Madame Bovary (47 page)

For he would come. She was sure of it! He would have got some money. But perhaps he would go down to her house, without suspecting that she was here; and she ordered the nurse to run to her house and get him.

“Hurry!”

“But my dear lady, I’m going! I’m going!”

She was surprised, now, that she had not thought of him right away; yesterday, he had given his word, he would not break it; and already she saw herself at Lheureux’s, spreading out the three banknotes on his desk. Then she would have to invent a story to explain things to Bovary. What would it be?

Meanwhile, the nurse was taking a long time returning. But as there was no clock in the cottage, Emma was afraid she might be exaggerating how much time had passed. She began to take little walks around the garden, step by step; she went down the path along the hedge and returned quickly, hoping the good woman might have come home another way. At last, tired of waiting, assailed by suspicions that she thrust away, no longer knowing if she had been there for a hundred years or a minute, she sat down in a corner and closed her eyes and blocked her ears. The gate creaked: she leaped up; before she could speak, Mère Rolet said:

“There’s nobody at your house!”

“What?”

“No! No one! And Monsieur is weeping. He’s calling you. They’re looking for you.”

Emma did not answer. She was breathing hard and staring wildly all around, while the countrywoman, frightened by her face, was instinctively backing away, thinking she was mad. Suddenly she struck her forehead and cried out, for the memory of Rodolphe, like a great bolt of lightning on a dark night, had entered her mind. He was so good, so sensitive, so generous! And besides, if he should hesitate to do her this service, she would know quite well how to force him by reminding him, with a single glance, of their lost love. She therefore set off toward La Huchette, quite unaware that she was hastening to yield to the very thing that had, only recently, so enraged her, nor in the least suspecting that she was prostituting herself.

She asked herself, as she walked: “What am I going to say? Where will I begin?” And as she came closer, she recognized the shrubs, the trees, the furze on the hill, the château beyond. She found herself experiencing once again the sensations of her first love, and her poor, contracted heart swelled with affection. A warm wind was blowing in her face; the snow, melting, fell drop by drop from the buds onto the grass.

She entered, as she used to, by the little gate into the park, then came to the main courtyard, which was bordered by a double row of thick-leaved lime trees. Their branches swayed, whistling. The dogs in the kennel all began to bark, and though the explosion of their voices echoed and reechoed, no one appeared.

She went up the broad, straight staircase, with its wooden banisters, that led to the hallway paved with dusty flagstones onto which many bedrooms opened, one after another, as in a monastery or an inn. His was at the end, at the very back, on the left. When she put her fingers on the latch, her strength suddenly abandoned her. She was afraid he would not be there, she almost wished he would not be, and yet this was her only hope, her last chance for salvation. She collected herself for a minute, and then, strengthening her resolve with a sense of the present necessity, she went in.

He was in front of the fire, his feet against the mantel, smoking a pipe.

“Why, it’s you!” he said, standing up abruptly.

“Yes, it’s me! … Rodolphe, I need your advice.”

And despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to unclench her teeth.

“You haven’t changed, you’re as charming as ever!”

“Oh—my charms!” she said bitterly. “They must be wretched enough, my dear friend, since you chose to reject them.”

Then he started in upon an explanation of his behavior, excusing himself in vague terms, since he could not invent something better.

She allowed herself to be persuaded by his words, even more by his voice and by the sight of his person, so much so that she pretended to believe, or perhaps did believe, the excuse he gave for their break: it was a secret on which the honor and even the life of a third person depended.

“It doesn’t matter!” she said, looking at him sadly. “I suffered a good deal!”

He answered philosophically:

“Life is like that!”

“Has it been good to you, at least,” Emma went on, “since we separated?”

“Oh! Neither good … nor bad …”

“Perhaps it would have been better if we’d never left each other.”

“Yes … perhaps!”

“Do you think so?” she said, moving closer to him.

And she sighed:

“Oh, Rodolphe! If you only knew! … I really loved you!”

