Madame Bovary

This chapter — Part Three, Chapter X — covers Emma's funeral, old Rouault's journey and grief, and closes with the novel's most quietly devastating image. Homais had worded his letter so carefully, from consideration for old Rouault's feelings, that it was impossible to make out what it was all about. The old man's first response was to fall as if struck by apoplexy. Then he understood she was not dead — but perhaps she might be. He put on his blouse, fastened his spurs, and set out at full speed, panting and torn by anguish the whole way. Near daybreak he saw three black hens asleep in a tree and shuddered at the omen; he promised the Holy Virgin three chasubles and a barefoot pilgrimage from the Bertaux cemetery to the chapel of Vassonville. At Maromme he burst open the inn door and gave his horse oats; at Quincampoix he drank three cups of coffee. He convinced himself it was all a mistake, or a bad joke — only to see a hallucination of Emma lying dead on the road. He reined up; it disappeared. He arrived in Yonville bending forward on his horse, belabouring it so hard the girths were dripping with blood, and fainted on the Place when he saw the black cloth. When he recovered, he fell weeping into Charles's arms: "My girl! Emma! my child! tell me—" Charles answered, sobbing: "I don't know! I don't know! It's a curse!" Homais separated them with calls for dignity and philosophy. The old man and Charles sat together in the choir stalls throughout the mass — Bournisien in full vestments, the serpent-player blowing with all his might, choristers filing past, Lestiboudois circling with his whalebone stick. Charles felt inclined to get up and put out the four candles around the bier. He tried to stir himself toward devotion, to imagine Emma gone on a long journey; but whenever he thought of her actually lying there and being put into the earth, a fierce, gloomy rage seized him. From the far end of the church came an irregular tapping on the stones: Hippolyte, the stable-boy, had come in his new prosthetic leg. Charles flung a five-franc piece at the collection plate: "Make haste! I am in pain!" Outside, Justin appeared at the pharmacy door, went pale, and stepped quickly back inside. The procession moved off. Charles walked erect at the head, affecting a brave air, saluting neighbours with a nod. The six bearers panted slightly. The priests and choristers recited the De Profundis, their voices rising and falling over the fields, disappearing into the path's windings while the great silver cross rose always before the trees. Women in black cloaks carried lighted candles. The spring morning made a cruel contrast — rye and colza sprouting, dewdrops on the hawthorn hedges, a cock crowing, a foal galloping under apple-trees, rosy clouds in a pure sky. Charles recognised each farmyard they passed, remembering mornings when he had come out from a patient's house and returned to her. The black cloth blew up from time to time, revealing the coffin; the tired bearers walked with constant jerks, like a boat pitching in waves. At the cemetery the grave was already dug. The coffin was placed on four ropes and lowered. Charles watched it descend, feeling it would never stop. A thud; the ropes creaked up. Bournisien took the spade and threw in the first earth; the pebbles struck the wood with "that dread sound that seems to us the reverberation of eternity." The holy water sprinkler passed to Homais, then to Charles, who sank to his knees in the earth and threw in handfuls, crying "Adieu!" He sent her kisses; he dragged himself toward the grave's edge as if to go down with her. They led him away. He soon grew calmer, feeling perhaps, like the others, a vague satisfaction that it was all over. On the walk back old Rouault smoked his pipe — Homais privately found this not quite the thing. Homais also noted that Binet had not been present, that Tuvache slipped off after mass, and that Theodore the notary's servant had worn a blue coat. He circulated from group to group with these observations. Lheureux deplored Emma's death with unction: "Poor little woman! What a trouble for her husband!" Homais told anyone who would listen that but for him Charles would have committed some fatal attempt on himself, and regretted not having had time to prepare a few words for the tomb. Back at the house, old Rouault put on his blue blouse — a new one, and the dye had run from sleeve-wipes of tears, staining his face in lines through the dust. He, Charles, and Madame Bovary senior sat in silence until the old man sighed: "Do you remember, my friend, that I went to Tostes once when you had just lost your first deceased? I consoled you then. I thought of something to say. But now—" A loud groan shook his whole chest. "Ah! this is the end for me. I saw my wife go, then my son, and now today it's my daughter." He would not stay the night and could not bear to see his granddaughter: "No, no! It would grieve me too much. Only kiss her many times for me." He slapped his thigh and promised the turkey would always come. Then he left. At the top of the hill he turned and looked back — as he had once turned on the road of Saint-Victor when parting from Emma herself. The village windows glowed beneath the slanting sun. He put his hand over his eyes and saw in the distance an enclosure of walls, trees forming black clusters between white stones. Then he went on at a gentle trot, for his horse had gone lame. Charles and his mother talked late into the night. She would come to live at Yonville; they would keep house together; they would never part again. Midnight. Rodolphe had been rambling in the wood all day to distract himself and was sleeping quietly in his château. Léon, in Rouen, also slept. There was another who at that hour was not asleep. On the grave, between the pine-trees, a child was on his knees weeping — Justin — his heart rent by sobs, beating in the darkness beneath the load of an immense regret, "sweeter than the moon and fathomless as the night." The gate grated: Lestiboudois, come to fetch his forgotten spade. He recognised Justin climbing the wall, and at last understood who had been stealing his potatoes.