Madame Bovary (38 page)

She was standing up again, and they were about to leave, when the verger approached them smartly, saying:

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

“No, no!” exclaimed the clerk.

“Why not?” she said.

For with her wavering virtue she was clinging to the Virgin, to the sculptures, to the tombs, to every chance opportunity.

Then, so that they might proceed
in the right order
, the verger led them to the entrance close to the square, where, pointing with his staff to a great circle of black paving stones without inscription or engraving:

“That,” he declared majestically, “is the circumference of the beautiful Amboise bell. It weighed forty thousand pounds. There was not its like in all of Europe. The workman who cast it died of joy …”

“Let’s go,” said Léon.

The fellow walked on; then, having returned to the Lady Chapel, he stretched out his arms in an all-embracing gesture of revelation, and, prouder than a country landowner showing you his espaliered trees:

“Under this simple stone lies Pierre de Brézé, Lord of the Varenne and of Brissac, Grand Marshal of Poitou, and Governor of Normandy, who died in the battle of Montlhéry, July sixteenth, 1465.”

Léon, biting his lips, tapped his feet impatiently.

“And to the right, this gentleman, clad in steel, on the rearing horse, is
his grandson Louis de Brézé, Lord of Breval and of Montchauvet, Count of Maulevrier, Baron of Mauny, Chamberlain to the King, Knight of the Order, and likewise Governor of Normandy, who died on July twenty-third, 1531, a Sunday, as the inscription tells us; and below him, that man about to descend into the grave shows you the very same person. It is not possible to imagine, don’t you agree, a more perfect representation of the void?”

Madame Bovary raised her lorgnette. Léon, motionless, was looking at her, no longer even trying to say a single word, or make a single motion, so discouraged did he feel in the face of this twofold persistence of volubility and indifference.

Their eternal guide was continuing:

“This woman on her knees at his side and weeping is his wife, Diane de Poitiers, Countess of Brézé, Duchess of Valentinois, born in 1499, died in 1566; and to the left, the one carrying a child, the Holy Virgin. Now, turn this way: here are the tombs of the Amboises. They were both cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one over there was a minister to King Louis XII. He was a great benefactor to the Cathedral. They found that in his will he had left thirty thousand gold ecus to the poor.”

And without pausing, still continuing to talk, he urged them into a chapel cluttered with balustrades, moved some of them aside, and revealed a sort of block, which could well have been a poorly made statue.

“At one time,” he said with a deep sigh, “this used to adorn the tomb of Richard the Lionhearted, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, monsieur, who reduced it to its present condition. They buried it, for spite, in the ground under Monseigneur’s episcopal throne. Look—here’s the door by which Monseigneur reaches his residence. Now let us go on and see the Gargoyle windows.”

But Léon quickly drew a silver coin from his pocket and seized Emma by the arm. The verger was quite stupefied, puzzled by this untimely munificence when there remained so many things for the stranger still to see. And so, calling him back:

“Eh, monsieur! The steeple! The steeple! …”

“Thank you, no,” said Léon.

“Monsieur is making a mistake! You’ll see that it’s four hundred and forty feet high, nine feet less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It’s made entirely of cast iron, it …”

Léon was fleeing; for it seemed to him that his love, which for nearly
two hours now had been immobilized inside the church like the very stones, was about to evaporate, like a puff of smoke, up that sort of truncated pipe, that oblong cage, that openwork chimney, which perches so perilously and so grotesquely on top of the cathedral, like the extravagant experiment of some whimsical metalworker.

“Where are we going?” she said.

Without answering, he was walking on at a rapid pace, and Madame Bovary was already dipping her finger in the holy water, when they heard behind them the sound of heavy panting regularly punctuated by the tapping of a stick. Léon turned around.

“Monsieur!”

“What?”

And he recognized the verger, carrying under his arm and balancing against his stomach about twenty stout paperbound volumes. They were books
dealing with the cathedral.

“Fool!” muttered Léon, dashing out of the church.

A street urchin was loitering about on the parvis:

“Go get me a cab!”

The child set off like a shot up the rue des Quatre-Vents; now they were left alone for a few minutes, face-to-face and a little embarrassed.

“Oh, Léon! … Really … I don’t know … if I should … !”

She was simpering. Then, in a serious tone:

“It’s quite improper, you know.”

“In what way?” replied the clerk. “They do it in Paris!”

And that remark, like an irresistible argument, decided her.

Yet the cab was nowhere in sight. Léon was afraid she would go back inside the church. At last the cab appeared.

“Go out by the north door, at least!” cried the verger, who had remained on the threshold. “So that you can see the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Souls of the Damned burning in the flames of hell!”

“Where does Monsieur wish to go?” asked the coachman.

“Wherever you like!” said Léon, thrusting Emma into the carriage.

And the heavy vehicle started off.

It went down the rue Grand-Pont, crossed the place des Arts, the quai Napoléon, and the Pont Neuf, and stopped short in front of the statue of Pierre Corneille.

“Keep going!” said a voice issuing from the interior.

The carriage set off again and, gathering speed on the downward slope from the carrefour La Fayette, came up to the railway station at a fast gallop.

“No! Straight on!” cried the same voice.

The cab went out through the gates and soon, having reached the promenade, trotted quietly between the lines of tall elms. The coachman wiped his forehead, put his leather hat between his legs, and urged the carriage on beyond the side avenues to the water’s edge, by the grass.

It went along the river, on the towpath with its surface of dry pebbles, and, for a long time, toward Oyssel, beyond the islands.

But all of a sudden, it dashed in one leap across Quatremares, Sotteville, the Grande-Chaussée, the rue d’Elbeuf, and made its third stop in front of the Jardin des Plantes.

“Keep going!” shouted the voice more furiously.

And immediately starting off again, it went past Saint-Sever, along the quai des Curandiers, along the quai aux Meules, once again over the bridge, by the place du Champ-de-Mars, and behind the gardens of the home for the elderly, where old men in black jackets walk in the sun along a terrace all green with ivy. It went back up the boulevard Bouvreuil, along the boulevard Cauchoise, then down the entire length of Mont-Riboudet as far as the Deville hill.

It turned back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, at random, it wandered. It was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont Gargan, at the Rouge-Mare, and in the place du Gaillardbois; in the rue Maladrerie, the rue Dinanderie, in front of Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien, Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise—in front of the Customs House—at the Basse Vieille-Tour, at Trois-Pipes, and at the Cimetière Monumental. From his seat the coachman now and again glanced at a tavern with a despairing eye. He could not understand what mania for locomotion was compelling these individuals to refuse to stop. He would sometimes try, and he would immediately hear exclamations of rage behind him. Then he would lash his two sweating nags all the harder, but with no regard for bumps, catching a wheel on one side or the other, not caring, demoralized, and almost weeping from thirst, fatigue, and gloom.

And at the harbor, among the drays and great barrels, and in the streets, at the corners by the guard stones, the townspeople would stare
wide-eyed in amazement at this thing so unheard of in the provinces, a carriage with drawn blinds that kept appearing and reappearing, sealed tighter than a tomb and tossed about like a ship at sea.

Once, at midday, out in the countryside, when the sun was beating down most fiercely against the old silver-plated lamps, a bare hand passed under the little blinds of yellow canvas and threw out some torn scraps of paper, which scattered in the wind and alighted, at a distance, like white butterflies, on a field of red clover all in bloom.

Then, toward six o’clock, the carriage stopped in a lane in the Beauvoisine district, and a woman stepped down from it and walked away, her veil lowered, without turning her head.

When she reached the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the stagecoach. Hivert, after waiting fifty-three minutes for her, had in the end driven away.

Nothing really obliged her to leave; but she had given her word that she would return that evening. Besides, Charles was waiting for her; and already she felt in her heart that craven docility that is, for many women, at once the punishment for their adultery, and the price they pay to redeem it.

Quickly she packed her bag, paid the bill, hired a gig in the courtyard, and, urging on the driver, encouraging him, asking him every minute what time it was and how many kilometers they had gone, managed to overtake the
Hirondelle
near the first houses of Quincampoix.

Scarcely seated in her corner, she closed her eyes, opening them again at the bottom of the hill, where from a distance she recognized Félicité, watching for her in front of the blacksmith’s. Hivert reined in his horses, and the cook, stretching up to the carriage window, said mysteriously:

“Madame, you must go to Monsieur Homais’s house right away. It’s urgent.”

The village was silent as usual. At the street corners, little pink mounds were steaming in the air, for it was jam time, and everyone in Yonville was confecting his own provision on the same day. But in front of the pharmacist’s shop, people were admiring a much larger mound, and one that surpassed the others with the superiority that a chemist’s dispensary
is bound to have over ordinary stoves, a general need over individual whims.

She went in. The large armchair was overturned, and even
Le Fanal de Rouen
was on the floor, lying between the two pestles. She pushed open the hall door; and in the middle of the kitchen, among the brown jars full of loose currants, grated sugar, lump sugar, scales on the table, pans on the fire, she saw the entire Homais family, big and little, wearing aprons that rose up to their chins and holding forks in their hands. Justin was standing with bowed head, and the pharmacist was shouting:

“Who told you to go get it from the capharnaum?”

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter?” answered the apothecary. “We’re making jam; it’s cooking; but it was about to overflow because it was boiling too fast, and I called for another pan. Then, because he’s slothful, because he’s lazy, he goes to my laboratory and takes, from the nail where it hangs—the key to the capharnaum!”

This was the apothecary’s name for a small room under the eaves filled with the utensils and supplies of his profession. Often he would spend long hours there alone, labeling, decanting, repackaging; and he considered it not a mere storeroom, but a veritable sanctuary, from which would then issue, transformed by his own hands, all kinds of pills, boluses, infusions, lotions, and potions, which were destined to spread his renown through the surrounding area. Not another soul ever set foot in there; and he had such a high regard for it that he would sweep it out himself. If the pharmacy, open to all comers, was the spot where he proudly exhibited his skill, the capharnaum was the refuge where, selfishly withdrawing from the world, Homais would rapturously indulge his predilections; thus, Justin’s thoughtlessness seemed to him monstrously irreverent; and, redder than the currants, he said again:

“Yes, the key to the capharnaum! The key for locking away the acids and the caustic alkalis! To go and take one of the spare pans!—a pan with a lid!—one I may never use! Each thing has its own importance in the delicate operations of our art! What the devil! One must make distinctions, one mustn’t employ for quasi-domestic purposes something intended for pharmaceuticals! It’s as if one were to cut up a chicken with a scalpel, as if a magistrate …”

“There, now, calm down, dear!” Madame Homais was saying.

And Athalie, pulling him by his frock coat:

“Papa! Papa!”

“No! Leave me alone!” the apothecary went on. “Leave me alone! Blast! I might as well go into business as a grocer, upon my word of honor! Go on! Respect nothing! Break it all! Shatter it all! Let the leeches out! Burn the mallow! Marinate pickles in the apothecary jars! Cut up the bandages!”

“But you had …,” said Emma.

“In a minute!— Do you know the risk you were taking? … Didn’t you notice something in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer, articulate something!”

“I don’t … know,” stammered the boy.

“Ah! You don’t know! Well, I
do
know! You saw a bottle, a blue glass bottle, sealed with yellow wax, with white powder in it, on which I have in fact written:
Dangerous!
And do you know what’s in it? Arsenic! —and you were going to touch that? Take a pan that’s right next to it!”

“Right next to it!” exclaimed Madame Homais, joining her hands. “Arsenic? You could poison us all!”

And the children began to cry out, as though they were already feeling atrocious pains in their bowels.

“Or poison a patient!” continued the apothecary. “So you wanted me to appear on the criminals’ bench, in the court of assizes? See me dragged to the gallows? Don’t you know the care I take in handling everything, even though I’m so utterly practiced in it? I even frighten myself, often, when I think of my responsibility! —for the government persecutes us, and the absurd legislation that restricts us hangs like a veritable sword of Damocles over our heads!”