Madame Bovary (Modern Library)

by Gustave Flaubert

  “My poor friend!” she said, holding out her hand to him.

  Léon quickly fixed his lips there. Then, drawing a deep breath:

  “At that time, you were, for me, an indescribable, incomprehensible force that took my life captive. For instance, I came to your house, once; but you probably have no recollection?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Continue.”

  “You were down below, in the anteroom, ready to go out, on the lowest step; you even had a hat with little blue flowers; and, without any invitation on your part, in spite of myself, I accompanied you. At each moment, however, I was more and more conscious of my foolishness, and I continued to walk near you, not daring quite to follow you, and not wanting to leave you. When you went into a shop, I’d stay in the street, I watched you through the glass as you took off your gloves and counted the change on the counter. Afterward you rang Madame Tuvache’s bell, someone opened up for you, and I stayed like an idiot in front of the great heavy door, which had closed upon you again.”

  Listening to him, Madame Bovary was amazed at being so old; all these things reappearing seemed to broaden her existence; they made a kind of emotional vastness on which she was being transported back; and she said from time to time, in a low voice and with her eyelids half-closed:

  “Yes, it’s true … It’s true … It’s true …”

  They heard eight o’clock chime from all the different clocks in the Beauvoisine quarter, which is full of boarding schools, churches and large abandoned mansions. They were no longer speaking; but they felt, looking at each other, a roaring in their heads, as if a clear loud sound was mutually bursting from eyes fixed on one another. They had just joined hands; and the past, the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were mingled in the sweetness of that rapture. Night thickened on the walls, on which there still shone, half lost in the shadow, the coarse colors of four prints depicting four scenes from The Tower of Nesle, with an inscription at the bottom, in Spanish and French. From the sash window, you could see a wedge of black sky, between pointed roofs.

  She rose to light two candles on the chest of drawers, then came and sat down again.

  “Well …” said Léon.

  “Well …?” she replied.

  And he was seeking a way to renew the broken-off dialogue, when she said to him:

  “Why is it that no one, up to now, has ever expressed similar sentiments?”

  The clerk cried out that ideal natures were hard to understand. He, for his part, had been in love with her from the first glance; and he was in despair, thinking of the happiness they might have had if, by a stroke of fortune, meeting each other earlier on, they might have been bound indissolubly together.

  “I dreamed of it sometimes,” she answered.

  “What a dream,” murmured Léon.

  And, delicately handling the blue piping of his long white waistband, he added:

  “So who’s preventing us from starting again?”

  “No, my friend,” she replied. “I am too old … you are too young … forget me! Others will love you … you’ll love them.”

  “Not as I do you!” he cried out.

  “What a child you are! Come, let’s be sensible. I mean it!”

  She impressed upon him the insuperable obstacles facing their love, and that they must behave, as in former times, within the simple limits of a brotherly affection.

  Was she speaking thus in earnest? Doubtless Emma herself had no idea, completely taken up by the appeal of the seduction and the need to defend herself against it; and, gazing on the young man with melting eyes, she gently spurned the shy caresses attempted by his trembling hands.

  “Ah, forgive me!” he said, drawing back.

  And Emma was seized by a vague dread, before this shyness, more dangerous to her than Rodolphe’s boldness when he advanced with open arms. Never had any man seemed so handsome to her. There was an exquisite openness about him. He lowered his long, delicate, curving lashes. His cheek’s smooth skin blushed—she thought—out of desire for her person, and Emma felt an irresistible longing to plant her lips there. So, leaning toward the clock as if to check the time:

  “Dear me, how late it is!” she said; “how we let our tongues run!”

  He took the hint and fetched his hat.

  “I’ve even forgotten the performance! Poor Bovary, leaving me behind especially. Monsieur Lormaux, of the rue Grand-Pont, was supposed to take me there with his wife.”

  And the opportunity was lost, for she was leaving tomorrow.

  “Truly?” said Léon.

  “Yes.”

  “Nevertheless I must see you again,” he continued, “I had something to tell you …”

  “What?”

