Madame Bovary (Modern Library)

by Gustave Flaubert

  How they loved that simple room, cheerful despite its somewhat faded splendor! They always found the furniture in the same position, and the occasional hairpin that she had forgotten, on a previous Thursday, under the base of the clock. They would have a fireside breakfast, on a little round table inlaid with rosewood. Emma carved, laid the morsels on his plate while babbling all sorts of kittenish things; and she laughed a high and licentious laugh when the froth from the champagne overflowed the slender glass onto the rings on her fingers. So completely lost were they in possession of each other, they believed themselves to be in their very own house, living there to the end of their days, like an ever-youthful husband and wife. They would say “our” bedroom, “our” carpet, “our” chairs, she even said “my” slippers, a present from Léon, a whim she had had. These were slippers of pink satin, trimmed with swansdown. When she sat on his knees, her leg, now too short, swung in the air; and the delicate shoe, which had no heel strap, clung on only by the toes to her bare foot.

  He savored for the first time the inexpressible refinement of feminine elegance. Never had he encountered such gracefulness of language, such coyness in dress, such drowsy, dovelike postures. He admired the exaltation of her soul and the lacework of her skirt. Moreover, was she not a woman of the world, and a married woman! A true mistress, in short?

  Through the variety of her moods, by turns mystical or joyous, chattering, reserved, carried away, listless, she would recall to him a thousand desires, conjuring up instincts or recollections. She was the lover from every novel, the heroine of every play, the vague she of every book of verse. He would recognize on her shoulders the amber color of the odalisque bathing; she had the elongated body of feudal chatelaines; she also resembled the pale woman of Barcelona, but above all she was wholly Angel!

  Often, when gazing at her, it seemed to him that his soul, escaping toward her, spread like a wave over the curve of her head, to be dragged down into her breast’s whiteness.

  He would fall at her feet; and, his elbows on her knees, he would contemplate her with a smile, his brow taut.

  She would lean toward him and murmur, as if elation had taken her breath away:

  “Oh! Don’t move! Don’t speak! Look at me! Something so soft is coming from your eyes, which does me so much good!”

  She would call him “child”:

  “Child, do you love me?”

  And she would scarcely catch his answer, in the rush of her lips up to his mouth.

  There was a little bronze Cupid on the clock, mincing as it rounded its arms below a gilded wreath. They laughed at it many times; but, when the time came to part, everything seemed serious.

  Motionless, facing one another, they would repeat:

  “Till Thursday! Till Thursday!”

  All of a sudden she would take his head in her hands, kiss him swiftly on the forehead and, crying out “Farewell!,” would dash down the stairs.

  She would go to the rue de la Comédie, to a hairdresser’s, to have her bandeaux put to rights. Night fell: they lit the gaslights in the shop.

  She heard the theater handbell calling the strolling players to the performance; and she saw, opposite, men with white faces and women in faded dress go by, entering by the stage door.

  It was hot in this little low-ceilinged room, its stove humming amidst wigs and pomades. It was not long before the odor of the curling irons, with those greasy hands touching her head, began to make her dizzy, and she slept a little under her gown. The boy, while dressing her hair, would frequently offer her tickets for the masked ball.

  Then she would be off! She would retrace her steps along the streets; arrive at the Croix Rouge; retrieve her overshoes, which she had hidden that morning under a bench, and settle in her place among the impatient travelers. Several alighted at the foot of the hill. She remained on her own in the carriage.

  At each turn of the road, all the lights of the city became more and more visible, making a great luminous vapor over the huddled houses. Emma kneeled on the cushions, and blinded herself with the dazzle. She sobbed, called out Léon’s name, and sent him loving words and kisses that were whirled away on the wind.

