Madame Bovary (39 page)

Emma was no longer thinking of asking what they wanted from her, and the pharmacist continued breathlessly:

“This is how you acknowledge the kindness I’ve shown you! This is how you repay me for the completely fatherly care I lavish on you! For without me, where would you be? What would you be doing? Who provides you with your food, your education, your clothes, all the means by which you may one day enter with honor the ranks of society! But for that you have to pull hard on the oar, you have to get calluses on your hands, as they say.
Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.
”

He was so angry he was quoting Latin. He would have quoted Chinese
or Greenlandic, had he known those languages; for he was in the throes of the sort of crisis in which one’s entire soul shows indiscriminately what it contains, just as the Ocean, during a storm, gapes open from the seaweed on its shore to the sand in its abysses.

And he went on:

“I’m beginning to repent terribly having taken you into my care! I’d certainly have done better to leave you to squat in your misery, back then, in the filth you were born in! You’ll never be good for anything but looking after horned animals! You have no aptitude for the sciences! You barely know how to glue on a label! And you live here, in my house, gorging yourself like a monk or a fighting cock!”

But Emma, turning toward Madame Homais:

“They told me to come …”

“Oh! My Lord!” interrupted the good lady with a sad look; “how can I possibly tell you? … It’s a dreadful thing!”

She broke off. The apothecary was thundering on:

“Empty it! Scour it! Take it back! Hurry up, can’t you!

And as he shook Justin by the collar of his smock, a book fell out of the pocket.

The boy bent down. Homais was quicker, and, having picked up the volume, he studied it, his eyes wide, his jaw gaping.

“
Conjugal … Love!
” he said slowly, separating the two words. “Oh! Very good! Very good! Very nice! With engravings, too! … Ah! this is too much!”

Madame Homais stepped forward.

“No, don’t touch it!”

The children wanted to see the pictures.

“Leave the room!” he said imperiously.

And they left.

At first he paced back and forth with long strides, keeping the volume open between his fingers, rolling his eyes, breathless, swollen, apoplectic. Then he walked straight over to his pupil, and, planting himself before him with his arms crossed:

“Well, so you have all the vices, do you, you little wretch? … Watch out, you’re on a downward slope! … I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that this sordid book of yours might fall into the hands of my children, strike a spark in their minds, tarnish Athalie’s purity, corrupt
Napoléon! Physically, he’s already a man. Are you quite sure, at least, that they haven’t read it? Can you guarantee me … ?”

“Now, really, monsieur,” Emma said. “Didn’t you have something to tell me … ?”

“Yes, I did, madame … Your father-in-law is dead!”

Indeed, the elder Monsieur Bovary had died two days before, suddenly, from an attack of apoplexy, as he was leaving the table; and out of an excessive concern for Emma’s sensibility, Charles had asked Monsieur Homais to inform her with the greatest tact of this horrible news.

The pharmacist had pondered his announcement, he had rounded it, polished it, cadenced it; it was a masterpiece of discretion and transitions, of subtle phrasing and delicacy; but rage had swept away rhetoric.

Emma, despairing of hearing any details, therefore left the pharmacy; for Monsieur Homais had resumed the trend of his vituperations. He was calming down, however, and was now grumbling in a fatherly tone, all the while fanning himself with his fez:

“It’s not that I disapprove of the book altogether! The author was a doctor. There are certain scientific aspects of it that are not bad for a man to know, that, indeed, I would venture to say, a man should know. But later, later! At least wait till you’re a man yourself and your character’s formed.”

At the sound of the door knocker, Charles, who was waiting for her, came forward with his arms open and said with tears in his voice:

“Oh, my dearest! …”

And he leaned over gently to kiss her. But at the touch of his lips, the memory of the other one seized her, and she passed her hand over her face, shuddering.

Yet she answered:

“Yes, I know … I know …”

He showed her the letter in which his mother described the event without any sentimental hypocrisy. She was only sorry that her husband had not received the succor of religion, since he had died at Doudeville, in the street, on the doorsill of a café, after a patriotic meal with former officers.