  “Something … grave, serious. Ah no—you can’t be leaving, anyway, it isn’t possible! If you knew … Listen … Then you haven’t understood me? You haven’t guessed, then …?”

  “Yet you’re a good speaker,” said Emma.

  “Ah, jokes! Enough, enough! Allow me to see you again, for pity’s sake … one time … only one.”

  “Well …!”

  She paused; then, as if thinking better of it:

  “Oh, not here.”

  “Wherever you please.”

  “Would you like …”

  She appeared to reflect, then, curtly:

  “Tomorrow, at eleven o’clock, in the cathedral.”

  “I’ll be there!” he cried, seizing her hands, which she withdrew.

  And, as they found themselves both on their feet, he standing behind her and Emma lowering her head, he stooped over her neck and kissed her lengthily on the nape.

  “But you’re mad! Oh, you’re mad!” she said through little ringing peals of laughter, while the kisses intensified.

  Then, thrusting his head over her shoulder, he appeared to be seeking consent from her eyes. These fell upon him, full of a glacial majesty.

  Léon took three steps back, in order to leave. He stopped on the threshold. Then he whispered in a trembling voice:

  “Till tomorrow.”

  She answered with a nod, and vanished like a bird into the adjoining room.

  That evening, Emma wrote an interminable letter to the clerk in which she extricated herself from the assignation: all was now over, and they should no longer meet each other, for their own good. But, when the letter was sealed, since she did not know Léon’s address, she found herself in a most awkward position.

  “I shall give it to him myself,” she said; “he’ll come.”

  The following day, Léon, window open and humming a tune on the balcony, polished his pumps himself, using several coats. He slipped on a pair of white trousers, fine-knit socks, a green coat, poured into his handkerchief everything he owned in the way of scent, then, having had his hair curled, uncurled it, to give it a more natural elegance.

  “It’s still too early,” he thought, looking at the wigmaker’s cuckoo clock, which was showing nine.

  He read an old fashion journal, stepped out, smoked a cigar, went up three streets, considered it was time and slowly made his way toward the porch of Notre Dame.

  It was a lovely summer morning. Silversmiths’ wares glittered in their shops, and the light falling aslant onto the cathedral set the breaks in the gray stones glistening; a flock of birds whirled in the blue sky, around the trefoil bell turrets; the square, echoing with cries, was fragrant with the flowers that bordered the paving, roses, jasmine, carnations, narcissus and tuberose, unequally spaced between moist pot herbs, cat mint and chickweed for the birds; the fountain gurgled in the middle, and under broad umbrellas, among the tiered pyramids of melons, the market traders, bareheaded, were twirling paper around bunches of violets.

  The young man took one. It was the first time he had bought flowers for a woman; and his breast, as he breathed in their scent, swelled with pride, as if this tribute intended for another had reverted to him.

  Nevertheless he was fearful of being spotted; he entered the church with a determ
ined air.

  Then there was the beadle standing on the threshold, in the middle of the left-hand doorway, under the dancing Marianne, plume on head, rapier at his side, cane in his hand, more majestic than a cardinal and glittering like a holy chalice.

  He approached Léon, and, with that smile of wheedling benignity that clergymen adopt when they question children:

  “Monsieur, doubtless, is not from these parts? Monsieur wishes to visit the church’s curiosities?”

  “No,” said the other.

  And he went around the aisles first of all. He then proceeded to take a peep at the square. Emma had not arrived. He went back in as far as the choir.

  The nave was mirrored in the brimming fonts, with the first of the lancet windows and some sections of stained glass. But the reflection of the paintings, breaking up on the marble’s lip, continued further off, on the flagstones, like a motley carpet. The broad daylight from outside extended into the church on three enormous beams, through the three open portals. From time to time, at the far end, a sacristan passed across, making the oblique genuflection of the hurried devotee. The crystal chandeliers hung motionless. In the choir, a silver lamp burned; and, from the side chapels, the gloomy parts of the church, there seemed to breathe an occasional sigh, with the sound of a grille falling back, reverberating its echo under the lofty vault.

  Léon, with an earnest stride, walked close to the walls. Never had life seemed to him so good. She would be coming in a little while, delightful, uneasy, watching out behind her for eyes that might be following—and in her flounced dress, with her gold lorgnon, her slender ladies’ boots, all sorts of elegant touches that he had not yet relished, and with the ineffable allure of the virtuous woman who succumbs. The church, like a gigantic boudoir, would array itself around her; the vaulted ceiling bow down to receive in the shadows the confession of her love; the stained-glass windows shine brilliantly to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she might appear like an angel, in the smoke of the incense.

  Yet she was not coming. He sat on a chair and his eyes alighted on a blue window in which boatmen can be seen, carrying baskets. He looked at it for a long time, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fish and the doublets’ buttonholes, while his thoughts roamed in search of Emma.

  The beadle, excluded, was inwardly indignant with this individual, who took the liberty of admiring the cathedral on his own. He seemed to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, stealing it in a way, and all but committing a sacrilege.

  But a rustle of silk on the flagstones, the edging of a hat, a black cope … it was her! Léon rose and ran to meet her.

  Emma looked pale. She was walking quickly.

  “Read it!” she said, holding out a paper for him … “Oh, no.”

  And she withdrew her hand abruptly, to enter the Chapel of the Virgin, where, kneeling against a chair, she began to pray.

  The young man was irritated by this overpious whim; then he found a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of the assignation, thus lost in prayer like an Andalusian marquess; then he grew weary soon enough, for she was taking an age.

  Emma prayed, or rather forced herself to pray, hoping that some unexpected resolve would descend upon her from the heavens; and, so as to entice divine aid, she filled her sight with the splendors of the tabernacle, she breathed in the fragrance of the white dame’s violet spreading wide in the great vases, and listened to the church’s silence, which merely increased the tumult of her heart.

  She got up, and they were about to leave, when the beadle hastily drew near, saying:

  “Madame, doubtless, is not from these parts? Madame wishes to visit the church’s curiosities?”

  “Ah no!” cried the clerk.

  “Why not?” she rejoined.

  For she clung with her wavering virtue to the Virgin, to the sculptures, to the tombs, to every opportunity.

  Then, so as to proceed in order, the beadle led them up to the entrance, near the square, where, showing them with his cane a great circle of black flagstones, with neither inscription nor carving:

  “Behold,” he declared majestically, “the circumference of the beautiful Amboise bell. It weighed forty thousand pounds. It was unequaled in all Europe. The artisan who cast it died of joy …”

  “Let’s go,” said Léon.

  The good old gentleman set off again; then, back at the Chapel of the Virgin, he stretched out his arms in a unifying gesture of display, and, prouder than a rustic landowner showing you his espalier:

  “This simple slab covers the remains of Pierre de Brézé, Lord of Varenne and Brissac, Grand Marshal of Poitou and Governor of Normandy, who fell at the battle of Montlhéry, on the sixteenth of July 1465.”

  Léon, gnawing at his lip, stamped his feet.

  “And, to the right, this gentleman, entirely clad in steel, on a prancing horse, is his grandson Louis de Brézé, Lord of Breval and of Montchauvet, Count of Maulevrier, Baron of Mauny, King’s Chamberlain, Knight of the Maltese Order and likewise Governor of Normandy, died on the twenty-third of July 1531, a Sunday, as the inscription states; and, below, this man ready to descend into the tomb shows you precisely the same person. Impossible, is it not, to imagine a more perfect representation of nothingness?”

  Madame Bovary took up her lorgnon. Léon, stock-still, gazed at her, not attempting to say so much as a single word, to make a single gesture, so discouraged did he feel before this dual obstinacy of loquacity and indifference.

  The everlasting guide continued:

  “Near him, this kneeling woman in tears is his wife Diane de Poitiers, Countess of Brézé, Duchess of Valentinois, born in 1499, died in 1566; and, to the left, the one carrying a child, the Holy Virgin. Now, turn to this side: here are the Amboise tombs. Both of them were cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was King Louis XII’s minister. He did much good for the cathedral. In his will we have found a bequest of thirty thousand crowns for the poor.”

