Madame Bovary

It is the beginning of April, primroses in bloom, a warm wind over the flower-beds. One evening Emma sits by the open window watching Lestiboudois trim the box hedge, and suddenly the Angelus rings. The evening vapours rise between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze. With the repeated tinkling her thoughts lose themselves in old memories of the convent — great candlesticks above vases of flowers, the long line of white veils marked off by the black hoods of the good sisters, the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of rising incense. She feels herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and goes unconsciously towards the church. In the churchyard, children play marbles on the graves; others astride the wall kick at nettles. Swallows cut the air. At the end of the nave a lamp burns — its light from a distance a white stain trembling in oil. The Abbe Bournisien appears: his cassock shiny at the elbows, grease and tobacco stains on his broad chest, the massive folds of his red chin resting in a neckcloth dotted with yellow spots, having just dined and breathing noisily. Emma tries to speak. But the priest is constantly distracted — shouting at boys climbing the precentor's footstool, darting in to distribute cuffs, returning to deliver a joke about a boy called Riboudet that he told Monsignor, who condescended to laugh at it. 'I should like to know —' Emma begins. 'It is no earthly remedy I need,' she says. 'It is indigestion, no doubt,' he replies. 'Drink a little tea, or a glass of fresh water with moist sugar.' She tries once more: 'Those who have bread and have no —' 'Fire in the winter,' says the priest. 'My God! My God!' she sighs. He excuses himself — duty first, the first communion approaching, extra catechism every Wednesday after Ascension Day — and goes into the church making a genuflexion at the door. Emma turns on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on a pivot, and goes home. Behind her the clear voices of the boys follow her down the street: 'Are you a Christian?' 'Yes, I am a Christian.' 'What is a Christian?' 'He who, being baptized — baptized — baptized —' Back in her room the furniture seems to have grown more immobile, losing itself in shadow as in an ocean of darkness. Little Berthe is there between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, trying to catch hold of the ends of her mother's apron-strings. 'Leave me alone,' says Emma. The little girl comes closer; her face frightens the child, who screams. Emma pushes her with her elbow; Berthe falls against the brass handle of the drawers and cuts her cheek. Emma springs up in panic, breaks the bell-rope, calls for the servant with all her might — and Charles arrives at that moment, it being the dinner-hour. 'The little one fell down while she was playing,' Emma says in a calm voice. Later, watching Berthe sleep — the big tears in the corner of her half-closed eyelids, the plaster stuck obliquely on her cheek — Emma thinks: 'It is very strange, how ugly this child is!' That evening Charles goes to Homais's, where Leon is also present. Charles draws Leon aside and whispers that he would like to know the price of a fine daguerreotype at Rouen — a sentimental surprise for his wife, a delicate attention: his portrait in a frock-coat. Leon's heart beats wildly: 'Can he suspect anything?' It is only a portrait. Leon is weary of loving without result, bored with Yonville beyond endurance. Binet, noticing his dejection, advises: 'If I were you I'd have a lathe.' Paris from afar begins sounding its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. Leon furnishes an apartment in his head. He will take guitar lessons. He will have a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers. He already admires in imagination two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death's head on the guitar above them. His mother consents. For a month Hivert carries boxes and valises from Yonville to Rouen and back while Leon dithers — buying neckties, having his armchairs restuffed — until a second letter from his mother urges him to leave at once. When the moment for farewells comes, Madame Homais weeps, Justin sobs, Homais conceals his emotion like a man of nerve and carries his friend's overcoat himself as far as the notary's gate. Leon stops at the head of the stairs, out of breath. Madame Bovary arises hurriedly. 'It is I again!' 'I was sure of it!' A rush of blood makes her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. He asks for the doctor; she says twice, 'He is out.' Silence. Their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, cling close together like two throbbing breasts. Leon says he would like to kiss Berthe. Felicite brings her, swinging a little windmill roof downwards on a string. He kisses her several times on the neck, then gives her back. 'Take her away,' Emma says. They remain alone. Emma's back is turned, her face pressed against the window-pane. Leon knocks his cap softly against his thigh. 'It is going to rain,' she says. 'I have a cloak.' 'Ah!' She turns around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward. The light falls on it as on a piece of marble. 'Well, good-bye,' he sighs. 'Yes, good-bye — go!' They advance towards each other; he holds out his hand; she hesitates. 'In the English fashion, then,' she says, giving her own hand wholly to him, forcing a laugh. Leon feels it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seems to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opens his hand; their eyes meet again; and he is gone. At the market-place he stops and hides behind a pillar to look for the last time at the white house with the four green blinds. The curtain slides slowly along the pole as though no one were touching it, opens its long oblique folds, and hangs straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Leon sets off running. Emma opens her window overlooking the garden. The clouds gather around the sunset on the side of Rouen, then swiftly roll back their black columns, behind which the great rays of the sun look out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy. Then a gust of wind bows the poplars and the rain falls. The sun reappears; the hens cluck; sparrows shake their wings in the damp thickets; the pools of water on the gravel carry off the pink flowers of an acacia. 'Ah! how far off he must be already!' Homais arrives at half-past six. He discourses on Paris students and actresses, ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, diploma-swindlers in public gardens, and typhoid fever from changes of regimen. Charles worries about typhoid; Emma shudders. Called away by Justin for a mulled egg, Homais pauses at the door: the agricultural meeting of the Seine-Inferieure may this year be held at Yonville-l'Abbaye.