Madame Bovary (21 page)

“Are you trying to turn them into Caribs or Botocudos?”

Charles, meanwhile, had tried several times to interrupt the conversation.

“I’d like to talk to you,” he had murmured quietly in the ear of the clerk, who started down the stairs ahead of him.

“Could he suspect something?” Léon wondered. His heart began pounding, and his mind was filled with conjectures.

At last, Charles, having closed the door, asked him if he would be so kind as to inquire in person, in Rouen, what the various prices of a good daguerreotype might be; this was a sentimental surprise he was preparing for his wife, a delicate tribute, a portrait of himself in a black suit. But he wanted to know, ahead of time,
what to expect;
such inquiries would surely be no trouble for Monsieur Léon, since he went to town every week, more or less.

For what purpose? Homais suspected it was some
young man’s business
, an intrigue. But he was mistaken; Léon was not involved in any love affair. He was more melancholy than ever, and Madame Lefrançois perceived this clearly by the quantity of food he now left on his plate. To find out more about it, she questioned the tax collector; Binet replied, in an arrogant tone, that he
was not in the pay of the police.

His dinner companion did, however, seem to him quite strange; for often Léon would lie back in his chair, spread his arms wide, and complain vaguely about life.

“The trouble is, you don’t have enough distractions,” said the tax collector.

“What sort do you mean?”

“Well, in your place, I would have a lathe!”

“But I don’t know how to use a lathe,” the clerk answered.

“Why, yes, that’s true!” said Binet, stroking his jaw with an air of mingled scorn and satisfaction.

Léon was tired of loving without having anything to show for it; then, too, he was beginning to feel the despondency that comes from leading an unvarying life, with no interest to give it direction and no hope to sustain it. He was so bored by Yonville and the people of Yonville that the sight of certain individuals, of certain houses, provoked him until he could not bear it any longer; and the pharmacist, good fellow that he was, was
becoming completely intolerable to him. And yet the prospect of a new situation frightened him as much as it attracted him.

This apprehension soon turned into impatience, and at that point Paris beckoned to him, in the distance, with the fanfare of its costume balls and the laughter of its grisettes. Since he had to finish his law studies there, why shouldn’t he leave now? What was there to stop him? And he set about making preparations in his imagination: he planned in advance what he would do. In his mind, he furnished a room for himself. There, he would lead the life of an artist! He would take guitar lessons! He would have a dressing gown, a Basque beret, blue velvet slippers! And already he admired the two crossed fencing foils on his mantelpiece, with a skull, and the guitar hanging above.

The difficult thing was his mother’s consent; yet nothing seemed more reasonable. Even his employer was urging him to spend time in another law practice, where he could develop himself further. And so, taking a middle course, Léon looked for some position as second clerk in Rouen, could not find one, and at last wrote his mother a long, detailed letter in which he explained the reasons for going to live in Paris at once. She consented.

He did not hurry. Each day, for an entire month, Hivert transported trunks, valises, packages for him from Yonville to Rouen, and from Rouen to Yonville; and when Léon had replenished his wardrobe, reupholstered his three armchairs, bought a supply of silk foulards—in other words, made more preparations than for a trip around the world—still he delayed from week to week, until he received a second letter from his mother pressing him to leave, since he wanted to pass his exam before the vacation.

When the moment came for the farewell embraces, Madame Homais wept; Justin sobbed; Homais, as befitted a strong man, concealed his emotion; he insisted on personally carrying his friend’s overcoat to the notary’s gate; the latter was to take Léon to Rouen in his carriage. The clerk had just enough time to say his goodbyes to Monsieur Bovary.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he stopped, he felt so out of breath. As he went in, Madame Bovary stood up quickly.

“Here I am again!” said Léon.

“I was sure of it!”

She bit her lips, and a wave of blood rushed under her skin, turning it pink from the roots of her hair to the edge of her collar. She remained standing, leaning with one shoulder against the wood paneling.

“Monsieur isn’t here?” he said.

“He’s out.”

She said again:

“He’s out.”

