Madame Bovary (26 page)

Two days later, in
Le Fanal de Rouen
, there was a long article about the agricultural fair. Homais, inspired, had composed it the very next day:

“Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither was it bound, this crowd running like the waves of a raging sea under the torrents of a tropical sun spreading its heat over our fallow fields?”

Next, he talked about the condition of the countrypeople. Certainly the government was doing a good deal, but not enough! “Be bold!” he cried, addressing the administration. “A thousand reforms are indispensable, let us bring them to pass.” Then, addressing the arrival of the Councilor, he did not fail to mention “the martial air of our militia,” nor “the most spirited women of our village,” nor “the bald-headed old men who were present, veritable patriarchs, some of whom, relics of our immortal phalanxes, felt their hearts throb once again to the manly beat of the drums.” He mentioned himself among the first of the members of the jury, and he even reminded his readers, in a footnote, that Monsieur Homais, pharmacist, had sent a monograph on cider to the Agronomic Society. When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he depicted the joy of the laureates in dithyrambic lines. “Father embraced
son, brother brother, husband wife. More than one proudly showed off his humble medal and, once back in his home, by the side of his good helpmeet, will doubtless have hung it, with tears in his eyes, on the modest wall of his little abode.

“At about six o’clock, a banquet set up in the meadow belonging to Monsieur Liégeard brought together the main participants in the fair. The utmost cordiality prevailed throughout. A number of toasts were offered: By Monsieur Lieuvain, to the monarch! By Monsieur Tuvache, to the prefect! By Monsieur Derozerays, to agriculture! By Monsieur Homais, to those two sisters, industry and the fine arts! By Monsieur Leplichey, to improvements! In the evening, a brilliant display of fireworks suddenly illuminated the heavens. It was a veritable kaleidoscope, a true stage set for an opera, and for a moment we in our little corner of the earth might have believed we had been transported into a dream from
A Thousand and One Nights.

“Let us note that no untoward event occurred to trouble this family gathering.”

And he added:

“Remarked upon, only, was the absence of the clergy. No doubt the vestries interpret progress in a different manner. As you will, apostles of Loyola!”

Six weeks went by. Rodolphe did not return. At last, one evening, he appeared.

He had said to himself, the day after the fair:

“Better not go back right away—that would be a mistake.”

And at the end of the week, he had gone off hunting. After the hunting trip, he had imagined it was too late; then he reasoned it out this way:

“But if she has loved me from the first day, she must be impatient to see me again, and therefore she’ll love me all the more. So let’s go on!”

And he knew his calculation had been correct when, entering the room, he saw Emma turn pale.

She was alone. Day was falling. The little muslin curtains over the windowpanes thickened the twilight, and the gilding on the barometer, struck by a ray of sun, cast flames over the mirror between the indentations of the coral.

Rodolphe remained standing; and Emma barely responded to his first polite remarks.

“I’ve had business to see to,” he said. “I’ve been ill.”

“Seriously ill?” she exclaimed.

“Well,” said Rodolphe, sitting down beside her on a stool, “no! … The fact is I didn’t want to come back.”

“Why?”

“Can’t you guess?”

He looked at her again, but with such intensity that she bowed her head, blushing. He went on:

“Emma …”

“Monsieur!” she said, moving away slightly.

“Ah! You see,” he replied in a melancholy voice, “I was right not to
want to come back; because that name, the name that fills my soul and that slipped out of me—you forbid me to use it! Madame Bovary! … Oh, everyone calls you that! … It’s not your name, anyway; it belongs to someone else!”

He said it again:

“Someone else!”

And he hid his face in his hands.

“Yes. I think about you constantly! … The memory of you makes me despair! Oh, forgive me! … I’ll leave you alone … Goodbye! … I’ll go away … so far away that you’ll never hear of me again! … And yet … today … I don’t know what power it was that impelled me to see you! For one can’t fight against providence, one can’t resist the smiles of an angel! One can’t help being carried away by what is beautiful, charming, endearing!”