Emma gave him back the letter; then, at dinner, for the sake of form, she affected some reluctance. But since he urged her several times, she
began resolutely to eat, while Charles, opposite her, remained motionless in a posture of dejection.

From time to time, lifting his head, he would give her a long look of distress. Once, he sighed:

“I would have liked to see him one more time!”

She said nothing. Finally, realizing that she ought to say something:

“How old was he—your father?”

“Fifty-eight!”

“Ah!”

And that was all.

A quarter of an hour later, he added:

“My poor mother! … What will become of her now?”

She conveyed with a gesture that she did not know.

Seeing her so reserved, Charles supposed that she was grieving, and he forced himself to say nothing so as not to reawaken this sorrow, which moved him. Nevertheless, shaking off his own:

“Did you have good time yesterday?” he asked.

“Yes.”

When the tablecloth was removed, Bovary did not get up, nor did Emma; and as she contemplated him, the monotony of the spectacle gradually drove all compassion from her heart. He seemed to her puny, weak, worthless, in fact a poor man in every way. How could she get rid of him? What an interminable evening! She felt numbed, as though by something stupefying like the fumes of opium.

They heard from the hall the dry sound of a stick striking the floorboards. It was Hippolyte bringing Madame’s bags. In order to set them down, he laboriously described a quarter of a circle with his wooden leg.

“He doesn’t even think about it anymore!” she said to herself as she looked at the poor devil, whose thick red hair was dripping with sweat.

Bovary was searching for a small coin in the bottom of his purse; and without appearing to realize how much humiliation there was for him in the very presence of this man, standing there like a living reproach for his incorrigible ineptitude:

“Oh! what a pretty bouquet you have there!” he said, noticing Léon’s violets on the mantelpiece.

“Yes,” she said indifferently; “I bought it earlier … from a beggar woman.”

Charles picked up the violets, and, cooling his tear-reddened eyes against them, he gently inhaled their fragrance. She took them quickly from his hand and went to put them in a glass of water.

The next day, the elder Madame Bovary arrived. She and her son wept a good deal. Emma, under the pretext of having orders to give, disappeared.

The day after, they had to decide, together, about their mourning clothes. They went to sit down, with their workbaskets, by the water’s edge, under the arbor.

Charles was thinking about his father, and he was surprised to feel so much affection for the man, whom up to then he had believed he had loved only halfheartedly. The elder Madame Bovary was thinking about her husband. The worst days of the past as they reappeared to her seemed enviable. Everything was eclipsed by her instinctive grief for the loss of a long-enduring habit; and from time to time, as she worked her needle, a large tear would run down the length of her nose and remain hanging there for a moment. Emma was thinking that scarcely forty-eight hours ago, they had been together, far away from the world, deeply intoxicated, without eyes enough to gaze at each other. She was trying to recapture even the imperceptible details of that vanished day. But the presence of her mother-in-law and her husband interfered. She wished she could hear nothing, see nothing, so as not to disturb the recollection of her love, which was steadily vanishing, no matter
what she did, under external sensations.

She was unstitching the lining of a dress, the scraps of which lay scattered about her; Mère Bovary, without raising her eyes, was plying a pair of squeaky scissors; and Charles, in his list slippers and the old brown frock coat that served him as a dressing gown, had his hands in his pockets and was not speaking either; near them, Berthe, in a little white apron, was scraping the sand in the paths with her spade.

Suddenly they saw Monsieur Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant, entering by the gate.

He was coming to offer his services,
in view of the melancholy circumstances.
Emma answered that she believed she could do without them. The merchant did not consider himself defeated.

“A thousand apologies,” he said; “I would like to have a word in private.”

Then, in a low voice:

“It’s about that matter … You know?”

Charles turned crimson to his ears.

“Ah! Yes! Of course.”

And in his disturbance, turning to his wife:

“My dear … Could you take care of … ?”

She seemed to understand, for she stood up, and Charles said to his mother:

“It’s nothing! Probably some household trifle.”

