And she detested her instinctively. At first she relieved herself with hints that Charles did not understand, then with parenthetical observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally with open reproaches to which he had no answer - Why did he keep going back to the Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault was healed and that these folks hadn’t paid yet? Ah! it was because a certain person was there, some one who knew how to talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted a town miss! On and on she went —

“The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who almost went to court for giving someone a nasty blow in a quarrel. There was no need for her to put on airs, or show herself in silk at church on Sundays, like a countess. Anyway, if it hadn’t been for last year’s harvest of colza, the poor old fellow would hardly have been able to pay up his arrears.”

For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. After much sobbing, many kisses and a great outburst of love, Héloïse made him swear, with his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more. He obeyed but the force of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive hypocrisy, that this prohibition to see Emma gave him a sort of right to love her. Besides, the widow was thin; she had long teeth; she wore a little black shawl in all kinds of weather, whose fringe hung down dismally from her scrawny shoulders. Her clothes sheathed her bony frame like a scabbard and the skirts were always too short, revealing her ankles. The bootlaces of her large feet were criss-crossed over grey stockings.

Charles’s mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her on edge. They sparred with one another, and then, like two knives, turned on him with their cutting observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much. Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came? What obstinacy not to wear flannels!

Then one fine day the following spring, the notary at Ingouville who had power of attorney over the Widow Dubuc’s property, walked off with all the money in his office. Héloïse, it is true, still possessed, her house in the Rue St. François, besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, but despite all that had been so trumpeted about concerning her fortune, she actually had no household belongings left to her name, apart from a little furniture perhaps, and a few clothes. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found to be riddled with mortgages, eaten up to its very foundations; God only knew what she had actually left in the hands of the notary; and her shares in the boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! Monsieur Bovary, the elder, smashed a chair on the flags in his exasperation. He accused his wife of having ruined their son and caused his misfortune by shackling him to such a harridan. Her harness wasn’t even worth her hide! They came to Tostes. Explanations were demanded. Scenes followed. Héloïse, throwing her arms about her husband in floods of tears, implored him to defend her against his parents.

Charles tried to speak up for her. His parents became angry and left the house.

But “the blow had struck home.” A week later, as she was hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the next day, when Charles was drawing the curtains with his back to her, she suddenly said, “O God!” gave a sigh, and fainted. She was dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Charles went home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!

Chapter Three

One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his leg — seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could.

“I know what it is,” said he, clapping him on the shoulder; “I’ve been through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very idea of going to a café disgusted me — you wouldn’t believe it. Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say — a weight here, at one’s heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d’ye know, and she says you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We’ll have some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit.”

Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again, came and went, making the farm more full of life.

Thinking it his duty to lavish the greatest possible attentions on the doctor because of his sad situation, he begged him not to take his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended to lose his temper because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the memory of his wife suddenly sobered him. Coffee was brought in; he stopped thinking about her.

He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The novel pleasure of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now change his meal-times, go in or out without justification, and when he was very tired, stretch his arms and legs out wide in the bed. So he pampered himself and coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered. What was more, his wife’s death had not served him ill professionally, since people had been saying, “The poor young man! What a loss!” for a whole month. His name had been noised abroad, his practice had increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux whenever he liked. He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking as he brushed his whiskers before the mirror.

He arrived there one day at about three o’clock. Everybody was in the fields. He entered the kitchen, but did not see Emma at first; the outside shutters were closed. The sunshine coming through the chinks of wood sent long fine rays across the floor that were refracted by the angles of the furniture and shimmered on the ceiling. Flies were crawling up the dirty glasses on the table, buzzing as they dropped and drowned in the dregs of cider. The daylight coming down the chimney flue transformed the soot to velvet at the back of the fireplace, and made the cold cinders look blue. Between the window and the hearth, Emma sat sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders.

She offered him something to drink, after the fashion of country folk. He declined; she insisted. At last, saying with a laugh that she would have a glass of liqueur with him, she fetched a bottle of curaçao from the cupboard and bringing down two small glasses, filled one to the brim while pouring scarcely anything into the other. Then, having clinked glasses with him, she lifted hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty, she had to lean back to drink, with her head tipped, her neck stretched, her lips in a pout. She giggled when nothing reached her, and passing the tip of her tongue between her small teeth, licked drop by drop from the bottom of her glass.

She sat down again after that and took up the white cotton stocking she was darning. She worked with her head bent; she did not speak, nor did Charles. The draft of air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard. From time to time, Emma cooled her cheeks with the palms of her hands, and then chilled them on the iron knobs of the great fire-dogs.

She complained of suffering from vertigo since the beginning of the season; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They went up to her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf wreathes collected at the bottom of a cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother’s tomb. But the gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid! She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town, although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.

Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her. Then he asked himself what would become of her — if she would be married, and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she! — so beautiful! But Emma’s face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the humming of a top, sounded in his ears, “What if you were to get married? What if you should marry!” At night he could not sleep; his throat was parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his face towards the Bertaux.

Thinking that, after all, he had nothing to lose, Charles promised himself to pop the question as soon as the opportunity arose, but each time it did arise, fear of not finding the proper words sealed his lips.

Old Rouault would not have minded being relieved of his daughter, who was of no use to him in the house. But in his heart he excused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a calling accursed of Heaven, since no millionaire was ever seen in it. Far from having made a fortune, the good man was losing every year; for while he was good at bargaining and enjoyed the dodges of trade, agriculture proper on the other hand, and the internal management of the farm, suited him less than most. He did not willingly take his hands out of his pockets, and spared no expense when it came to himself, liking to eat well, sleep well and the indulgences of a good fire. He enjoyed hard cider, a rare leg of lamb, and glorias well beaten. He took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, served up to him on a little table all ready laid, just like in the theatre.

And so when he noticed Charles’s cheeks turning red when he was near his daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days, he pondered the matter ahead of time. He certainly thought him a little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of “his property,” as he owed a great deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, “If he asks for her,” he said to himself, “I’ll give her to him.”

At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux.

The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it —

“Monsieur Rouault,” he murmured, “I should like to say something to you.”

They stopped. Charles was silent.

“Well, tell me what’s on your mind. Don’t I know all about it already?” said old Rouault, laughing softly.

“Monsieur Rouault — Monsieur Rouault,” stammered Charles.

“I ask nothing better,” the farmer went on. “Although, no doubt, the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get off — I’ll go back home. If it is ‘yes’, you needn’t return because of all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so that you mayn’t be eating your heart, I’ll open wide the outer shutter of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over the hedge.”

And he went off.

Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited. Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch. Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown back; the hook was still swinging.

The next day by nine o’clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.

The winter passed in expectation of it. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after the fashion patterns that she borrowed. When Charles visited the farmer, the wedding preparations were discussed; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of dishes that would be served, and what should be the entrées.

Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following.

Chapter Four

The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany.

All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between friends resolved, letters written to acquaintances long lost from sight.

From time to time there was the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, in bonnets, were wearing dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pèlerines with the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down behind with a pin, that left the napes of their necks bare.
The lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many wearing their very first pair of boots that day), and by their sides, breathing never a word, in the white dress of a first communion lengthened for the occasion, was some big girl of fourteen or sixteen, a cousin or elder sister no doubt, red-faced, open-mouthed, hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying her gloves.
As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. According to their different social positions, they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter’s hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses — that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt.

And shirts bulged out from chests like breastplates! Everyone had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they’d been close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and had not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were mottled here and there with red dabs.

The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at its pegs. Then came the bride and the groom, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children lagged behind, amusing themselves by plucking the oat-bells from their stalks, or playing out of sight. Emma’s dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledown, while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands all the way down to his nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary the elder. As for Monsieur Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folks, had come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons — he was delivering bar room compliments to a blond young peasant woman. She bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their business or played tricks behind each other’s backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. The noise of the instrument put the little birds to flight.

The table had been set up under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins of roast beef, six fricassées of chicken, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four sausage chitterlings flavored with sorrel. At the corners stood decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim beforehand, with wine. Large dishes of yellow cream, that quivered at the least shake of the table, displayed on their smooth surfaces the initials of the newly wedded pair in arabesques of nonpareil. A confectioner of Yvetot had been entrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just started up business, he had taken a lot of trouble, and brought in the dessert dish himself, to cries of wonderment. First, at its base, there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all around, and in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second tier, was a castle of Savoy sponge cake, surrounded by tiny fortifications in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and orange quarters; and finally, on the topmost tier, a green field with rocks, lakes of jam, and hazelnut boats, and a small Cupid balancing in a chocolate swing whose two poles ended in real rosebuds for knobs.

