Madame Bovary (37 page)

“She looked a little like you.”

Madame Bovary turned her head away so that he would not see the irresistible smile she felt appearing on her lips.

“Often,” he went on, “I would write letters to you and then tear them up.”

She did not answer. He went on:

“I would fancy that some chance event might bring you to me. I thought I recognized you on street corners; and I would run after a cab if I saw a shawl, a veil like yours, floating at the window …”

She seemed determined to let him talk without interrupting him. Crossing her arms and bowing her head, she was contemplating the bows on her slippers and making little movements in the satin, now and then, with her toes.

At last, she sighed:

“The most pitiful thing, don’t you think, is to drag out one’s life uselessly, the way I do. If only our suffering could benefit someone, we could find consolation in the thought of sacrifice!”

He began to extol virtue, duty, and silent renunciation, he himself having an incredible need for selfless dedication that he could not satisfy.

“I would very much like,” she said, “to belong to an order of nursing sisters.”

“Alas!” he replied, “men have no such sacred missions, and I see no calling … except perhaps that of doctor …”

With a slight shrug, Emma interrupted him to lament the illness during which she had nearly died; what a shame!—she would no longer be suffering now. Léon immediately envied
the tranquillity of the grave
, and one night he had even written out his will, requesting that he be buried in that beautiful coverlet, with its bands of velvet, that she had given him; for this was the way they would have liked to be—they were both creating for themselves an ideal against which they were now adjusting their past lives. Besides, speech is a rolling press that always extends one’s emotions.

But at this invention concerning the coverlet:

“Why?” she asked.

“Why?”

He hesitated.

“Because I loved you so much!”

And, applauding himself for having gotten past the difficulty, Léon watched her expression out of the corner of his eye.

It was like the sky, when a gust of wind drives away the clouds. The accumulation of sad thoughts that had darkened her blue eyes seemed to withdraw from them; her entire face was radiant.

He was waiting. At last she answered:

“I always thought so …”

Then they told each other about the little happenings of that far-off life, whose delights and sorrows they had just evoked in a single word. He recalled the arbor of clematis, the dresses she had worn, the furniture in her room, her entire house.

“And our poor cactuses, where are they?”

“The cold killed them this winter.”

“Ah! You know, I often thought of them. I would see them again as I used to, when the sun would strike the shutters on summer mornings … and I would see your two bare arms moving about among the flowers.”

“My poor friend!” she blurted, holding her hand out to him.

Léon quickly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep breath:

“For me, in those days, you were a kind of incomprehensible force that held my life captive. There was one time, for example, when I came to your house; but you probably don’t remember this?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “Go on.”

“You were downstairs, in the hall, about to go out, standing on the bottom step;—you were even wearing a hat with little blue flowers on it; and though you hadn’t invited me, I went with you in spite of myself. Yet every minute I was more and more aware of how foolish I’d been, and I went on walking near you, not quite daring to follow you, and not wanting to leave you. When you entered a shop, I’d stay out in the street; I’d watch you through the window as you undid your gloves and counted out the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache’s, they opened the door, and I stayed there like an idiot in front of that great, heavy door after it fell shut behind you.”

As she listened, Madame Bovary marveled at how old she was; all these things as they reappeared seemed to extend her life; it was as though immense expanses of feeling were opened up, upon which she could look back; and from time to time, she would say softly, her eyes half closed:

“Yes, it’s true! … It’s true! … It’s true …”

They heard eight o’clock strike from the different clocks in the Beauvoisine district, which is full of boarding schools, churches, and large mansions now abandoned. They were no longer talking; but as they stared at each other, they felt a murmuring in their heads, as if something audible were escaping from one to the other through their steady gazes. They had just taken each other by the hand; and the past, the future, their reminiscences, and their dreams were all now merged in the sweetness of their ecstasy. The darkness was growing denser along the walls; still gleaming, half lost in shadow, were the garish colors of four prints representing four scenes from
The Tower of Nesle
, with legends below in Spanish and French. Through the sash window, one could see a patch of dark sky between peaked roofs.

She stood up to light two candles on the dresser, then came and sat down again.

“Well …,” Léon said.

“Well?” she answered.

And he was trying to think how to resume the interrupted conversation, when she said:

“Why is it that no one, before now, has ever expressed such feelings to me?”

The clerk exclaimed that idealistic natures were difficult to understand. He had loved her the moment he first saw her; and he was filled with despair when he thought what happiness might have been theirs if, by good fortune, meeting earlier, they had been joined together by an indissoluble bond.

“I’ve sometimes thought about that,” she answered.

“What a dream!” murmured Léon.

And, delicately fingering the blue border of her long white belt, he added:

“What’s to prevent us from beginning again now? …”

“No, my dear,” she answered. “I’m too old … you’re too young … forget me! Others will love you … and you’ll love them.”

“Not as I love you!” he cried.

“You child! Come now, let’s be sensible! That’s what I want!”

She pointed out to him all the reasons their love was impossible, and why they would have to remain, as they used to be, merely friends, like brother and sister.

Did she mean it when she said this? Probably Emma herself did not know, completely occupied as she was by the charm of the seduction and the need to resist it; and, contemplating the young man with a fond gaze, she gently pushed away the timid caresses his trembling hands were attempting.

“Oh, forgive me,” he said, drawing back.

And Emma was seized by a vague alarm in the face of this timidity, which was more dangerous to her than Rodolphe’s boldness when he came up to her with open arms. Never had any man seemed to her so handsome. His whole bearing radiated an exquisite candor. He had lowered his long, fine, curving eyelashes. The smooth skin of his cheek was flushed, with desire—she thought—for her, and Emma felt an irresistible longing to put her lips to it. Then, leaning toward the clock as though to see the time:

“Heavens, how late it is!” she said; “how we’ve talked!”

He understood the hint and picked up his hat.

“I even forgot the opera! Poor Bovary—and he left me here just for
that! Monsieur Lormeaux, in the rue Grand-Pont, was supposed to take me with his wife.”

And the opportunity was lost, for she was leaving the next day.

“Really?” said Léon.

“Yes.”

“But I must see you again,” he went on; “I wanted to tell you …”

“What?”

“Something … important, something serious. Oh, no! You mustn’t go, you can’t! If you knew … Listen … Didn’t you understand what I was saying? Couldn’t you guess? …”

“And yet you express yourself very clearly,” said Emma.

“Ah! Now you’re joking with me! Please don’t! Take pity on me, let me see you again … once … just once.”

“Well …”

She stopped; then, as though thinking better of it:

“Oh, not here!”

“Wherever you like.”

“Do you want to …”

She seemed to think it over; then, tersely:

“Tomorrow, at eleven o’clock, in the cathedral.”

“I’ll be there!” he exclaimed, seizing her hands, which she disengaged.

And as they were now both standing, he behind her and Emma bowing her head, he leaned over and gave her a long kiss on the nape of her neck.

“You’re crazy! Ah!—you’re quite crazy!” she said with little peals of laughter as he kissed her again and again.

Then, leaning his face forward over her shoulder, he seemed to be searching her eyes for her consent. They looked at him full of an icy majesty.

Léon took a few steps back, preparing to leave. He stopped on the doorsill. Then he whispered in a tremulous voice:

“Till tomorrow.”

She answered with a nod and vanished like a bird into the next room.

Emma, that evening, wrote the clerk an endless letter canceling their
appointment: it was all over now, and for the sake of their own happiness, they must never meet again. But when the letter was finished, since she did not have Léon’s address, she found herself quite perplexed.

“I’ll give it to him myself,” she said; “he’s sure to come.”

The next day, Léon, his window open, singing softly on his balcony, polished his dress shoes himself with several layers of polish. He drew on a pair of white pants, some thin socks, a green coat, poured into his handkerchief everything he owned in the way of scent, then, having had his hair curled, took the curl out of it again, so as to give his hair a more natural elegance.

“It’s still too early!” he thought, looking at the barber’s cuckoo clock, which pointed to nine.

He read an old fashion magazine, went out, smoked a cigar, walked up three streets, imagined it was time, and headed briskly toward the parvis of Notre-Dame.

It was a beautiful summer morning. Silver gleamed in the windows of the gold- and silversmiths, and the light that fell obliquely on the cathedral shimmered in the cracks of the gray stones; a flock of birds circled in the blue sky around the trefoiled pinnacle turrets; the square, echoing with cries, smelled of the flowers that bordered its pavement—roses, jasmine, carnations, narcissus, and tuberoses unevenly interspersed with damp greenery, catnip, and chickweed; the fountain, in the middle, was gurgling; and under broad umbrellas, among pyramids of cantaloupes, bareheaded flower-women were twisting bunches of violets in paper.

The young man took one. It was the first time he had bought flowers for a woman; and as he inhaled their fragrance, his chest swelled with pride, as though this homage, which he intended for someone else, had been redirected toward him.

Yet he was afraid of being seen; he went resolutely into the church.

The verger, just then, was standing on the threshold, in the center of the left-hand portal, under the
Marianne Dancing
, a plume on his head, a rapier by his calf, a staff in his fist, more majestic than a cardinal and gleaming like a sacred ciborium.

He advanced toward Léon, and with that smile of unctuous benignity assumed by ecclesiastics when questioning children:

“Monsieur is perhaps from out of town? Monsieur would like to be shown the special features of the church?”

“No,” said the other.

And first he walked all the way around the side aisles. Then he came and looked out at the square. Emma was not in sight. He walked back as far as the choir.

The nave was mirrored in the brimming holy-water basins, along with the lower parts of the ogives and some portions of the stained glass. But the reflections of the images, breaking at the marble rims, continued beyond, over the flagstones, like a gaudy carpet. The broad daylight of the outdoors extended into the church in three enormous beams through the three open portals. Now and then, deep inside the church, a sacristan would pass the altar, making that oblique genuflection practiced by the devout when in a hurry. The crystal chandeliers hung motionless. In the choir, a silver lamp was burning; and from the side chapels, from the darker parts of the church, there sometimes issued a sort of effluence of sighs, along with the sound of a grille closing, sending its echo up under the lofty vaults.

Léon, with a sober step, was walking close to the walls. Never had life seemed so good to him. Any minute now she would appear, charming, agitated, glancing behind her at the eyes that were following her,—in her flounced dress, her gold lorgnette, her thin little boots, all kinds of elegant refinements he had never had a taste of before, and with all the ineffable seductiveness of virtue yielding. The church, like a gigantic boudoir, was arranging itself around her; the vaults were leaning down to gather up, in the shadows, the confession of her love; the windows shone resplendent to illuminate her face; and the censers burned so that she might appear like an angel, amid clouds of perfume.

Yet still she did not come. He took a seat, and his eyes happened upon a blue window that shows boatmen carrying baskets. He looked at it for a long time, attentively, and he counted the scales on the fish and the buttonholes on the doublets, while his thoughts wandered in search of Emma.

The verger, standing to one side, was raging inwardly at this person who permitted himself to admire the cathedral on his own. He was behaving monstrously, he felt, stealing from him, in a way, and almost committing a sacrilege.

But a rustling of silk on the flagstones, the brim of a hat, a black hooded cloak … It was she! Léon stood up and hurried to meet her.

Emma was pale. She was walking quickly.

“Read this!” she said, handing him a piece of paper … “No, no!”

And abruptly she drew back her hand and went into the Lady Chapel, where, kneeling against a chair, she began to pray.

The young man was irritated by this overly pious whim; but then he found a certain charm in seeing her thus, in the middle of an assignation, lost in prayer like some Andalusian marquise; then he quickly grew bored, for she was going on and on.

Emma was praying, or rather endeavoring to pray, in the hope that some sudden resolution would descend upon her from heaven; and in order to attract divine assistance, she was filling her eyes with the splendors of the tabernacle, breathing in the fragrance of the white stock in full bloom in their tall vases, and listening to the silence of the church, which only increased the tumult in her heart.