  And, without stopping, speaking all the while, he ushered them into a chapel cluttered with railings, disturbed a few, and revealed a kind of block, that could well have been a badly made statue.

  “In former times it embellished,” he said, with a lengthy groan, “the tomb of Richard the Lionheart, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It is the Calvinists, Monsieur, who reduced it to this state. They had, out of malice, buried it in some earth, under His Grace’s episcopal throne. Look, here is the door by which His Grace repaired to his dwelling. Let us go and view the gargoyle windows.”

  But Léon hastily pulled out a silver coin from his pocket and seized Emma by the arm. The beadle remained utterly astonished, unable to comprehend this untimely munificence, while the stranger still had so many things to see. Then, remembering:

  “Ah, Monsieur! The spire! The spire …”

  “Thank you,” said Léon.

  “Monsieur is wrong! It weighs four hundred and forty pounds, nine less than Egypt’s Great Pyramid. It is all cast iron, it …”

  Léon fled; for it seemed to him that his love, which, for almost two hours, had stood as still in the church as the stones, would now evaporate like steam up this truncated funnel, this oblong cage, this open chimney, which exposes itself so grotesquely on top of the cathedral like the wild endeavor of some whimsical tinker.

  “Where are we going then?” she said.

  Without replying, he continued to walk with a rapid step, and Madame Bovary was already dipping her finger in the holy water, when they heard behind them a great puffing of breath, regularly interspersed with the rebounding of a cane. Léon swerved.

  “Monsieur!”

  “What?”

  And he recognized the beadle, carrying under his arm and holding balanced against his belly about twenty stitched and sturdy volumes. They were the works that dealt with the cathedral.

  “Idiot!” muttered Léon, dashing out of the church.

  An urchin was getting up to mischief in the portico:

&
nbsp; “Go and fetch me a hack!”

  The child shot off like a bullet, down the rue des Quatre-Vents; so they remained on their own for several minutes, face-to-face and a little embarrassed.

  “Ah, Léon …! Truly … I don’t know … if I should …!”

  She was affectedly pensive. Then, with a serious air:

  “You know this is most improper?”

  “How so?” rejoined the clerk. “They do it in Paris!”

  And this utterance, like an irresistible argument, decided her.

  The hackney coach did not come, however. Léon was fearful lest she go back into the church. At last the coach appeared.

  “At least leave by the north portal!” the beadle shouted after them, having stayed in the doorway, “to view the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, the Paradise, the King David, and the Reprobates in the fires of Hell.”

  “Where’s Monsieur going?” asked the coachman.

  “Wherever you like!” said Léon, pushing Emma into the carriage.

  And the conveyance lumbered off.

  It went down the rue Grand-Pont, crossed the place des Arts, the quai Napoléon, the pont Neuf and stopped short in front of the statue of Pierre Corneille.

  “Carry on!” came a voice from within.

  The carriage set off again, and, borne along, from the La Fayette crossroads, by the downward slope, it penetrated the railway terminus at full gallop.

  “No! Straight on!” cried the same voice.

  The coach emerged from the iron gates, and soon, reaching the park walk, trotted gently, amidst the tall elms. The coachman wiped his forehead, put his leather hat between his knees and urged the vehicle beyond the side paths, to the water’s edge, close to the turf.

  It proceeded along the river, on the tow path laid with dry pebbles, and, for a good while, toward Oyssel, beyond the islands.

  But all of a sudden, it shot in one bound through Quatremares, Sotteville, la Grande-Chaussée, the rue Elbeuf, and came to its third halt in front of the Botanical Gardens.

  “Well, go on!” the voice shouted out, more furious than ever.

  And straightaway, resuming its fare, it went by way of Saint-Sever, the quai des Curandiers, the quai aux Meules, once again over the bridge, by the place du Champ-de-Mars and the back of the hospital gardens, where old men in black jackets take a stroll in the sun, along a terrace turned completely green by ivy. It ascended the boulevard Bouvreuil, ran along the boulevard Cauchoise, then the whole of Mont-Riboudet up to the Côte de Deville.