Madame Bovary (43 page)

He did this less out of vanity than with the sole aim of pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was becoming her mistress more than she was his. She said tender things to him and gave him kisses that transported his soul. Where could she have learned this depravity, so deep and so dissembled that it was almost incorporeal?

On his trips to see her, Léon had often dined at the home of the pharmacist, and he had felt obliged, out of politeness, to invite him in return.

“With pleasure!” Monsieur Homais had responded. “I need to revitalize myself a bit, in any case, for I’m getting into a rut here. We’ll go to the theater, eat in a restaurant, treat ourselves to a real fling!”

“Ah! My dearest!” murmured Madame Homais tenderly, dismayed by the unknown perils he was preparing to risk.

“Well, what is it? Don’t you think I’m already ruining my health as it is by living amid the continual emanations from the pharmacy! Such, however, is the nature of women: they’re jealous of Science, then oppose one’s enjoying the most legitimate amusement. Never mind, you can count on me; one of these days, I’ll turn up in Rouen and together we’ll make the
monacos
fly.”

In earlier times, the apothecary would have carefully avoided such an expression; but he was now inclined toward a playful Parisian style, which he found in better taste; and, like his neighbor Madame Bovary, he would examine the clerk inquisitively about the customs of the capital; he even used slang to dazzle … the bourgeoisie, saying
“turne”
(digs),
“bazar”
(stuff),
“chicard”
(classy),
“chicandard”
(most classy),
“Breda-street”
(red-light district), and
“Je me la casse”
(I’m hoofing it) for “I’m going now.”

And so, one Thursday, Emma was surprised to encounter Monsieur Homais in the kitchen of the Lion d’Or wearing traveling clothes, that is, draped in an old cloak that no one knew he owned, and carrying in one hand a suitcase, and in the other the footmuff from his shop. He had not confided his plan to anyone, for fear of worrying the public by his absence.

The idea of revisiting the places where he had spent his youth no doubt excited him, for he did not stop discoursing all the way there; then, scarcely arrived, he leaped smartly from the carriage and set off in search of Léon; and though the clerk struggled, Monsieur Homais dragged him out to the large Café de Normandie, which he entered majestically without doffing his hat, deeming it very provincial to bare his head in a public place.

Emma waited for Léon three-quarters of an hour. Finally she hurried
to his office, and, lost in conjectures of every kind, accusing him of indifference and reproaching herself for her weakness, she spent the afternoon with her forehead pressed to the windowpane.

At two o’clock they were still at the table, face-to-face. The large room was emptying; the stovepipe, in the form of a palm tree, spread out over the white ceiling in a gold fan; and near them, behind the window, in the full sun, a small jet of water gurgled into a marble basin where, among watercress and asparagus, three torpid lobsters extended their claws toward a heap of quail lying on their sides.

Homais was thoroughly enjoying himself. Although he was even more intoxicated by luxury than by a sumptuous meal, still, the Pommard was exciting his faculties a little, and, when the rum omelet appeared, he began to advance certain immoral theories concerning women. What captivated him above all was
chic.
He adored an elegant toilette in a well-furnished room, and, as for the bodily attributes, he was not averse to a
dainty morsel.

Léon was gazing at the clock in despair. The apothecary was drinking, eating, talking.

“You must be feeling quite bereft,” he said suddenly, “here in Rouen. But then your love doesn’t live too far away.”

And when the other blushed:

“Come now, be frank! You won’t deny that in Yonville …”

The young man began to stammer.

“At Madame Bovary’s, weren’t you courting …”

“Well, who?”

“The servant girl!”

He was not joking; but, vanity prevailing over discretion, Léon protested in spite of himself. Besides, he liked only dark-haired women.

“I agree with you,” said the pharmacist; “they’re more hot-blooded.”

And leaning over to his friend’s ear, he indicated the signs by which one could recognize a hot-blooded woman. He even launched into an ethnographic digression: German women were moody, French women licentious, Italian women passionate.

“And what about Negro women?” asked the clerk.

“That’s a taste cultivated by artists,” said Homais. “—Waiter! Two demitasses.”

“Shall we go?” said Léon at last, becoming impatient.