It was the first time Emma had heard such things said to her; and her pride, like a person relaxing in a steam bath, stretched out languidly in the warmth of the words.

“But though I didn’t come to you,” he went on, “though I couldn’t see you, ah!—at least I could see what was around you. At night, every night, I would get up, I would come here, I would gaze at your house, at the roof shining in the moonlight, at the trees in the garden swaying by your window, and at a little lamp, a gleam of light, shining through the panes of glass in the darkness. Ah! You scarcely knew that out there, so close and yet so far away, was a poor wretch …”

She turned to him with a sob.

“Oh! You’re so good!” she said.

“No. I love you, that’s all! You can’t doubt it! Say it to me: one word! Just one word!”

And imperceptibly, Rodolphe let himself slip from the stool to the floor; but they could hear the sound of wooden shoes in the kitchen, and he noticed that the parlor door was not closed.

“It would be very kind of you,” he went on, straightening up, “to indulge a whim of mine!”

The whim was to walk through her house; he wanted to see it; and since Madame Bovary had no objection, they were both rising when Charles came in.

“Hello, Doctor,” Rodolphe said to him.

The public health officer, flattered at being addressed by this unexpected title, launched into a stream of obsequious remarks, and the other took advantage of this to collect himself a little.

“Madame was telling me,” he said then, “about her health …”

Charles interrupted him: he was terribly worried, in fact; his wife’s fits of breathlessness had started up again. Then Rodolphe asked if exercise in the form of horseback riding would not be good for her.

“Certainly! Excellent, perfect! … What a fine idea! You ought to act upon it.”

And when she objected that she did not have a horse, Monsieur Ro dolphe offered her one of his; she refused his offer; he did not insist; then, to give a reason for his visit, he said that his carter, the man who had been bled, was still having dizzy spells.

“I’ll come by,” said Bovary.

“No, no, I’ll send him to you; we’ll come here—it’ll be more convenient for you.”

“Well, all right! Thank you.”

And as soon as they were alone:

“Why won’t you accept Monsieur Boulanger’s suggestions? He’s being so gracious.”

She looked cross, contemplated a dozen excuses, and finally declared
that it might seem strange.

“Well, I really don’t care!” said Charles, turning on his heel. “Health comes first! You’re quite wrong!”

“Well, how do you expect me to go riding, if I don’t have a riding habit?”

“You must order one!” he answered.

The riding habit decided her.

When the outfit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his wife was at his disposition, and that they were grateful for his kindness.

The following day, at noon, Rodolphe arrived in front of Charles’s door with two saddle horses. One was wearing pink pom-poms at its ears and a lady’s buckskin saddle.

Rodolphe had put on tall boots of soft leather, telling himself that she had probably never seen anything like them; and indeed Emma was charmed by the way he looked when he appeared on the landing in his
full velvet coat and his white tricot riding breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.

Justin slipped out of the pharmacy to see her, and the pharmacist, too, left his work. He gave Monsieur Boulanger some advice:

“An accident can happen so quickly! Watch out! Your horses may be high-spirited!”

She heard a noise over her head: it was Félicité drumming on the windowpanes to amuse little Berthe. The child sent her a kiss; her mother answered by motioning with the butt of her riding crop.

“Have a good ride!” shouted Monsieur Homais. “But be careful! Be careful!”

And he waved his newspaper as he watched them go off.

As soon as he felt the earth, Emma’s horse broke into a gallop. Rodolphe galloped next to her. At times they would exchange a few words. With her face tilted down a little, her hand raised, and her right arm outstretched, she abandoned herself to the cadence of the motion that rocked her in the saddle.

At the base of the hill, Rodolphe loosened his reins; they took off together in a single leap; then, at the top, the horses stopped suddenly, and her long blue veil fell back around her.