It was then that she took his hand, and they remained for some time with their fingers intertwined—as on the first day, at the Agricultural Fair! Pride was making him struggle against his feelings of tenderness. But, leaning against his chest, she said to him:

“How did you expect me to live without you? One can’t break the habit of being happy, you know! I was desperate! I thought I was going to die! I’ll tell you about it; you’ll see how it was. And you … you stayed away from me! …”

Because he had indeed carefully avoided her, for the past three years, out of that natural cowardice characteristic of the stronger sex; and Emma went on, with enchanting little motions of her head, more winning than an amorous cat:

“You’ve loved other women, admit it. Oh, I understand them, you
know! I forgive them; you probably seduced them, the way you seduced me. You’re a man! Everything about you would make a woman cherish you. But you and I will start all over again, won’t we? We’ll love each other! See, I’m laughing, I’m happy! … Say something, won’t you?”

And she was ravishing to look at, a tear trembling in her eye like water from a rainstorm in the blue chalice of a flower.

He drew her down on his knees, and with the back of his hand he caressed her smooth bands of hair, where, in the light of dusk, a last ray of sunlight gleamed like an arrow of gold. She bowed her head; at last he kissed her on the eyelids, very gently, with the tips of his lips.

“But you’ve been crying!” he said. “Why?”

She burst into sobs. Rodolphe thought it was from the violence of her love; when she said nothing, he took that silence for a last feeling of modesty, and he exclaimed:

“Ah, forgive me! You’re the only one I care about. I’ve been idiotic and wicked! I love you, I’ll always love you! … What’s the matter? Please tell me!”

He was on his knees.

“Well, then … I’m ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand francs!”

“But … but …,” he said, slowly getting to his feet, a grave expression coming over his features.

“You know,” she went on quickly, “my husband had placed the whole of his fortune with a notary; he ran off. We borrowed; the patients weren’t paying. In fact, the settlement of the estate isn’t done yet; we’ll have something later. But today, because we don’t have three thousand francs, they’re taking possession of our things; it’s happening now, at this very instant; and so, counting on your friendship, I’ve come to you.”

“Ah!” thought Rodolphe, suddenly turning very pale. “That’s why she came!”

At last he said calmly:

“I don’t have it, dear lady.”

He was not lying. If he had had it, he would probably have given it, unpleasant though it usually is to make such handsome gestures: a request for money, of all the tempests that may descend upon love, being the coldest and most profoundly destructive.

At first she went on staring at him for a long moment.

“You don’t have it!”

She said it again several times:

“You don’t have it! … I ought to have spared myself this final humiliation. You never loved me! You’re no better than the rest!”

She was giving herself away, she was destroying herself.

Rodolphe broke in, declaring that he was “hard up” himself.

“Oh, I’m sorry for you!” said Emma. “I’m so sorry for you! …”

And, her eyes falling on a damascened rifle shining in a display of arms:

“But when you’re as poor as that, you don’t put silver on the stock of your rifle! You don’t buy a clock with tortoiseshell inlays!” she went on, pointing to the Boulle clock. “Or silver-gilt whistles for your whips”—she touched them—“or watch charms for your watch chain! Oh! he lacks for nothing! There’s even a liqueur stand in his bedroom; for you pamper yourself, you live well, you have a château, farms, woods; you hunt, you travel to Paris … Oh! even these—” she exclaimed, taking his cuff links from the mantelpiece, “the least of your foolish things!—can be turned into money! … Oh! But I don’t want them!—keep them!”

And she hurled the cuff links from her, their gold chain snapping as they struck the wall.