“Yes,”
said Homais in English.

But before going, he asked to see the head of the establishment and offered him his congratulations.

Then the young man, in the hope of being left alone, alleged that he had some business to take care of.

“Ah! I’ll escort you!” said Homais.

And as he walked along the streets with him, Homais talked about his wife, his children, their future, and his pharmacy, describing the state of decline it had once been in and the degree of perfection to which he had raised it.

Having arrived in front of the Hôtel de Boulogne, Léon left him abruptly, climbed the stairs, and found his mistress highly emotional.

When she heard the pharmacist’s name, she flew into a rage. Yet he was piling one good excuse upon the next: It was not his fault. Didn’t she know Monsieur Homais? Could she believe that he preferred his company? But she turned away; he held her back; and, sinking to his knees, he put his arms around her waist in a languorous posture full of desire and supplication.

She stood there; her great fiery eyes were gazing at him soberly in a way that was almost terrifying. Then they darkened with tears, her rosy eyelids lowered, she yielded her hands, and Léon was just bringing them to his lips when a servant appeared and informed Monsieur that someone was asking for him.

“Are you going to come back?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Right away.”

“It was a
dodge
,” said the pharmacist when he saw Léon. “I wanted to interrupt this appointment of yours, which I thought you didn’t seem too pleased about. Let’s go to Bridoux’s and have a glass of garus.”

Léon swore he had to return to his office. Then the apothecary made some jokes about paperwork and legal proceedings.

“Forget about Cujas and Bartole for a little while—what the devil! What’s to stop you? Be a bold fellow! Come to Bridoux’s; you’ll have a look at his dog. It’s very odd!”

And when the clerk persisted:

“Then I’ll come, too. I’ll read a newspaper while I wait, or dip into one of the Codes.”

Léon, stunned by Emma’s anger, Monsieur Homais’s chatter, and perhaps the heaviness of his lunch, remained undecided, as though bewitched by the pharmacist, who kept repeating:

“Come to Bridoux’s! It’s only a couple of steps away, in the rue Malpalu.”

And so, out of cowardice, out of stupidity, out of that shameful feeling that entices us into the most antipathetic actions, he let himself be taken off to Bridoux’s; and they found him in his little courtyard, overseeing three waiters who were panting as they turned the large wheel of a machine for making Seltzer water. Homais gave them some advice; he embraced Bridoux; they had their garus. Twenty times over, Léon tried to go; but the pharmacist held him back by the arm, saying:

“In a minute! I’m leaving. We’ll stop by
Le Fanal de Rouen
and see those gentlemen. I’ll introduce you to Thomassin.”

He got rid of him, however, and raced back to the hotel. Emma was no longer there.

She had just left, enraged. She hated him now. That broken promise at their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she sought yet more reasons to separate from him: he was incapable of heroism, he was weak, ordinary, softer than a woman, and also greedy and timid.

Then, growing calmer, she came to see that she had probably disparaged him unjustly. But vilifying those we love always detaches us from them a little. We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.

Now they talked more often about things unconcerned with their love; and the letters Emma sent him were full of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, as she naïvely attempted to revive her weakened passion with external stimulants. She kept promising herself that on her next trip, she would be profoundly happy; then she would admit that she had not felt anything extraordinary. This disappointment would fade quickly in the presence of fresh hope, and Emma would return to him more ardent, more avid. She would undress roughly, tearing the thin string of her corset, which would whistle around her hips like a slithering snake. She would stand on the tips of her bare toes to see one more time that the door was locked, then drop all her clothes in a single motion; —and,
pale, speechless, solemn, she would collapse against his chest with a long shudder.

But on that forehead beaded with cold droplets, on those stammering lips, in those wild eyes, in the clasp of those arms, there was something extreme, undefined, and bleak that seemed to Léon to slip subtly between them as though to separate them.

He did not dare question her; but, understanding how experienced she was, he would say to himself that she must have passed through every ordeal of suffering and pleasure. What had once charmed him he now found a little frightening. Moreover, he rebelled against the way his personality was absorbed by her more and more each day. He resented Emma for this perpetual victory. He even attempted to stop loving her; then, at the creak of her little boots, he would feel how cowardly he was, like a drunkard at the sight of strong liquor.