Then there was a silence. They looked at each other; and their thoughts, mingling in the same distress, clung to each other like two trembling hearts.

“I would like to give Berthe a kiss, if I could,” said Léon.

Emma went down a few steps and called Félicité.

Quickly he looked around at the walls, the shelves, the fireplace, as though to penetrate all of it, carry it all away with him.

But she came back, and the servant brought in Berthe, who was shaking a toy windmill upside down at the end of a string.

Léon kissed her on the neck several times.

“Goodbye, poor child! Goodbye, dear little girl, goodbye!”

And he returned her to her mother.

“Take her away,” she said.

They were left alone.

Madame Bovary, her back turned, was resting her face against a windowpane; Léon was holding his cap in his hand and tapping it gently against his thigh.

“It’s going to rain,” said Emma.

“I have a coat,” he answered.

“Ah!”

She turned around, her chin lowered and her forehead toward him. The light slid over it, as though it were marble, as far as the curve of her eyebrows; it was impossible to know what Emma was seeing in the distance or what she was thinking deep inside herself.

“Well, then, goodbye!” he sighed.

She lifted her head abruptly:

“Yes, goodbye … Go!”

They moved toward each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.

“English style, then,” she said, surrendering her own hand to him as she forced herself to laugh.

Léon felt it between his fingers, and to him it seemed that the very substance of his entire being was descending into that moist palm.

Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he went.

When he reached the marketplace, he stopped and hid behind a post to contemplate one last time that white house with its four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow behind the window, in the bedroom; but the curtain, released from its hook as though no one were touching it, slowly stirred its long slanting folds, then sprang fully out and hung down straight and still as a plaster wall. Léon set off at a run.

From a distance, he saw his employer’s gig in the road, and next to it a man in an apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were talking together. They were waiting for him.

“Give me a hug,” said the apothecary, tears in his eyes. “Here’s your overcoat, my good friend; watch out for the cold! Look after yourself! Don’t overdo!”

“Come, Léon, jump in!” said the notary.

Homais leaned over the splashboard and, in a voice broken by sobs, pronounced these two sad words:

“Bon voyage!”

“Bon soir,” answered Monsieur Guillaumin. “Off we go!” They left, and Homais headed back home.

Madame Bovary had opened her window onto the garden, and she was watching the clouds.

They were piling up in the west, in the direction of Rouen, and swiftly rolling over and over in volutes of black, from behind which long rays of sunlight extended like the golden arrows of a hanging trophy, while the rest of the empty sky was white as porcelain. But a gust of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell, pattering on the green leaves. Then the sun came out again, the hens clucked, sparrows beat their wings in the wet bushes, and puddles of water running over the gravel carried away the pink petals of an acacia.

“Oh, how far off he must be already!” she thought.

Monsieur Homais, as usual, came in at six-thirty, during dinner.

“Well, well,” he said, sitting down, “so we’ve sent our young man on his way, now, have we?”

“So it seems!” answered the doctor.

Then, turning in his chair:

“And what is new at your house?”

“Not much. Only, this afternoon, my wife was a bit upset. Women, you know—the least little thing troubles them! Especially my wife! And one would be wrong to oppose it, since their nervous systems are much more impressionable than ours.”

“Poor Léon!” said Charles. “How will he live in Paris? … Will he get used to it?”

Madame Bovary sighed.

“Come now!” said the pharmacist, with a tut-tut. “Parties at restaurants! Costume balls! Champagne! He’ll have a high old time, I assure you.”

“I don’t think he’ll do anything wrong,” objected Charles.

“Nor do I!” Monsieur Homais said quickly; “though he’ll have to go along with the others, if he’s not to risk looking like a Jesuit. And you don’t know the sort of life those young devils lead in the Latin Quarter, with their actresses! Anyway, students are very highly regarded in Paris. If they have any talent at all for making themselves agreeable, they’re received in the best circles, and in fact the ladies in the Faubourg Saint-Germain tend to fall in love with them, which gives them the chance, subsequently, to contract some very fine marriages.”

