Madame Bovary

The crowd waited against the wall in the heat; at the corner huge bills repeated in quaint letters: 'Lucie de Lammermoor—Lagardy—Opera.' A warm wind from the river stirred the awnings; from the Rue des Charrettes came an icy current smelling of tallow, leather, and oil. For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma wished to have a stroll in the harbour before going in, while Bovary prudently kept the tickets pressed against his stomach. Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger the large tapestried door. She breathed in the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when seated in her box bent forward with the air of a duchess. The theatre filled; young beaux strutted in the pit, showing the opening of their waistcoats and their pink or apple-green cravats. The orchestra tuned — a protracted hubbub of basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting — then three knocks, a rolling of drums, the brass instruments, and the curtain rising discovered a country scene with a fountain shaded by an oak, where peasants and lords sang a hunting-song. She felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott. The melodies lullabied her; she gave herself up to them and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. Then Lucie attacked her cavatina in G major: she plained of love, she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy appeared. He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of marble to the ardent races of the South, his vigorous form tightly clad in a brown doublet, a small chiselled poniard at his thigh, laughing looks showing white teeth. A Polish princess had heard him sing on the beach at Biarritz where he mended boats, fallen in love with him, ruined herself for him. A fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing — these made up the charm of this admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the toreador. Emma leant forward, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was filling her heart with these melodious lamentations drawn out to the accompaniment of double-basses like the cries of the drowning in a tempest. She recognised all the intoxication and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna seemed to be but echoes of her conscience. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit night when they said 'To-morrow! To-morrow!' When the lovers sang the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last chords. 'But why,' asked Bovary, 'does that gentleman persecute her?' — 'No, no! He is her lover!' He confessed he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered very much with the words. 'Be quiet! be quiet!' she cried impatiently. Lucie advanced for the wedding scene half-supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed of her own marriage day, the little path through the corn to the church. Why had she not, like this woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Then she tried to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, and smiled internally with disdainful pity — until the great sextet began. Edgar dominated with his clearer voice, silver-gilt spurs clanking on the boards; anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and stupefaction breathed forth from half-opened mouths. She thought he must have an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. Drawn towards this man by the illusion of the character, she tried to imagine his life — resonant, extraordinary, splendid. Through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled with him, capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her — it was certain. She longed to cry out: 'Take me away! carry me with you! Thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!' The curtain fell. The smell of gas mingled with the breaths, the waving of fans made the air suffocating. Charles ran to the refreshment-room for a glass of barley-water and spilt three-fourths of it on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short sleeves, who uttered cries like a peacock as the cold liquid ran down to her loins; her husband, a mill-owner, raged about indemnity and costs. Charles reached his wife quite out of breath: 'Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. Such a crowd! Just guess whom I met up there — Monsieur Léon!' And as he finished these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box. He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; Madame Bovary extended hers, obeying the attraction of a stronger will. She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell on the green leaves and they had said good-bye at the window. She stammered a few hurried words; a voice from the pit cried 'Silence!' for the third act was beginning. They said nothing more. But from that moment she listened no more to the opera. He was standing behind her, leaning against the wall; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair. The mad scene did not interest Emma. 'She screams too loud,' she said. Léon sighed that the heat was unbearable; she declared she was stifling. He put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders and all three went to sit in the harbour, in the open air, outside the windows of a café. They spoke of her illness; Léon mentioned he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large office to get practice in his profession — different in Normandy and Paris. People leaving the theatre passed along humming 'O bel ange, ma Lucie!' Léon, playing the dilettante, judged Lagardy nowhere beside Tambourini or Rubini. Charles sipped his rum-sherbet and said he regretted leaving before the end; it was beginning to amuse him. Unless, he added, turning to his wife — you would like to stay alone, kitten? At this unexpected opportunity, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the last number: superb, sublime. Charles insisted: 'You would get back on Sunday. You are wrong if you feel this is doing you the least good.' The tables around them were emptying; a waiter stood discreetly near. Charles took out his purse; Léon held back his arm and made two silver pieces chink on the marble. They parted before the Saint-Herbland Passage as the cathedral clock struck half-past eleven. Part III begins.