Madame Bovary (50 page)

The church clock struck two. The deep murmur of the stream could be heard as it flowed past in the darkness at the bottom of the terrace. Monsieur Bournisien, from time to time, would blow his nose loudly, and Homais’s pen was scratching over the paper.

“Come now, my good friend,” he said, “you mustn’t stay. The sight of her is tearing you apart!”

When Charles had gone, the pharmacist and the curé resumed their arguments.

“Read Voltaire!” one was saying; “read d’Holbach, read the
Encyclopedia
!”

“Read the
Letters of Some Portuguese Jews
!” the other was saying; “read the
Proof of Christianity
, by the former magistrate Nicholas!”

They were becoming heated, they were red in the face, they were both talking at once without listening to each other; Bournisien was scandalized by such audacity; Homais marveled at such stupidity; and they were almost on the point of trading insults when Charles suddenly reappeared. He was drawn by a sort of fascination. He kept coming back up the stairs.

He positioned himself facing her so as to see her better, and he sank into a contemplation so profound that it was no longer painful.

He recalled stories about catalepsy, about the miracles of magnetism; and he told himself that by straining his will to the utmost, he could perhaps succeed in reviving her. Once he even leaned over toward her and cried out very softly: “Emma! Emma!” His breath, forcefully expelled, made the candle flames flicker against the wall.

At first light, the elder Madame Bovary arrived; when Charles embraced her, he overflowed in tears again. She tried, as the pharmacist had, to say something to him about the funeral expenses. He flew into such a rage that she fell silent, and he even told her to go into the city immediately to buy what was needed.

Charles remained alone all afternoon: Berthe had been taken to Madame Homais; Félicité was staying upstairs, in the bedroom, with Mère Lefrançois.

In the evening, he received visitors. He would stand up, shake them by the hand, incapable of speaking; then each would sit down next to the others, forming a wide semicircle in front of the fireplace. Faces bowed and legs crossed, they would bob their feet, uttering a heavy sigh from time to time; and all of them were bored beyond measure; yet none would be the first to leave.

When Homais returned at nine o’clock (for the past two days he had been seen constantly crossing the Square), he was carrying a supply of
camphor, benzoin, and aromatic herbs. He had also brought a vase full of chlorine, to drive out the miasmas. Just then, the servant, Madame Lefrançois, and Mère Bovary were circling around Emma, finishing dressing her; now they lowered the long, stiff veil, which covered her down to her satin shoes.

Félicité was sobbing:

“Oh, my poor mistress! My poor mistress!”

“Look at her,” the innkeeper was saying with a sigh. “How pretty she is, still! You’d swear she’d be getting up any moment now.”

Then they leaned over to put on her wreath.

They had to lift her head a little, and at that a stream of black liquid ran out of her mouth like vomit.

“Oh, my Lord! The dress—be careful!” exclaimed Madame Lefrançois. “Help us, can’t you!” she said to the pharmacist. “You’re not afraid, are you?”

“I, afraid?” he replied, shrugging. “Well, now! I’ve seen others before this, at the Hôtel-Dieu, when I was studying pharmacy! We used to make punch in the dissection hall! The void doesn’t frighten a rationalist; in fact, as I often say, I intend to leave my body to the hospitals, so that later I can be of service to Science.”

When he arrived, the Curé asked how Monsieur was doing; and at the apothecary’s reply he said:

“The shock, you understand, is still too recent!”

Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other men, to the risk of losing a beloved companion; whence there followed a discussion about the celibacy of priests.

“After all,” said the pharmacist, “it’s not natural for a man to do without women! We’ve all heard of crimes …”

“Well, hang it!” exclaimed the clergyman. “How do you expect an individual involved in a marriage to preserve the secrets of the confessional, for example?”

Homais attacked confession. Bournisien defended it; he expatiated on the acts of restitution that resulted from it. He cited various anecdotes concerning thieves who had suddenly turned honest. Soldiers, approaching the tribunal of penitence, had felt the scales fall from their eyes. In Fribourg there was a minister …

His companion was asleep. Then, as he felt a little short of breath, the
air in the room being so heavy, he opened the window, which woke the pharmacist.

“Here, have a pinch of snuff!” he said. “Take it, it clears the head.”

There was a steady barking somewhere off in the distance.

“Do you hear a dog howling?” asked the pharmacist.

“They can smell the dead, people say,” answered the clergyman. “It’s the same with bees: they fly from their hives when people die.” Homais did not challenge these superstitions, for he had fallen asleep again.

Monsieur Bournisien, being more resistant, went on moving his lips very softly for some time; then, imperceptibly, he lowered his chin, let go of his thick black book, and began to snore.

They sat opposite each other, their stomachs out, their faces swollen, both scowling, after so much dissension united, at last, in the same human weakness; and they moved no more than the corpse by their side, which seemed to be asleep.

When Charles came in, he did not wake them. It was the last time. He had come to say his goodbyes to her.

The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and swirls of bluish vapor mingled at the edge of the casement with the mist that was entering. There were a few stars, and the night was mild.

The wax from the tapers was falling in great teardrops onto the sheets of the bed. Charles was watching them burn, tiring his eyes in the radiance of their yellow flames.

The watered satin of her dress was shimmering, as white as moonlight. Emma was disappearing beneath it; and it seemed to him she was spreading out beyond herself, confusedly melting into the things around her, into the silence, the night, the wind passing through, the damp smells rising.

Then, suddenly, he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on the bench, against the thorn hedge, or in the streets of Rouen, on the doorsill of their house, in the farmyard at Les Bertaux. Once again he heard the laughter of the high-spirited boys dancing under the apple trees; the bedroom was full of the fragrance of her hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a sound of sparks. It was this same dress!

He spent a long time like this, remembering all his vanished happiness, her way of sitting and standing, her gestures, the timbre of her voice. One
feeling of despair would be followed by another, on and on, inexhaustibly, like the waves of an overflowing tide.

A terrible curiosity came over him: slowly, with the tips of his fingers, his heart pounding, he lifted her veil. But he cried out in horror, waking the other two. They took him downstairs into the parlor.

Then Félicité came up to say that he was asking for some of her hair.

“Cut some!” replied the apothecary.

And since she did not dare, he stepped forward himself, the scissors in his hand. He was shaking so hard that he punctured the skin of the temples in several places. At last, stiffening himself against his emotion, Homais made two or three large cuts at random, leaving white marks in that lovely head of black hair.

The pharmacist and the curé immersed themselves once again in their occupations, not without dozing off from time to time, something for which they reproached each other each time they woke. Then Monsieur Bournisien would sprinkle the room with holy water and Homais would toss a little chlorine on the floor.

Félicité had taken care to set out for them, on the chest of drawers, a bottle of eau-de-vie, a cheese, and a large brioche. And so the apothecary, who could hold out no longer, said, toward four in the morning, sighing:

“I must confess, I would be happy to partake of a bit of sustenance!”

The clergyman did not need to be coaxed; he went out to say his Mass, came back; then they ate and clinked glasses, chuckling a little, without knowing why, excited by that vague sort of elation that follows periods of sadness; and with the last small glass, the priest said to the pharmacist, patting him on the shoulder:

“We’ll end up being friends yet, one day!”

Downstairs, in the front hall, they met the workers coming in. For two hours, Charles had to submit to the torture of the hammer resounding on the wooden boards. Then they brought her down in her oak coffin, which they set inside the other two; but as the coffin was too wide, they had to fill the gaps with wool from a mattress. At last, when the three covers had been planed, nailed, soldered, she was placed on display before the door; they opened wide the house, and the people of Yonville began to flow in.

Père Rouault arrived. He fainted in the Square when he saw the black cloth.

He had not received the pharmacist’s letter until thirty-six hours after the event; and out of respect for his sensitivity, Monsieur Homais had written it in such a fashion that it was impossible to know what to think.

First the good fellow had collapsed as though stricken by apoplexy. Then he realized that she was not dead. But she could be … At last he had put on his smock, taken up his hat, buckled a spur on his shoe, and ridden off at full speed; and all along the road, Père Rouault, gasping for breath, was consumed with anxiety. Once he even had to get down from his horse. He could no longer see anything, he was hearing voices all around him, he felt he was going mad.

Day dawned. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree; he shuddered, terrified by this omen. Then he promised the Holy Virgin three chasubles for the church and vowed to walk barefoot from the cemetery at Les Bertaux to the chapel in Vassonville.

He entered Maromme hailing the people at the inn, burst open the door with a blow from his shoulder, bounded over to the bag of oats, poured a bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and got back up on his nag, making the sparks fly up from under its hooves.

He told himself they would surely save her; the doctors would certainly find a cure. He recalled all the miraculous recoveries he had heard described.

Then she appeared to him, dead. She was there, in front of him, lying on her back, in the middle of the road. He pulled up on the reins, and the hallucination disappeared.

At Quincampoix, to keep up his courage, he drank three coffees one after the other.

He imagined they had gotten the name wrong when they wrote to him. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt it, but did not dare open it.

It occurred to him eventually that it was perhaps a
joke
, someone’s revenge, something dreamed up by some fellow who had had one too many; after all, if she had died, wouldn’t he know it? But no! there was
nothing extraordinary about the countryside: the sky was blue, the trees were swaying, a flock of sheep went past. He caught sight of the village; they saw him racing ahead, hunched over his horse; he was whipping it hard, and its girth was dripping blood.

When he regained consciousness, he fell weeping into Bovary’s arms:

“My daughter! Emma! My child! Tell me …”

And the other answered, sobbing:

“I don’t know, I don’t know! It’s a curse!”

The apothecary separated them.

“The horrible details are pointless. I’ll explain it to Monsieur. People are coming. Have some dignity, for goodness’ sake! Be rational!”

The poor fellow wanted to appear strong, and he said several times:

“Yes … Be brave!”

“Well, all right, then,” exclaimed the old man, “I will, great God in heaven! I’ll be with her all the way to the end.”

The bell was tolling. Everything was ready. It was time to set out.

And sitting side by side in a choir stall, they watched the three choristers cross back and forth in front of them, chanting. The serpent player was blowing with all his might. Monsieur Bournisien, in full apparel, was singing in a shrill voice; he bowed to the tabernacle, raised his hands, extended his arms. Lestiboudois was circulating through the church with his whalebone staff; near the lectern, the coffin lay between four rows of candles. Charles wanted to get up and put them out.

And yet he was trying to awaken a feeling of piety in himself, to rise to the hope of a future life in which he would see her again. He imagined that she had gone off on a voyage, very far away, a long time ago. But then, when he thought that she was here, under all of this, and that it was all over, that she would be taken away and buried, he was filled with a savage, dark, despairing rage. At moments he thought he no longer felt anything; and he relished the easing of his pain, even as he blamed himself for being a wretch.

Something like the sharp sound of an iron-tipped walking stick was heard striking the flagstones at regular intervals. It came from the back and stopped short in the side aisles of the church. A man in a coarse brown jacket knelt down with difficulty. It was Hippolyte, the stableboy at the Lion d’Or. He had put on his new leg.

One of the choristers came through the nave to take up the collection, and the heavy sous clattered one after another into the silver dish.

“Hurry up, would you! I’m suffering so!” exclaimed Bovary, angrily tossing him a five-franc coin.

The churchman thanked him with a long bow.

They sang, they knelt, they got up again, it was endless! He remembered that once, in the early days, they had attended Mass together, and they had sat on the other side, on the right, against the wall. The bell began tolling again. There was a great movement of chairs. The bearers slipped their three poles under the bier, and everyone left the church.

At that moment Justin appeared in the doorway of the pharmacy. He went back inside suddenly, pale, unsteady.

People stood at their windows to see the procession go past. Charles, at the head, stood very straight. He was putting on a brave front and greeted with a nod those who, emerging from lanes or doorways, joined the ranks of the crowd.