It was the beginning of October. There was a haze over the countryside. Mist lay along the horizon, between the outlines of the hills; and elsewhere it tore apart, rose, vanished. Sometimes, through a gap in the haze, one could see the roofs of Yonville under a ray of sunlight in the distance, with its gardens by the water’s edge, its courtyards, walls, and church steeple. Emma would half close her eyes so as to distinguish her own house, and never had this poor village where she lived seemed so small to her. From the height on which they were standing, the whole valley appeared to be one vast, pale lake, evaporating into the air. Clumps of trees jutted up at intervals like black rocks; and the tall lines of poplars, rising above the fog, were like its shores, stirred by the wind.

Beside them, among the pine trees, a dusky light eddied above the grass in the warm atmosphere. The reddish earth, the color of snuff, deadened the sound of their steps; and the horses, as they walked, pushed the fallen pinecones before them with the tips of their iron shoes.

Rodolphe and Emma went on along the edge of the wood. She would turn away from time to time to avoid his eyes, and then she would see
only the trunks of the pines in rows, the continuous succession of which dizzied her a little. The horses were blowing. The leather of the saddles creaked.

Just as they entered the forest, the sun appeared.

“God is protecting us!” said Rodolphe.

“Do you think so?” she said.

“Let’s go on!” he said.

He clicked his tongue. The two animals began to trot.

Tall ferns by the side of the path kept catching in Emma’s stirrup. Rodolphe, as he rode, would lean down each time and pull them out. At other moments, to move a branch out of the way, he would come close to her, and Emma would feel his knee brush against her leg. The sky was blue now. The leaves were not moving. There were large clearings full of heather all in bloom; and the expanses of violet alternated with the tangle of trees, which were gray, fawn, or gold depending on their different leaves. Often one would hear a faint beating of wings slipping past under the bushes, or the hoarse, gentle caw of crows flying up into the oaks.

They dismounted. Rodolphe tied up the horses. She walked ahead over the moss, between the ruts.

But her long skirt was getting in her way, even though she carried the end of it, and Rodolphe, walking behind her, kept gazing at her delicate white stocking, which showed between the black cloth and the little black boot and seemed to him to be part of her naked flesh.

She stopped.

“I’m tired,” she said.

“Come now, a little farther!” he said. “Take heart—try!”

Then, a hundred steps farther on, she stopped again; and through her veil, which fell obliquely from her man’s hat down over her hips, her face could be seen in a bluish transparency, as though she were swimming under azure waves.

“Where are we going?”

He did not answer. She was breathing unevenly. Rodolphe was glancing around him and biting his mustache.

They came to a larger open space, where some saplings had been cleared. They sat down on a felled tree trunk, and Rodolphe began talking to her about his love.

He did not frighten her, at first, with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy.

Emma listened to him with her head bowed, stirring the wood chips on the ground with the toe of her boot.

But when he said:

“Our destinies are bound together now, aren’t they?”

“No!” she answered. “You know that perfectly well. It can’t be.”

She stood up to leave. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, after looking at him for a few moments with tearful, loving eyes, she said quickly:

“Oh, come, let’s not talk about it anymore … Where are the horses? Let’s go back.”

He made a gesture of anger and weariness. She repeated:

“Where are the horses? Where are the horses?”

Then, smiling a strange smile, his eyes unmoving, his teeth clenched, he moved toward her with open arms. She backed away trembling. She stammered:

“Oh, you’re frightening me! You’re upsetting me! Let’s go.”

“If we must,” he said, changing his expression.

And he immediately became respectful again, tender, timid. She gave him her arm. They turned back. He said:

“Now, what was the matter? What happened? I don’t understand! You must be misjudging me. Within my soul you’re like a madonna on a pedestal, in an exalted place, secure, immaculate. But I need you if I am to live! I need your eyes, your voice, your thoughts. Be my friend, my sister, my angel!”

And he reached out his arm and put it around her waist. She tried gently to free herself. He held her that way as they walked.

But they could hear the two horses, who were browsing on leaves.

“Oh, just a little longer!” said Rodolphe. “Let’s not go yet. Stay here!”

He drew her farther on, around a little pond, where duckweed made a patch of green on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless among the rushes. At the sound of their steps in the grass, frogs leaped away to conceal themselves.

“I’m wrong, I’m wrong,” she said. “I’m insane to listen to you.”