  There was a poor devil on the hill, roaming about with his staff, right in among the stagecoaches. A pile of rags covered his shoulders, and his face was concealed by an old stove-in beaver hat, rounded like a bowl; but, when he took it off, he exposed, where the eyelids should be, two bloodied and gaping sockets. The flesh raveled out into red tatters; and fluids trickled to stiffen into green scabs down to the nose, its black nostrils sniffing convulsively; to speak to you, he would throw back his head with an idiot laugh—then his bluish eyeballs, constantly rolling up toward the temples, would proceed to knock against the rim of the open sore.

  He sang a little song as he followed the carriages:

  A fair day’s heat does often move

  The thoughts of some young lass to love.

  And the rest was all birds, sun and leafage.

  Sometimes, he would appear behind Emma quite suddenly, bareheaded. She would draw back with a cry. Hivert would proceed to joke with him. He urged him to rent a booth at the Saint-Romain fair, or else asked him, laughing, how fared his sweetheart.

  Often, when they were on their way, his hat, with an abrupt movement, would poke through the carriage blind into the coach, while he clung, with the other arm, to the footboard, between the mud splash of the wheels. His voice, feeble at first and wailing, grew shrill. It lingered in the night, like the indistinct lamentation of a dim distress; and, through the jingling of the harness bells, the murmur of the trees and the drone of the hollow box, it had something faraway about it that troubled Emma. Down it went into the depths of her soul like a whirlpool in an abyss, sweeping her off amid the spaces of a limitless melancholy. But Hivert, aware of a shift in weight, would deal the blind man fierce blows with his whip. The lash stung against his sores, and he would fall howling into the mud.

  Then the passengers on the Hirondelle would end up going to sleep, some with mouth open, others with chin lowered, resting on their neighbor’s shoulder, or else with an arm slipped through the leather strap, swinging steadily to the motion of the carriage; and the lamp’s reflection rocking outside, on the rumps of the shaft-horses, penetrating the interior through the chocolate-colored calico of the curtains, laid ruddy shadows on all these motionless individuals. Emma, drunk with sadness, shivered with cold in her clothes; and her feet would grow colder and colder, as she inwardly grieved.

  Charles was waiting for her, back at the house; the Hirondelle was always late on Thursdays. Madame was here at last! Although she hardly kissed the little one. Dinner was not ready, no matter! She forgave the cook. All seemed permitted to this girl.

  Often her husband, noting her pallor, would ask her if she was not ill.

  “No,” said Emma.

  “But,” he answered, “you are odd tonight …”

  “Oh, it is nothing, nothing!”

  There were even some days when, scarcely returned, she went up to her room; and Justin, happening to be there, padded silently about, more skillful at serving her than a superior lady-in-waiting. He set out the matches, the candlestick, a book, arranged her nightdress, turned back the sheets.

  “Come,” she would say, “that will do, be off now!”

  For he would remain standing, hands dangling and eyes wide open, as if entangled in the innumerable threads of a sudden daydream.

  The day after was dreadful, and those following were made even more intolerable by Emma’s longing to seize her happiness once more—an ardent lustfulness, inflamed by familiar images, and which, on the seventh day, burst with such ease under Léon’s fondlings. His own burning heat was half-hidden under effusions of wonder and gratitude. Emma tasted this passion in a discreet and absorbed manner, kept it alive with all the guile of her soft caresses, and trembled a little lest it be lost later.

  Often she would say, with the soft voice of melancholy:

&nbs
p; “Ah, you’ll leave me, you will. You’ll marry! You’ll be just like the others.”

  He would ask:

  “What others?”

  “Why men, in short,” she replied.

  Then, pushing him off with a languorous gesture, she would add:

  “Vile wretches, all of you.”

  One day when they were chatting philosophically of earthly disillusions, she happened to say (testing his jealousy or perhaps yielding to an overpowerful desire to unburden herself) that in times past, before him, she had loved someone, “not like you!” she hastily resumed, protesting on her daughter’s life that nothing had happened!

  The young man believed her, and asked her questions nevertheless to find out what it was he did.

  “He was a ship’s captain, my darling.”

