of the letter returned to her. How
had she lost it? Where could she find it? But she felt such wear-
iness of spirit that she could not even invent a pretext for leav-
ing the table. Then she became a coward; she was afraid of
Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced
these words in a strange manner:
"We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it
seems."
"Who told you?" she said, shuddering.
"Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt
tone. "Why, Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the
Cafe Francais. He has gone on a journey, or is to go."
She gave a sob.
"What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that
from time to time for a change, and, ma foi, I think he's right,
when one has a fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly
times, has our friend. He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois
told me—"
He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in.
She put back into the basket the apricots scattered on the side-
board. Charles, without noticing his wife's colour, had them
brought to him, took one, and bit into it.
"Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!"
And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her
gently.
"Do just smell! What an odour!" he remarked, passing it un-
der her nose several times.
"I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will
the spasm passed; then—
"It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit
down and go on eating." For she dreaded lest he should begin
questioning her, attending to her, that she should not be left
alone.
Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones
of the apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his
plate.
Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid
trot. Emma uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground.
In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set
out for Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no

197
other way than by Yonville, he had to go through the village,
and Emma had recognised him by the rays of the lanterns,
which like lightning flashed through the twilight.
The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house ran
thither. The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat,
knives, the salt, and cruet-stand were strewn over the room;
Charles was calling for help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and
Felicite, whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress,
whose whole body shivered convulsively.
"I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said
the druggist.
Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle—
"I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead
person for you!"
"Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it is your
Charles, who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your
little girl! Oh, kiss her!"
The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to
her neck. But turning away her head, Emma said in a broken
voice "No, no! no one!"
She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there
stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her
hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two
streams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon the
pillow.
Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the
chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is
becoming on the serious occasions of life.
"Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "I think the
paroxysm is past."
"Yes, she is resting a little now," answered Charles, watching
her sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!"
Then Homais asked how the accident had come about.
Charles answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while
she was eating some apricots.
"Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it might be that
the apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so
sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very fine
question to study both in its pathological and physiological re-
lation. The priests know the importance of it, they who have

198
introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. It is to stupefy
the senses and to bring on ecstasies—a thing, moreover, very
easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than
the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt
hartshorn, of new bread—"
"Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a low voice.
"And not only," the druggist went on, "are human beings sub-
ject to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ig-
norant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the Ne-
peta cataria, vulgarly called catmint, on the feline race; and, on
the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity I can
answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present estab-
lished in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into con-
vulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often
even makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-
house at Guillaume Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple
sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal or-
ganism? It is extremely curious, is it not?"
"Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to him.
"This shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign self-
sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous sys-
tem. With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I
confess, very susceptible. And so I should by no means recom-
mend to you, my dear friend, any of those so-called remedies
that, under the pretence of attacking the symptoms, attack the
constitution. No; no useless physicking! Diet, that is all; sedat-
ives, emollients, dulcification. Then, don't you think that per-
haps her imagination should be worked upon?"
"In what way? How?" said Bovary.
"Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the ques-
tion,' as I lately read in a newspaper."
But Emma, awaking, cried out—
"The letter! the letter!"
They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight.
Brain-fever had set in.
For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all
his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feel-
ing her pulse, putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses.
He sent Justin as far as Neufchatel for ice; the ice melted on
the way; he sent him back again. He called Monsieur Canivet

199
into consultation; he sent for Dr. Lariviere, his old master, from
Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was Emma's
prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even
seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting to-
gether after all their troubles.
About the middle of October she could sit up in bed suppor-
ted by pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first
bread-and-jelly. Her strength returned to her; she got up for a
few hours of an afternoon, and one day, when she felt better,
he tried to take her, leaning on his arm, for a walk round the
garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing beneath the
dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers,
and leaning against Charles's shoulder. She smiled all the time.
They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace.
She drew herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to
look. She looked far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon
were only great bonfires of grass smoking on the hills.
"You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary. And, push-
ing her gently to make her go into the arbour, "Sit down on
this seat; you'll be comfortable."
"Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice.
She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her ill-
ness recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true,
and more complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart,
then in the chest, the head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in
which Charles thought he saw the first signs of cancer.
And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money
matters.