“But I—I would have given you everything, I would have sold everything, I would have worked with my hands, I would have begged by the roadside, for a smile, for a glance, just to hear you say ‘Thank you!’ And you sit there quietly in your chair, as if you hadn’t already made me suffer enough? Without you, you know very well, I could have been happy! What made you do it? Was it a wager? Yet you loved me, you used to say so … And just now you said it again … Ah! you’d have done better to throw me out! My hands are still warm from your kisses, and here’s the very place, on the carpet, where you crouched at my knees and swore you’d love me forever. You made me believe it: for two years, you enticed me along in the most magnificent, the sweetest of dreams! … Oh, yes! and our plans for going away, do you remember? Oh, your letter! Your letter tore my heart to pieces! … And
then, when I come back to him—and he’s rich, and happy, and free!—to implore him for help, help that anyone in the world would give, when I come begging, bringing back all my love, he rejects me, because it would cost him three thousand francs!”

“I don’t have it!” answered Rodolphe with that perfect calm with which resigned anger covers itself like a shield.

She went out. The walls were trembling, the ceiling was crushing her; and she walked back down the long avenue, stumbling over the piles of dead leaves that were scattering in the wind. At last she reached the ditch in front of the gate; she broke her nails on the latch, so frantic was she to open it. Then, a hundred paces farther on, breathless, nearly falling, she stopped. And, turning, she once again saw the impassive château, with its park, its gardens, its three courtyards, the many windows of its façade.

She stood there lost in a daze, no longer aware of herself except through the beating of her arteries, which she thought she could hear outside herself like some deafening music filling the countryside. The earth beneath her feet was softer than a wave, and the furrows seemed to her like immense brown billows unfurling. All that her mind contained of memories and thoughts was pouring out at once, in a single burst, like the thousand parts of a firework. She saw her father, Lheureux’s office, their room back there, another landscape. Madness was stealing over her; she grew frightened and managed to take hold of herself again, though confusedly; for she did not remember the cause of her horrible state of mind, namely, the question of the money. She was suffering only because of her love, and she felt her soul slipping away through the memory of it, just as the wounded, in their last agony, feel the life going out of them through their bleeding wounds.

Night was falling, rooks were flying overhead.

It seemed to her suddenly that little flame-colored globes were exploding in the air like bullets bursting and flattening, and spinning over and over, then melting on the snow, among the branches of the trees. In the center of each, Rodolphe’s face appeared. They were multiplying, coming together, penetrating her; everything vanished. She recognized the lights of the houses, shining from a distance through the mist.

At once her situation, like an abyss, appeared before her. She was panting as if her ribs might break. Then, in an ecstasy of heroism that filled her almost with joy, she ran down the hillside, across the plank bridge, on down the path and the alley, and across the marketplace, and came to the front of the pharmacist’s shop.

No one was there. She was about to go in; but, at the sound of the shop’s bell, someone might come; and so, slipping through the gate,
holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she went as far as the door to the kitchen, where a candle set on the stove was burning. Justin, in shirtsleeves, was carrying out a dish.

“Ah! They’re having dinner. Wait.”

He returned. She tapped on the window. He came outside.

“The key! The one for upstairs, where the …”

“What?”

And he looked at her, astonished by the pallor of her face, which stood out white against the black background of the night. She seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful, and as majestic as a phantom; without understanding what she wanted, he had a foreboding of something terrible.

But she went on quickly, in a low voice, a voice that was soft, melting:

“I want it! Give it to me.”

The wall was thin, and one could hear the clattering of the forks on the plates in the dining room.

She claimed she needed to kill some rats that were stopping her from sleeping.

“I ought to let Monsieur know.”

“No! Stay here!”

Then, with a casual air:

“Oh, it’s not worth bothering, I’ll tell him myself later. Come on, light the way for me!”

She went into the hallway onto which the laboratory door opened. Hanging against the wall was a key labeled
capharnaum.

“Justin!” shouted the apothecary, who was growing impatient.

“Let’s go up!”

And he followed her.

The key turned in the lock, and she went straight to the third shelf, so well did her memory guide her, seized the blue jar, wrenched out the cork, thrust in her hand, and, withdrawing it full of white powder, began to eat it.

“Stop!” he cried, throwing himself on her.

“Be quiet! Someone might come …”

He was in despair and wanted to call out.

“Don’t say anything about it. All the blame would fall on your master!”