  Was this not to hinder further inquiry, and at the same time set herself on a truly elevated level, through a feigned fascination for a man who ought by nature to be warlike and accustomed to respect?

  So the clerk felt the lowliness of his position; he desired epaulettes, orders, titles. All that sort of thing must please her: he suspected it from her expensive habits.

  Nevertheless Emma kept quiet about a host of her extravagances, such as the desire to have a blue tilbury to take her to Rouen, drawn by an English horse, and driven by a groom in top boots. It was Justin who had prompted this whim in her, by begging her to take him on in the house as a footman; and, if this privation did not dilute, at each assignation, the pleasure of arrival, it certainly increased the bitterness of return.

  Frequently when they talked to one another about Paris, she would finish by murmuring:

  “Ah, how good things would be for us, living there!”

  “Are we not happy?” the young man softly chided, smoothing the sides of her hair with his hand.

  “Yes, that is true,” she said, “I’m mad; kiss me.”

  For her husband she was more charming than ever, making him pistachio creams and playing waltzes after dinner. He reckoned himself the luckiest of mortals, and Emma lived free from anxiety, when one evening, all of a sudden:

  “It is Mademoiselle Lempereur who gives you lessons, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I saw her just now,” Charles went on, “at Madame Liégeard’s. I spoke of you to her; she’d no knowledge of you.”

  It was like a lightning bolt. Nevertheless she answered with a genial air:

  “Oh. No doubt she forgot my name?”

  “Perhaps there are,” said the doctor, “several young ladies in Rouen who go by the name of Lempereur and are piano teachers?”

  “Quite possible.” Then, sharply:

  “Yet I have her receipts, here, look!”

  And she went to the writing table, rummaged through all the drawers, muddled the papers and ended by losing her head so completely, that Charles strongly urged her not to give herself so much trouble over these wretched receipts.

  “Oh, I shall find them,” she said.

  Indeed, the very next Friday, Charles, placing one of his boots in the dark closet where his clothes were put away, felt a sheet of paper between the leather and his sock, took it out and read:

  “Received, for three months of lessons, plus various materials, the sum of sixty-five francs. FELICIE LEMPEREUR, music teacher.”

  “How the devil did it get into my boots?”

  “No doubt,” she replied, “it fell out of the old bill box, which is on the edge of the shelf.”

  From that moment on, her existence was no more than a jumble of lies, in which she would shroud her love as if with veils, to conceal it.

  This was a need, a mania, a pleasure, to the extent that if she said that yesterday she had gone down a street on the right-hand side, you would have to believe that she had taken the left-hand side.

  One morning when she had just set out, as usual, rather lightly dressed, there was a sudden fall of snow; and as Charles was checking the weather through the window, he spotted Monsieur Bournisien in Monsieur Tuvache’s gig, being driven to Rouen. So he went down to entrust the cleric with a large shawl to give to Madame, as soon as he arrived at the Croix Rouge. No sooner was he at the inn than Bournisien asked for the whereabouts of the Yonville doctor’s wife. The landlady replied that she very seldom frequented her establishment. Then, that evening, on recognizing Madame Bovary in the Hirondelle, the priest recounted his embarrassment to her, without appearing, however, to attach any importance thereby; for he began to sing the praises of a preacher who was working wonders in the cathedral at that time, and whom all the women were hastening to hear.

  Never mind that he had not asked for an explanation, others might prove less discreet later on. She also judged it useful to alight each time at the Croix Rouge, so that the good folk of the village who saw her on the stairs would suspect nothing.

  Yet the day came when Monsieur Lheureux met her leaving the Hôtel de Boulogne on Léon’s arm; and she was fearful, imagining that he would blab. He was not so stupid.

  But three days later, he came into her room, shut the door and said:

  “I shall need money.”

  She declared that she could not give him any. Lheureux burst into a groan, and recalled how indulgent he had been.