200
Chapter 14
To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Monsieur Ho-
mais for all the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medic-
al man, he was not obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless
blushed a little at such an obligation. Then the expenses of the
household, now that the servant was mistress, became terrible.
Bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen grumbled; Mon-
sieur Lheureux especially harassed him. In fact, at the height
of Emma's illness, the latter, taking advantage of the circum-
stances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the
cloak, the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a num-
ber of other things. It was very well for Charles to say he did
not want them. The tradesman answered arrogantly that these
articles had been ordered, and that he would not take them
back; besides, it would vex madame in her convalescence; the
doctor had better think it over; in short, he was resolved to sue
him rather than give up his rights and take back his goods.
Charles subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the
shop. Felicite forgot; he had other things to attend to; then
thought no more about them. Monsieur Lheureux returned to
the charge, and, by turns threatening and whining, so man-
aged that Bovary ended by signing a bill at six months. But
hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea occurred to him:
it was to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux. So, with an
embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them,
adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished.
Lheureux ran off to his shop, brought back the money, and dic-
tated another bill, by which Bovary undertook to pay to his or-
der on the 1st of September next the sum of one thousand and
seventy francs, which, with the hundred and eighty already
agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus lending at
six per cent in addition to one-fourth for commission: and the
things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in

201
twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty
francs. He hoped that the business would not stop there; that
the bills would not be paid; that they would be renewed; and
that his poor little money, having thriven at the doctor's as at a
hospital, would come back to him one day considerably more
plump, and fat enough to burst his bag.
Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudic-
ator for a supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchatel; Mon-
sieur Guillaumin promised him some shares in the turf-pits of
Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of establishing a new diligence ser-
vice between Arcueil and Rouen, which no doubt would not be
long in ruining the ramshackle van of the "Lion d'Or," and that,
travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more luggage,
would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville.
Charles several times asked himself by what means he
should next year be able to pay back so much money. He re-
flected, imagined expedients, such as applying to his father or
selling something. But his father would be deaf, and he—he
had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that he
quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from
his mind. He reproached himself with forgetting Emma, as if,
all his thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of
something not to be constantly thinking of her.
The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence
slow. When it was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the win-
dow that overlooked the square, for she now had an antipathy
to the garden, and the blinds on that side were always down.
She wished the horse to be sold; what she formerly liked now
displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to the care
of herself. She stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the
servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The
snow on the market-roof threw a white, still light into the
room; then the rain began to fall; and Emma waited daily with
a mind full of eagerness for the inevitable return of some tri-
fling events which nevertheless had no relation to her. The
most important was the arrival of the "Hirondelle" in the even-
ing. Then the landlady shouted out, and other voices answered,
while Hippolyte's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the
boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came
in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and

202
towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming
back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pave-
ment, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers one
after the other.
It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her.
He inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to
religion, in a coaxing little prattle that was not without its
charm. The mere thought of his cassock comforted her.
One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought
herself dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while
they were making the preparations in her room for the sacra-
ment, while they were turning the night table covered with syr-
ups into an altar, and while Felicite was strewing dahlia
flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing over her
that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all feel-
ing. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was be-
ginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God,
would be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that
melts into vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy
water, the priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and
it was fainting with a celestial joy that she put out her lips to
accept the body of the Saviour presented to her. The curtains
of the alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays
of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine
like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying
she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived
in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints hold-
ing green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty,
who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry
her away in their arms.
This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beauti-
ful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove
to recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less
exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tor-
tured by pride, at length found rest in Christian humility, and,
tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the destruc-
tion of her will, that must have left a wide entrance for the in-
roads of heavenly grace. There existed, then, in the place of
happiness, still greater joys—another love beyond all loves,
without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally!