Madame Bovary (14 page)

But it was most of all at mealtimes that she could not bear it any longer, in that little room on the ground floor, with the stove that smoked, the door that squeaked, the walls that seeped, the damp flagstones; all the bitterness of life seemed to be served up on her plate, and, with the steam from the boiled meat, there rose from the depths of her soul other gusts of revulsion. Charles took a long time eating; she would nibble a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amuse herself drawing lines on the oilcloth with the tip of her knife.

Now she let everything in the house go, and the elder Madame Bovary, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was very surprised at the change. Indeed, she, once so neat and refined, would now go whole days without dressing, wear stockings of gray cotton, and use a candle for light. She would repeat that they had to economize, since they were not rich, adding that she was very content, very happy, that she liked Tostes very much, and other novel remarks that closed the mother-in-law’s mouth. Moreover, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow her advice; once, even, when Madame Bovary took it upon herself to maintain that employers ought to oversee their servants’ religious life, she had answered her with an eye so angry and a smile so cold that the good woman did not meddle again.

Emma was becoming difficult, capricious. She would order dishes for herself and not touch them, would one day drink only pure milk and, the next, cups of tea by the dozen. Often she would stubbornly refuse to go
out, then she would feel stifled, open the windows, put on a thin dress. After she had browbeaten her maid, she would present her with gifts or send her for a stroll to visit the neighbors, just as she would sometimes throw the poor all the silver coins in her purse, though she was scarcely tenderhearted or easily touched by another’s emotion, like most people born of countryfolk, whose souls always retain something of the hardness of their fathers’ hands.

Toward the end of February, Père Rouault, in memory of his recovery, came in person with a superb turkey for his son-in-law, and he stayed at Tostes for three days. Since Charles was seeing patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the bedroom, spat on the andirons, chatted about crops, calves, cows, chickens, and the town council; so that she closed the door behind him, when he left, with a feeling of relief that surprised even her. What was more, she no longer hid her scorn for anything, or anyone; and she would sometimes express singular opinions, condemning what was generally approved, and commending perverse or immoral things: which made her husband stare at her wide-eyed.

Would this misery last forever? Would she never find a way out of it? And yet she was certainly just as good as all those women who lived happy lives! She had seen duchesses at La Vaubyessard with heavier figures and more vulgar manners, and she cursed God’s injustice; she would lean her head against the walls and cry; she would think with envy of tumultuous lives, nights at masked balls, outrageous pleasures, and all the wild emotions, unknown to her, that they must inspire.

She grew pale and had palpitations of the heart. Charles administered valerian and camphor baths. Everything he tried seemed to irritate her further.

On certain days, she would chatter with feverish abandon; these states of excitement would be followed suddenly by periods of torpor in which she would stop speaking, stop moving. What would revive her at these times was for her to douse her arms with a bottle of eau de Cologne.

Because she complained constantly about Tostes, Charles imagined that the cause of her illness undoubtedly lay in some local influence, and, fixing on that idea, he thought seriously of setting up his practice elsewhere.

At that, she began drinking vinegar to lose weight, contracted a dry little cough, and completely lost her appetite.

It cost Charles to leave Tostes after four years and at a time
when he was beginning to establish himself.
Still, if it had to be … ! He drove her to Rouen to see his old teacher. It was a nervous disease: she should have a change of air.

After looking here and there, Charles learned that in the region of Neufchâtel, there was a sizable market town called Yonville-l’Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had just decamped the week before. And so he wrote to the local pharmacist to find out the size of the population, how far away his closest colleague would be, how much per year his predecessor had earned, and so forth; and, the replies being satisfactory, he resolved to move in the spring, if Emma’s health did not improve.

One day while tidying a drawer in anticipation of her departure, she pricked her fingers on something. It was a piece of wire in her wedding bouquet. The orange-blossom buds were yellow with dust, and the satin ribbons, with their silver piping, were fraying at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it lay like a red bush on the embers, slowly being consumed. She watched it burn. The little cardboard berries burst open, the binding wire twisted, the braid melted; and the shriveled paper petals, hovering along the fireback like black butterflies, at last flew away up the chimney.

When they left Tostes, in March, Madame Bovary was pregnant.

Yonville-l’Abbaye (so named for an old abbey of Capuchin friars of which even the ruins no longer exist) is a market town eight leagues from Rouen, between the Abbeville and the Beauvais roads, in the bottom of a valley watered by the Rieule, a small river that flows into the Andelle after working three mills near its mouth, and in which there are a few trout that boys like to fish with lines on Sundays.

You leave the highway at La Boissière and continue level as far as the top of Les Leux hill, from which you first discern the valley. The stream that runs through it creates two regions distinct in physiognomy: everything on the left is in pasture, everything on the right is tillage. The grassland extends under a fold of low hills to join at the far end the pastures of the Bray country, while to the east, the plain, rising gently, broadens out and extends its blond wheat fields as far as the eye can see. The water that runs along the edge of the grass divides with its line of white the color of the meadows from the color of the furrows, so that the countryside resembles a great mantle, unfolded, its green velvet collar edged with silver braid.