  In fact, of the two bills signed by Charles, Emma had only paid one of them up until now. As for the second, the dealer, at her entreaty, had agreed to replace it with two others, which had even been renewed on a very long expiry date. Then he pulled from his pocket a list of unpaid supplies, viz.: the curtains, the carpet, the cloth for the chairs, several gowns and sundry dressing items for her toilette, whose value came to the sum of about two thousand francs.

  She lowered her head; he went on:

  “But, if you don’t have hard cash, you have property.”

  And he indicated a wretched hovel situated in Barneville, near Aumale, which yielded nothing much. This was once a dependency of a little farm sold by Père Bovary, for Lheureux knew everything, down to the number of hectares, along with the neighbors’ names.

  “If I were in your shoes,” he said, “I would clear my debts, and I’d still have what was left over.”

  She argued that it would be hard to find a purchaser; he gave her hope of finding one; but she asked how she might go about selling it.

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

  This term reached her like a puff of fresh air.

  “Leave me the bill,” said Emma.

  “Oh, it’s not worth the trouble,” answered Lheureux.

  He returned the following week, and boasted of having finally unearthed, after many proceedings, a certain Langlois who, for quite a time, had had an eye on the property without naming his price.

  “Never mind the price!” she cried.

  On the contrary, they must wait, sound the fellow out. The matter was worth the trouble of a journey, and, as she could not make the journey, he offered to go on the spot himself, to make contact with Langlois. On his return, he announced that the purchaser was offering four thousand francs.

  Emma’s face lit up at the news.

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

  She drew on half the amount immediately, and, when she made to settle her bill, the dealer said to her:

  “It grieves me, upon my honor, to see you part so promptly with such a considerable sum.”

  She looked then at the bank notes; and, dreaming of the unlimited number of assignations those two thousand francs represented:

  “How? How?” she stammered.

  “Oh,” he continued, laughing with a genial air, “we can put anything we want on the bills. Don’t I know a bit about husbands and wives?”

  And he gazed at her fixedly, holding in his hand two long documents that he slid between his nails. At length, opening his bill case, he spread out on the table four promissory notes, for a thousand francs each.

  “Sign that for me,” he said, “and keep everything.”r />
  She cried out, scandalized.

  “But, if I’m giving you the surplus,” Monsieur Lheureux brazenly replied, “is it not to do you, you personally, a service?”

  And, taking a pen, he wrote at the bottom of the bill:

  Received from Madame Bovary the sum of four thousand francs.

  “Why worry, since in six months you can collect the arrears on your hut, and I’m placing your final bill’s settlement for after the payment?”

  Emma got a little tangled up in his calculations, and her ears rang as if the gold coins, disemboweled from their bags, were clinking all about her on the floor. At length Lheureux explained that he had a friend, Vinçart, a banker in Rouen, who would discount these four notes, then he himself would hand over to Madame the surplus of the actual debt.

  But instead of two thousand francs, he brought along only eighteen hundred, as his friend Vinçart (as was proper) had deducted two hundred, in commission and discount charges.

  Then he casually asked for a receipt.

  “You know how it is … in business … sometimes … And the date, please, the date.”

  A vista of obtainable extravagances then opened up before Emma. She was prudent enough to place a thousand crowns in reserve, with which the first three bills, when they were due, were paid off; but the fourth, by chance, dropped into the house on a Thursday, and Charles, upset, waited patiently for his wife’s return and an explanation.

  If she had not made him privy to this bill, it was in order to spare him domestic worries; she sat on his knees, stroked him, cooed, made a long enumeration of all the indispensable things purchased on credit.

  “You’ll agree that, given the quantity, it’s not so expensive, after all.”

  Charles, at his wit’s end, soon had recourse to the eternal Lheureux, who swore to calm things down, if Monsieur would sign two bills for him, one being for seven hundred francs, payable in three months. To achieve this, he wrote his mother a moving letter. Instead of sending a reply, she came herself; and, when Emma wanted to know if he had got something out of her: