Madame Bovary

Part Three opens by going back to fill in Léon's years away. During his law studies in Paris he had been a great success amongst the grisettes — well-mannered, spending his quarter's money wisely, keeping on good terms with his professors — but the memory of Emma persisted through everything, like a golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree. Seeing her again after three years, his passion reawakened. His timidity had worn off with his gay companions; he returned to the provinces despising everyone who had not trodden the asphalt of the boulevards. Here at Rouen, with the wife of this small doctor, he felt at his ease. Self-possession depends on its environment. On leaving the Bovarys he had followed them at a distance through the streets, watched them stop at the Croix-Rouge, then went home to meditate a plan. The next day at five o'clock he walked into the kitchen of the inn with a choking sensation in his throat — pale cheeks and that resolution of cowards that stops at nothing. Emma was not disturbed at his approach. They spoke of the misery of earthly affections, the eternal isolation of the heart. He declared he had been awfully bored during his studies; she expatiated on her suffering. Both stopped short of complete exposition — she did not confess her passion for another; he did not say he had forgotten her. Speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment. The room seemed small, as if on purpose to hem in their solitude more closely. Emma in her dimity dressing-gown leant her head against the back of the old arm-chair; the yellow wallpaper formed a golden background behind her. He confessed he had spent hours before an engraver's shop on the boulevard, staring at an Italian print of a Muse with forget-me-nots in her flowing hair. 'She resembled you a little.' Madame Bovary turned away her head to hide her irrepressible smile. He had written letters he tore up; he had run after carriages through whose windows he saw a shawl, a veil like hers. He recalled the day she wore a bonnet with small blue flowers and he had followed her without daring to speak, then waited in the street while she counted change on a counter, then stood like an idiot before the great heavy door of Madame Tuvache's house after it closed. He had even made his will, asking to be buried in the beautiful rug with velvet stripes she had given him. 'But why?' — 'Because I loved you so!' The mass of sad thoughts lifted from her blue eyes; her whole face shone: 'I always suspected it.' They recalled the cactuses killed in the cold, the arbour with clematis, the furniture of her room. Eight struck on the clocks of the Beauvoisine quarter. Night darkened over the walls, where four bills representing scenes from the Tour de Nesle still showed in the shade. She rose and lit two wax candles. 'And who prevents us from beginning now?' he said, fingering gently the blue binding of her long white sash. 'I am too old; you are too young. Forget me.' But she was absorbed by the charm of the seduction and the necessity of defending herself from it simultaneously. She gently repulsed his trembling hands. Then as the kisses multiplied: 'You are mad! Ah! you are mad!' Her eyes fell upon him at last full of icy dignity. She told him about an engagement at the theatre with Monsieur Lormeaux of the Rue Grand-Pont. He whispered: 'Tomorrow!' She answered with a nod and disappeared like a bird into the next room. That evening Emma wrote him an interminable letter cancelling the rendezvous — all was over, they must not meet again. But when finished she did not know his address. 'I'll give it to him myself.' Next morning Léon varnished his pumps with several coatings on his balcony, put on white trousers, fine socks, a green coat, emptied all his scent into his handkerchief, had his hair curled, then uncurled it for a more natural elegance. He checked the hairdresser's cuckoo-clock — still too early. He read, smoked a cigar, walked up three streets, then went slowly towards Notre Dame. The square was fragrant with roses, jasmines, pinks, narcissi, and tuberoses between moist grasses; the fountains gurgled; flower-women under large umbrellas twisted paper round bunches of violets. Léon bought one — the first time he had ever bought flowers for a woman — and his breast swelled with pride as if the homage had recoiled upon himself. He entered the church. The beadle, more majestic than a cardinal and as shining as a saint on a holy pyx, immediately advanced to offer a tour. 'No!' said Léon. He waited in the nave, gazing at a blue stained window of boatmen carrying baskets, counting the scales of the fish and the button-holes of the doublets. At last a rustle of silk on the flags — a bonnet, a lined cloak — she arrived, pale, walking fast. She thrust a letter at him. 'Read!' Then abruptly withdrew her hand and went to kneel in the chapel of the Virgin. She prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping some sudden resolution might descend from heaven. When she rose, the beadle came forward: 'Madame would like to see the curiosities of the church?' Léon cried no; Emma said why not — clinging with her expiring virtue to the Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs. The beadle conducted them through the full tour: the bell of Ambroise — forty thousand pounds, no equal in all Europe, the workman who cast it died of the joy — the tomb of Pierre de Breze, the prancing horse of Louis de Breze, Diane de Poitiers weeping in stone, the mutilated effigy of Richard Coeur de Lion reduced by the Calvinists. Léon bit his lips, fuming. He finally thrust silver at the beadle, seized Emma's arm, and fled. 'Sir! The steeple! Four hundred and forty feet — nine less than the great pyramid of Egypt!' Léon was already fleeing, terrified his love was petrifying like the stones. He sent a boy for a cab. 'It is very improper,' she whispered. 'It is done at Paris,' he replied — and that, as an irresistible argument, decided her. The cab set out with blinds drawn. It crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoléon, the Pont Neuf, halted, set off again, wound through Quattremares, Sotteville, the Rue d'Elbeuf, the Boulevard Bouvreuil, the Deville hills — wandering at hazard past Saint-Pol, Lescure, Mont Gargan, the Rue Maladrerie, Saint-Maclou, the Monumental Cemetery. The coachman cast despairing eyes at public-houses and almost wept with thirst and fatigue. The good folk of Rouen stared open-mouthed at this cab with blinds drawn, tossing about like a vessel. Once, in the open country at midday, a bared hand passed beneath the yellow canvas blinds and threw out scraps of paper that scattered in the wind and lighted like white butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom. At about six o'clock the carriage stopped in a back street, and a woman got out, who walked with her veil down, and without turning her head.