He did not want her to know about the note, afraid of what she would say.

As soon as Emma was alone with Monsieur Lheureux, he began by congratulating her, in quite clear terms, on the inheritance, then went on to chat about indifferent things—the espaliers, the harvest, and his own health, which was always
so-so, fair to middling.
Indeed, he worked like a dog, even though, despite what people said, he did not make enough even to put butter on his bread.

Emma was letting him talk. She had been so prodigiously bored the last two days!

“And you’re quite well again now?” he went on. “My faith, I could see that your poor husband was in a real state! He’s a good fellow, though we did have our difficulties, he and I.”

She asked what they were, for Charles had hidden from her the dispute over her purchases.

“But you know very well!” retorted Lheureux. “It was over those little whims of yours—the luggage.”

He had lowered his hat over his eyes, and with both hands behind his back, smiling and whistling under his breath, he was looking her full in the face in an insufferable manner. Did he suspect something? She became lost in apprehension. At last, however, he went on:

“We’ve made it up now, and I came back to suggest an arrangement to him.”

It was to renew the note signed by Bovary. Of course, Monsieur should do as he saw fit; he should not let it worry him, especially now that he was going to have a host of other troubles.

“And he would do even better to hand it over to someone else, to you, for example; with a power of attorney, it would be easy, and then you and I could take care of these matters together …”

She did not understand. He fell silent. Then, going on to speak of his trade, Lheureux declared that Madame should not fail to order something from him. He would send her a length of black barege, twelve meters, to make up a dress.

“The one you have there is good enough for the house. You need another for visiting. I saw that right away when I came in. I have the eye of an American.”

He did not send the material, he brought it. Then he came again to take the measurements; he came again on other pretexts, each time trying to make himself amiable, helpful, pledging his loyalty like a vassal, as Homais would have put it, and always slipping to Emma some words of advice about the power of attorney. He never mentioned the note. She did not think about it; Charles, at the beginning of her convalescence, had indeed told her something about it; but her mind had been so agitated that she no longer remembered. What was more, she refrained from broaching any discussion of money; Mère Bovary was surprised by this and attributed her change of disposition to the religious sentiments she had developed when she was ill.

But as soon as she had left, Emma lost no time amazing Bovary with her practical good sense. They were going to have to make inquiries, check the mortgages, see if there ought to be a sale by auction or a liquidation. She used technical terms at random; she uttered important words such as “order,” “the future,” “foresight,” and continually exaggerated the complications of the inheritance; and then one day she showed him the draft of a general authorization to “manage and administer his affairs, negotiate all loans, sign and endorse all notes, pay all sums, etc.” She had profited from Lheureux’s lessons.

Charles, naïvely, asked her where this paper had come from.

“From Monsieur Guillaumin.”

And with the greatest composure in the world, she added:

“I don’t trust him very much. Notaries have such a bad reputation! We ought perhaps to consult … We know only … Oh, there’s no one!”

“Unless Léon …,” replied Charles, who was thinking.

But it was hard to explain matters by letter. So she offered to make the trip. He thanked her but would not let her. She insisted. Each tried to outdo the other with considerate attentions. At last, she cried out in a tone of affected rebellion:

“No, you must let me—I must go.”

“How good you are!” he said, kissing her on the forehead.

The very next day, she set off in the
Hirondelle
for Rouen to consult Monsieur Léon; and she stayed there three days.

They were three full, exquisite, splendid days, a real honeymoon.

They stayed at the Hôtel de Boulogne, on the harbor. And there they lived with shutters closed and doors locked, flowers on the floor and fruit drinks on ice, which were brought up to them from morning on.

Toward evening, they would hire a covered boat and go have dinner on an island.

It was the hour when, from along the dockside, one can hear the echo of the caulkers’ mallets striking the hulls of the ships. Smoke from the tar would rise from between the trees, and on the river one saw broad patches of oil undulating unevenly beneath the crimson glow of the sun, like floating sheets of Florentine bronze.