Madame Bovary

No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down at his bureau under the stag's head to write. But when he had the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing. To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard an old Rheims biscuit-box in which he kept his letters from women — from it came an odour of dry dust and withered roses. He found a handkerchief with pale little spots (her nose had bled once; he had forgotten), a miniature in which her toilette seemed pretentious and her look in the worst possible taste, and pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and locks of hair — dark and fair, some catching in the hinges. He dallied with his souvenirs. The women cramped each other and lessened, reduced to a uniform level that equalised them all. He amused himself letting the letters fall in cascades from right to left hand, then put the box away: 'What a lot of rubbish!' — for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall. 'Come,' said he, 'let's begin.' He wrote with elaborate self-satisfaction, stopping to appraise each phrase. 'Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life.' — 'After all, that's true.' He invoked fate, inevitable lassitude, the world's cruelty. 'Accuse only fate' — 'That's a word that always tells.' He added that he was going into exile; that she should teach his name to her child and let the child repeat it in her prayers. A postscript warned he would be far away when she read the letter. He divided the final adieu into A Dieu! — which he thought in very excellent taste — and signed 'Your friend.' He re-read his letter and considered it very good. 'There ought to have been some tears,' he reflected — and dipped a finger in a glass of water, letting a big drop fall on the paper, making a pale stain on the ink. Looking for a seal, he came upon the Amor nel cor. 'That doesn't at all fit. Pshaw! never mind.' He smoked three pipes and went to bed. The next day he had a basket of apricots picked, put the letter at the bottom under vine leaves, and sent his ploughman Girard to deliver it by hand. Girard, in his new blouse, his handkerchief knotted round the apricots, walked heavily through Yonville in his thick iron-bound galoshes. Madame Bovary was arranging linen with Félicité when he arrived. She was seized with apprehension at the sight of the basket. As soon as Girard had gone she ran to the sitting room, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found the letter, opened it — and flew to her room as if some fearful fire were behind her. Charles was there; she heard nothing; she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, holding the horrible piece of paper that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. She stopped before the attic door. The slates threw down a heavy heat that gripped her temples. She dragged herself to the garret-window and drew back the bolt; the dazzling light burst in with a leap. Opposite, beyond the rooftops, stretched the open country. Down below the village square was empty, the stones of the pavement glittering, the weathercocks motionless. From a lower storey at the corner of the street rose a humming with strident modulations — it was Binet turning his lathe. She leant against the window and reread the letter with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention on it, the more confused were her ideas. She looked about her with the wish that the earth might crumble to pieces. The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. The ground of the oscillating square seemed to go up the walls; the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her; the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her. 'Emma! Emma!' cried Charles from below. She stopped. The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint. She closed her eyes; then shivered at the touch of Félicité's hand on her sleeve. 'Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table.' She went down and tried to eat; the food choked her. She unfolded her napkin and counted the threads in the linen, dreading lest Charles should begin questioning her. Then he said, in a strange manner: 'We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems.' — 'Who told you?' she said, shuddering. Girard had told him; Rodolphe had gone on a journey. Charles bit into one of the apricots and passed the basket under her nose several times. 'Do just smell! What an odour!' — 'I am choking,' she cried, leaping up. Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma uttered a cry and fell back rigid on the ground — Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for Rouen, and as there was no other way than through Yonville, Emma had recognised him by the rays of the lanterns. The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and the cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles called for help; Berthe was crying. Homais ran over with aromatic vinegar. Emma lay stretched on her bed, lips apart, eyelids closed, hands open, white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed slowly from her eyes onto the pillow. Charles stretched out his arms to her; Berthe reached up to cling to her neck. 'No, no! no one!' she said in a broken voice, and fainted again. By midnight she was crying out: 'The letter! the letter!' Brain-fever had set in. For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse, putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as Neufchâtel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again. He called in Canivet and Dr. Larivière from Rouen. What alarmed him most was Emma's prostration — she did not speak, did not listen, did not even seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting after all their troubles. About the middle of October she could sit up in bed. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her strength returned; one afternoon she walked with him slowly round the garden, dragging her slippers, leaning against his shoulder, smiling. They went to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She shaded her eyes to look far off, but on the horizon were only great bonfires of grass smoking on the hills. He steered her gently towards the arbour: 'Sit down on this seat.' — 'Oh! no; not there!' she said in a faltering voice. She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness recommenced, with more uncertain and complex symptoms: suffering in her heart, then her chest, the head, the limbs; vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the first signs of cancer.