True, she unfailingly lavished on him attentions of every kind, from delicacies for the table to her stylish clothing and her dreamy glances. She would bring roses from Yonville in her bosom and toss them in his face; she would worry over his health, give him advice about how to conduct himself; and in order to keep a firmer hold on him, hoping that heaven would perhaps intervene, she hung around his neck a medal of the Blessed Virgin. She informed herself, like a virtuous mother, about his friends. She would say to him:

“Don’t see them, don’t go out, think only about us; love me!”

She would have liked to be able to keep a constant eye on him, and it occurred to her to have him followed in the streets. Near the hotel, there was a sort of tramp who was always accosting travelers and who would not refuse … But her pride rebelled.

“Oh, too bad! If he’s deceiving me, what do I care! Does it matter to me?”

One day when they had left each other early, and she was walking back alone down the boulevard, she caught sight of the walls of her convent; she sat down on a bench, in the shade of the elms. How peaceful those days had been! How she had longed for the indescribable feelings of love that she had tried, with the help of her books, to imagine for herself!

The first months of her marriage, her horseback rides in the forest, the Vicomte waltzing, and Lagardy singing, all passed before her eyes again … And suddenly Léon appeared to her as far away as the others.

“And yet I love him!” she said to herself.

It didn’t matter! She was not happy and never had been. Why was life so inadequate, why did the things she depended on turn immediately to dust? … Yet if somewhere there existed a strong, handsome being, with a valorous nature, at once exalted and refined, with the heart of a poet in the shape of an angel, a lyre with strings of brass, sounding elegiac epithalamiums to the heavens, then why mightn’t she, by chance, find him? Oh, how impossible! And anyway, nothing was worth the difficulty of such a search; everything was a lie! Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a malediction, every pleasure its own disgust, and the sweetest kisses left on your lips no more than a vain longing for a more sublime pleasure.

A prolonged metallic rattle whirred through the air and four strokes sounded from the convent bell. Four o’clock! and it seemed to her that she had been there on that bench for all eternity. But an infinity of passions can be contained within a minute, like a crowd of people in a small space.

Emma’s life was completely occupied by her passions, and she worried no more about money than an archduchess.

One day, however, a sickly-looking man, red-faced and bald, entered her house declaring that he had been sent by Monsieur Vinçart of Rouen. He withdrew the pins fastening the side pocket of his long green frock coat, stuck them in his sleeve, and politely held out a piece of paper.

It was a note for seven hundred francs, signed by her, which Lheureux, despite all his protestations, had endorsed over to Vinçart.

She sent her servant to his house. He was unable to come.

Then the stranger, who had remained standing, glancing curiously to the right and left under the cover of his thick blond eyebrows, asked with a naïve air:

“What answer will I give Monsieur Vinçart?”

“Well,” answered Emma, “tell him … that I don’t have it … It’ll have to be next week … He should wait … Yes. Next week.”

And the fellow went off without uttering a word.

But the next day, at noon, she received a protest of nonpayment; and the sight of the official document, on which were displayed, in several places and in large letters, the words “Maître Hareng, Bailiff at Bucy,” frightened her so much that she ran in all haste to the dry-goods merchant.

She found him in his shop, tying up a parcel.

“Your servant!” he said; “what can I do for you?”

Yet Lheureux went on with his task, helped by a slightly hunchbacked girl of about thirteen, who served him as both shop assistant and cook.

Then, his wooden shoes clattering on the floorboards of the shop, he preceded Madame up to the second floor and showed her into a cramped office where a large pine desk supported several ledgers secured by a transverse padlocked iron bar. Against the wall, under some lengths of calico, a strongbox could be seen, of such dimensions, however, that it had to contain something other than promissory notes and cash. Indeed, Monsieur Lheureux was a pawnbroker, and it was here that he had put Madame Bovary’s gold chain, along with some earrings belonging to poor Père Tellier, who, having at last been obliged to sell, had bought a struggling grocery business in Quincampoix, where he was dying of his catarrh, his face yellower than the candles that surrounded him.