On the horizon before you, when you arrive, you have the oaks of the Argueil forest and the escarpments of the Saint-Jean hill, streaked from top to bottom by long, irregular trails of red; these are the marks left by the rains, and their brick-red tones, standing out so clearly in slender threads against the gray of the mountain, come from the abundance of ferruginous springs that flow beyond, in the surrounding countryside.

Here you are on the borders of Normandy, Picardy, and Île-de-France, a mongrel region where the language is without expressive emphasis, just as the landscape is without character. It is here that they make the worst Neufchâtel cheeses in the whole district, while farming is costly, because a good deal of manure is needed to enrich this crumbly soil full of sand and stones.

Until 1835, there was no passable road for reaching Yonville; but at about that time they established a
major local route
that connects the Abbeville road to that of Amiens and is sometimes used by carters going from Rouen into Flanders. Nevertheless, Yonville-l’Abbaye has stood still, despite its
new outlets.
Instead of improving the cultivated lands, the
people here persist in maintaining the pastures, however depreciated they may be, and the lazy town, moving away from the plain, has continued naturally to grow toward the river. You can see it from far off, stretched out along the bank, like a cowherd taking his nap at the water’s edge.

At the foot of the hill, after the bridge, and planted with young aspens, begins a roadway leading you in a straight line to the first houses of the area. They are enclosed within hedges, in the middle of yards full of scattered outbuildings, presses, cart sheds, and distilleries standing here and there under dense trees bearing ladders, poles, or scythes hooked over their branches. The thatched roofs cover the top third or so of the low windows, like fur caps pulled down over eyes, and the thick, bulging panes are garnished with a nub in the middle, like the base of a bottle. Against the plaster wall, which is traversed diagonally by black timbers, there sometimes clings a thin pear tree, and the ground floors have at their door a little swing gate to guard them against the chicks, who come to the doorsill to peck at the crumbs of brown bread soaked in cider. Meanwhile, the yards become narrower, the habitations draw closer together, the hedges disappear; a
bundle of ferns dangles below a window at the end of a broom handle; there is a farrier’s forge and then a cartwright with two or three new carts outside, jutting into the road. Then through the railings appears a white house beyond a circle of lawn decorated with a Cupid, its finger on its mouth; two cast-iron urns stand at either end of the flight of front steps; brass plates gleam at the door; it is the notary’s house, and the handsomest in the region.

The church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther on, at the entrance to the square. The little cemetery that surrounds it, enclosed by an elbow-high wall, is so filled with graves that the old stones, flush with the ground, form a continuous pavement on which the grass has drawn regular green rectangles. The church was rebuilt new in the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden vault is beginning to rot at the top and has cavities of black, here and there, in its blue. Above the door, where the organ would be, is a gallery for the men, with a spiral staircase that echoes under their wooden shoes.

The daylight, coming in through the plain glass windows, falls obliquely on the pews set at right angles to the wall, on which is nailed here and there a piece of straw matting with these words below it in large letters: “Pew of Monsieur So-and-So.” Farther on, at the point where
the nave narrows, the confessional stands opposite a small statue of the Virgin wearing a satin gown, coiffed in a tulle veil spangled with silver stars, and colored crimson on the cheeks like an idol from the Sandwich Islands; lastly, a copy of
The Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior
, hanging over the main altar between four candlesticks, closes the perspective at the far end. The choir stalls, of pine, have remained unpainted.

The market, that is, a tile roof supported by about twenty posts, takes up about half of the large Yonville square. The town hall, built
from designs by a Paris architect
, is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner, next door to the pharmacist’s house. It has on the ground floor three Ionic columns and, on the second floor, a semicircular gallery, while the tympanum at its top is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one foot on the Charter and holding in the other the scales of justice.

But what chiefly strikes the eye, across from the Lion d’Or inn, is the pharmacy belonging to Monsieur Homais! In the evening, particularly, when his lamp is lit and the red and green jars that embellish his shop window cast the glow of their two colors far out over the ground; then, through them, as if through Bengal lights, the shadow of the pharmacist can be seen leaning his elbows on his desk. His house, from top to bottom, is placarded with inscriptions in running script, in round hand, in block capitals: “Vichy, Seltzer, and Barèges Waters, Depurative Syrups, Raspail’s Medicine, Arabian Racahout, Darcet’s Pastilles, Regnault’s Ointment, Bandages, Baths, Medicinal Chocolates, etc.” And the shop sign, which occupies the entire width of the shop, bears the gold letters:
Homais, Pharmacist.
Then, at the back of the shop, behind the large scales fastened to the counter, the word
Laboratory
unfurls above a glass door that repeats yet one more time, halfway up, the word
Homais
in gold letters on a black background.

After that, there is nothing more to see in Yonville. The street (the only one), the length of a rifle shot and lined by a few shops, ends abruptly where the road bends. If you leave it on your right and follow the base of Saint-Jean hill, you soon reach the cemetery.