Madame Bovary

Chapter 9 opens with Emma returning to the cigar case she has hidden between the folds of the linen in the cupboard. When Charles is out she takes it down, opens it, and smells the lining — a mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's? Perhaps a present from his mistress, embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty little thing hidden from all eyes, over which had fallen the soft curls of a pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away with him. The name "Paris" rings in Emma's ears like a great cathedral bell; it shines even on the labels of her pomade-pots. At night, when carriers pass under her windows singing the "Marjolaine," she lies awake and follows them in thought up and down the hills, traversing villages, gliding along the highroads by starlight — until her dream dies in some confused spot at an indefinite distance. She buys a plan of Paris and with the tip of her finger walks about the capital, stopping at every turning, between the lines of streets, in front of the white squares representing houses. She closes her weary eyes and sees gas jets flaring in the wind and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles of theatres. She takes in La Corbeille and the Sylphe des Salons, devouring without skipping a word all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirees. She reads Eugene Sue for descriptions of furniture, Balzac and George Sand for imaginary satisfaction of her own desires. Even at table she has her book by her, turning over the pages while Charles eats and talks. The memory of the Viscount always returns as she reads; but the circle of which he is the centre gradually widens round him, the aureole fading from his form and broadening out beyond, lighting up her other dreams. Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmers before Emma in an atmosphere of vermilion. She perceives only two or three worlds that represent all humanity. The world of ambassadors moves over polished floors in drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths — dresses with trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then the society of the duchesses: all pale, all getting up at four o'clock, wearing English point on their petticoats, their men unappreciated geniuses riding horses to death at pleasure parties, spending summers at Baden, towards their forties marrying heiresses. And in the private rooms of restaurants, supping after midnight by wax candles, the motley crowd of men of letters and actresses, prodigal as kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. She confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands — all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be separated from the balconies of great castles, from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, a bed on a raised dais, from the flashing of precious stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries. To replace Nastasie — who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears — Emma takes into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face, named Felicite. She forbids her wearing cotton caps, teaches her to address her in the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before coming into a room. She wants to make a lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeys without a murmur so as not to be sent away; and as madame usually leaves the key in the sideboard, Felicite every evening takes a small supply of sugar that she eats alone in her bed after saying her prayers. Charles, meanwhile, trots across country in snow and rain, eating omelettes on farmhouse tables, poking his arm into damp beds, receiving the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his face. But every evening he finds a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy chairs, and a well-dressed woman charming with an odour of freshness. She seduces him with numerous attentions — a new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce altered on her gown, an extraordinary name for some very simple dish. He is like a golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life. But Emma watches him fall asleep after dinner over La Ruche Medicale — his chin on his hands, his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the lamp — and shrugs her shoulders. Why was not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their books all night, and at last, at sixty, the age of rheumatism, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat? She could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition. An Yvetot doctor whom he has lately met in consultation has humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives. When Charles tells her this anecdote in the evening, Emma inveighs loudly against his colleague. Charles is much touched; he kisses her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she is angered with shame; she feels a wild desire to strike him; she goes to open the window in the passage and breathes in the fresh air to calm herself. "What a man! What a man!" she says in a low voice, biting her lips. His habits disgust her more each month. At dessert he cuts the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he cleans his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he makes a gurgling noise with every spoonful; as he grows fatter the puffed-out cheeks seem to push his small eyes up to the temples. Sometimes Emma tucks the red borders of his under-vest into his waistcoat, rearranges his cravat — not, as he fancies, for himself, but for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation. She confides many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock. At the bottom of her heart she is waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turns despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She does not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it, toward what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning as she awakes she hopes it will come that day; she listens to every sound, springs up with a start, wonders that it does not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longs for the morrow. From the beginning of July she counts how many weeks there are to October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers will give another ball. All September passes without letters or visits. The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast. She gives up music. Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while boring herself with practising. Her drawing cardboard and embroidery she leaves in the cupboard. "I have read everything," she said to herself. And she sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling. How sad she is on Sundays when vespers sound. She listens with dull attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walks over some roof, putting up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the highroad blows up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howls; and the bell, keeping time, continues its monotonous ringing that dies away over the fields. The same five or six men stay playing at corks in front of the large door of the inn. The winter is severe. The windows every morning are covered with rime, and the light through them dims as through ground-glass. On fine days she goes down into the garden. The dew has left on the cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads. No birds are heard; everything seems asleep; the vine, like a great sick serpent, crawls along the wall; the plaster cure under the spruce has lost his right foot, and white scabs from the frost disfigure his face. Then she goes back up, shuts her door, puts on coals, and fainting with the heat of the hearth, feels her boredom weigh more heavily than ever. Sometimes in the afternoon the head of a man appears outside her window — a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with a broad gentle smile that shows his white teeth. A waltz immediately begins, and on the barrel-organ, in a little drawing room, dancers the size of a finger — women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches — turn and turn between the sofas, multiplied in the bits of looking-glass held together at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turns his handle, looking to the right and left and up at the windows, shooting now and again a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone. Endless sarabands run through Emma's head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leap with the notes, swing from dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man has caught some coppers in his cap, he draws down an old cover of blue cloth, hitches his organ on to his back, and goes off with a heavy tread. She watches him going. Meal-times are the most unbearable — the small room on the ground floor with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweat, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life seemed served up on her plate, and with the smoke of the boiled beef there rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth with the point of her knife. She becomes more difficult, capricious. She orders dishes for herself, then does not touch them; one day drinks only pure milk, the next cups of tea by the dozen. She throws beggars all the silver in her purse, though she is by no means tender-hearted. She lets the household take care of itself, passes whole days without dressing, wears grey cotton stockings, burns tallow candles. When her mother-in-law visits for Lent she tells her they must be economical since they are not rich, adding with a cold smile that she is very contented, very happy. At times she sets herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with what others approve, approving things perverse and immoral, all of which makes Charles open his eyes widely. Towards the end of February old Rouault comes to Tostes with a superb turkey, in memory of his cure. He stays three days. Charles is with his patients; Emma keeps the old man company, listening to him talk farming, calves, cows, poultry, and the municipal council. When he leaves she closes the door with a feeling of satisfaction that surprises even herself. She grows pale, suffers from palpitations of the heart. Charles prescribes valerian and camphor baths. Everything tried only seems to irritate her more. On certain days she chatters with feverish rapidity; this over-excitement is suddenly followed by a state of torpor in which she remains without speaking, without moving. What then revives her is pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms. From the moment Charles begins to think seriously of moving she drinks vinegar, contracts a sharp little cough, and completely loses her appetite. It costs Charles much to give up Tostes after four years — when he was beginning to get on there. He takes her to Rouen to see his old master. A nervous complaint: change of air is needed. He learns of a considerable market town in the Neufchatel arrondissement called Yonville-l'Abbaye, whose doctor — a Polish refugee — has decamped a week before. He writes to the chemist to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year. The answer being satisfactory, he resolves to move towards the spring. One day when, in view of her departure, she is tidying a drawer, something pricks her finger. It is a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms are yellow with dust and the silver-bordered satin ribbons are frayed at the edges. She throws it into the fire. It flares up more quickly than dry straw. Then it is, like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. She watches it burn. The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twists, the gold lace melts; and the shrivelled paper corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last fly up the chimney. When they leave Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary is pregnant.