“But,” said the doctor, “I worry that he may … in that place …”

“You’re right,” interrupted the apothecary; “that’s the other side of the coin! And you must always keep your hand on your pocket there. For instance, supposing you’re in a public park; some fellow comes up to you, well turned out, even decorated, someone you would take for a diplomat; he speaks to you; you get into a conversation with him; he ingratiates himself, offers you a pinch of snuff or picks up your hat for you. Then the two of you become friendlier; he takes you to a café, invites you to his house in the country, introduces you, between one glass and the next, to all sorts of people, and three-quarters of the time, it’s only to make off with your purse or entice you into some pernicious adventure.”

“That’s true,” answered Charles; “but I was thinking mainly of diseases—typhoid fever, for example, which students from the country are likely to contract.”

Emma shuddered.

“Because of the change in regimen,” agreed the pharmacist, “and the
resulting perturbation of the whole system. And then, you know, there’s the Paris water! And the restaurant meals, all those spicy foods that end by overheating your blood and aren’t worth as much, whatever they may say, as a good stew. I myself have always preferred home cooking: it’s healthier! For instance, when I was studying pharmacy at Rouen, I stayed in a boardinghouse; I ate with the professors.”

And he went on expounding his general opinions and airing his personal predilections until Justin came to get him because an eggnog needed to be made up.

“Not a moment’s respite!” he cried. “Always at the grindstone! I can’t leave for a minute! I’m made to sweat blood and water, like a workhorse! What eternal drudgery!”

Then, when he was at the door:

“By the way,” he said, “have you heard the news?”

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s quite likely,” said Homais, raising his eyebrows and assuming an expression of extreme gravity, “that the agricultural fair for the Seine Inférieure will be held at Yonville-l’Abbaye this year. At least, that’s the rumor that’s going around. The paper mentioned something about it this morning. It would be of the utmost importance for our district! But we’ll talk about it later. I can see, thank you; Justin has the lantern.”

The next day was, for Emma, a dismal one. Everything seemed enveloped in a black atmosphere that hovered indistinctly over the exterior of things, and sorrow rushed into her soul, moaning softly like the winter wind in abandoned manor houses. It was the sort of reverie you sink into over something that will never return again, the lassitude that overcomes you with each thing that is finished, the pain you suffer when any habitual motion is stopped, when a prolonged vibration abruptly ceases.

As on her return from La Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles whirled around in her head, she was filled with a bleak melancholy, a numb despair. Léon reappeared to her, taller, handsomer, more delightful, less distinct; though gone from her, he had not left her, he was there, and the walls of the house seemed to retain his shadow. She could not take her eyes off the carpet on which he had stepped, the empty furniture on which he
had sat. The river still flowed past and slowly nudged its little billows along the shining bank. They had walked there many times, accompanied by the same murmur of the waves, over the moss-covered stones. What lovely sunlight they had enjoyed! What fine afternoons, alone in the shade, at the bottom of the garden! He would read aloud, his head bare, seated on a stool made of dry sticks; the cool wind from the meadow would flutter the pages of the book and the nasturtiums in the arbor … Oh! He was
gone—the only delight in her life, her only possible hope of happiness! Why hadn’t she seized that happiness when it was offered! Why hadn’t she held on to it with both hands, on both knees, when it tried to slip away? And she cursed herself for not having loved Léon; she thirsted for his lips. She was seized with a longing to run to him, to throw herself into his arms, to say: “Here I am, I’m yours!” But the difficulties of the undertaking discouraged Emma in advance, and her desires, increased by regret, merely became all the more urgent.

From then on, the memory of Léon occupied the center of her feeling of weariness; there it sparkled more brightly than a fire abandoned by travelers on the snow of a Russian steppe. She would rush up to it, she would crouch down next to it, she would delicately stir its embers, so close to dying out, she would look all around for something that could revive it; and the most distant memories, as well as the most recent events, what she was feeling and what she was imagining, her sensuous desires, which were dissipating, her plans for happiness, which were cracking in the wind like dead branches, her sterile virtue, her disappointed hopes, the litter of her domestic life—she gathered all of it up, took it, and used it to rekindle her sadness.