Madame Bovary

The day after Leon's departure is dreary. Everything seems enveloped in a black atmosphere. As on the return from Vaubyessard when the quadrilles were running in her head, Emma is full of gloomy melancholy. Leon reappears in her mind taller, handsomer, more charming, more vague. Though separated, he has not left her; he is there, and the walls of the house seem to hold his shadow. She cannot detach her eyes from the carpet where he had walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. She remembers the afternoons in the garden: him bareheaded on a footstool of dry sticks, reading aloud, the fresh wind of the meadow trembling the leaves of the book and the nasturtiums of the arbour. Why had she not seized this happiness? She cursed herself for not having loved Leon; she thirsted for his lips. Henceforth the memory of Leon was the centre of her boredom; it burnt there more brightly than the fire travellers have left on the snow of a Russian steppe. But little by little love was quelled by absence, regret stifled beneath habit, and this incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and faded by degrees. There was night on all sides, and she was lost in a terrible cold. Then the evil days of Tostes began again — now far worse, for she had the experience of grief with the certainty that it would not end. A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could allow herself certain whims. She bought a Gothic prie-dieu; spent fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; wrote to Rouen for a blue cashmere gown; chose one of Lheureux's finest scarves and wore it knotted around her waist over her dressing-gown, lying stretched out on a couch with closed blinds and a book in her hand. She tried Italian dictionaries, grammars, serious history, philosophy. Sometimes in the night Charles woke with a start at the noise of a match Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But her reading fared like her embroidery — begun, abandoned, passed on to other books. She maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she could drink off a large glass of brandy, and as Charles was stupid enough to dare her to, she swallowed it to the last drop. She had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids and men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all over, white as a sheet. After discovering three grey hairs on her temples she talked much of her old age. She often fainted; one day she spat blood. As Charles fussed around her showing his anxiety — 'Bah!' she answered. 'What does it matter?' Charles fled to his study and wept there, both elbows on the table, sitting under the phrenological head. He wrote to his mother, who came and had long consultations. 'Do you know what your wife wants?' said Madame Bovary senior. 'She wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. It is all these novels, bad books, works against religion — anyone who has no religion always ends by turning out badly.' So it was decided to stop Emma reading novels. Madame Bovary senior would go herself to the lending-library at Rouen and cancel the subscription. The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold; in three weeks together they had not exchanged half a dozen words. Madame Bovary senior left on a Wednesday — market-day at Yonville. The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses. Canvas booths sold cotton checks, blankets, woollen stockings, harness, and packets of blue ribbon whose ends fluttered in the wind. Pyramids of eggs rose beside hampers of cheeses from which sticky straw stuck out. The crowd pushed into Homais's shop less to buy drugs than for consultations — so great was his reputation in the neighbouring villages. Emma was leaning out at the window; in the provinces the window replaces the theatre and the promenade. She was amusing herself watching the boors when she saw a gentleman in a green velvet coat with yellow gloves and heavy gaiters, coming towards the house followed by a peasant walking with a bent head. He asked for the doctor, adding — not from territorial vanity but to make himself better known — that he was Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette, an estate near Yonville where he had just bought the chateau and two farms. He lived as a bachelor and was supposed to have at least fifteen thousand francs a year. The peasant wanted to be bled because he felt a tingling all over. 'That'll purge me,' he urged against all reasoning. At the prick of the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass. 'How red my blood is! That's a good sign, isn't it?' At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he had been twisting in his fingers, shuddered, and fainted. Almost simultaneously Justin, holding the basin, turned pale and crumpled. 'O dear! two at once!' cried Charles. Emma came down in one bound. Rodolphe took Justin in his arms and seated him against the wall. Emma loosened his cravat, poured vinegar on her cambric handkerchief, moistened his temples with little dabs and blew upon them softly. Then she bent to hide the basin under the table; as she stooped, her yellow summer dress with four flounces spread out around her on the flags, the stuff giving with the inflections of her bust. Justin's eyeballs had disappeared in the pale sclerotics like blue flowers in milk. Homais arrived and delivered a tirade at his pupil: 'A fool in four letters! A phlebotomy's a big affair, is it? Under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals to enlighten the magistrates, and you would have to keep your head then!' He hustled Justin back to the shop. Rodolphe remarked to Emma that he had seen a second faint at the mere sound of pistols being loaded. He put three francs on the corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out. Emma watched him cross the meadow under the poplars towards La Huchette. Rodolphe was thirty-four, of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having had much to do with women. 'She is very pretty,' he said to himself. 'Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a Parisienne's. She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table. With three words of gallantry she'd adore one.' He compared her to his actress mistress Virginie at Rouen — decidedly beginning to grow fat, and with a mania for prawns. 'Oh, I will have her,' he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a clod in front of him. By the time he reached the top of the Argueil hills his plan was made. 'It's only finding the opportunities. There's the agricultural show coming on. She'll be there. We'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way.'