They ate till nightfall. When any of them tired of sitting, they went out for a stroll in the yard, or played a game with corks in the barn before returning to table. Some fell asleep outright and snored towards the end. But the coffee roused everyone. Then they broke into song, showed off their muscles, raised heavy weights, performed feats with their fingers and thumbs, then tried lifting carts onto their shoulders, made vulgar jokes, kissed the ladies. At night when it was time to leave, the horses, gorged to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be fitted into their shafts; they kicked, they reared, the harnesses broke, their masters laughed or swore; and all through the night under the light of the moon along country roads there were runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, leaping over yards of gravel, clinging to the sides of embankments, with women leaning out of the doors to catch hold of the reins.

Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen. The children had fallen asleep under the benches.

The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual wedding pranks. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even brought a pair of soles as a present), was just about to squirt water from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in time to stop him, explaining that the distinguished position of his son-in-law would not allow for such liberties. The cousin, however, did not submit readily to these reasons. In his heart, he accused old Rouault of being proud, and joining four or five other guests in a corner, who having by chance been served with the worst cuts of meat several times running and being also of the opinion that they had been poorly treated, muttered against their host, quietly hoping he would ruin himself.

Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This inspired even greater respect for him.

Charles, who was not a wit by nature, did not shine at the wedding. He answered feebly to the quips, the puns, the doubles entendres, and compliments, the chaff that people felt duty bound to level at him from the moment soup was served.

The next day, however, he seemed another man. It was he who might have been taken for the virgin of the evening before, whilst the bride gave no hint of anything to anyone. Even the shrewdest did not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed near them with an unbounded concentration. But Charles concealed nothing. He called her “my wife”, tu-toyéd her, asked for her of everyone, looked for her everywhere, and often dragged her out into the grounds where he could be seen from afar between the trees, walking with her, putting his arm around her waist, and half-bending over her, his head rumpling the lace of her chemisette.

Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way. When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh. Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head, he saw her near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face smiling silently under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went right away home.

Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o’clock.

The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor’s new wife.

The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not having dinner ready, and suggested that Madame, in the meantime, should look over her house.

Chapter Five

The brick house front was flush with the street, or rather the road. Behind the door hung a narrow collared cloak, a bridle, and a black leather cap, and on the floor, in the corner, a pair of leggings, still covered with dry mud. On the right, was the parlor that was both a dining and sitting room. The canvas of the poorly stretched, canary yellow wallpaper, set off at the top with swags of pale flowers, was puckered along its entire length; white calico curtains bordered with red braid hung crossways over the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece sat resplendent a pendulum clock with a head of Hippocrates between two silver plated candlesticks under oval shades. On the other side of the hallway was Charles’s consulting room, a small room about six paces wide, with a table, three seats, and an office chair. Volumes of the Dictionary of Medical Science, uncut, but with binding that was rather the worse for the successive sales through which they had gone, filled the six shelves of a pine bookcase almost entirely.

The smell of melted butter and sauce penetrated the walls of the consultation room, just as people coughing and recounting their medical histories could be heard in the kitchen.

Then, opening directly into the yard with its stable was a large derelict room with a stove, now used as a woodshed, cellar, and store, full of old pieces of ironware, empty barrels, disused gardening tools, and a quantity of other dusty things whose function it was impossible to guess.

The garden, longer than it was wide, extended between two mud walls covered with espaliered apricots to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field beyond. In the middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four symmetrical flower beds filled with spindly wild roses surrounded the more useful kitchen garden. At the far end, under the spruce bushes, stood a plaster curé reading his breviary.

Emma went up to the bedrooms. The first was not furnished, but the second, which was the conjugal bedroom, contained a mahogany bedstead in an alcove hung with red drapes. A box made of seashells adorned the chest of drawers, and on the writing desk near the window, there stood, in a carafe, a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin ribbons. It was a bridal bouquet: — the other woman’s. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he picked it up and carried it off to the attic, while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were unpacking her things around her) thought of her bridal flowers tucked away in a bandbox, and wondered, dreamily, what would be done with them if she were to die.

During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wallpaper put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out, picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.

He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together, a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, beside her on the pillow, he watched the sunlight catching the down on her fair cheek, half hidden by the flaps of her night-cap. Seen that close, her eyes looked even larger to him, especially when she blinked rapidly several times, on waking up. Black in shadow, dark blue in broad daylight, they seemed to contain depths of layered colour, dark deep down and growing lighter and lighter towards the enameled surface. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geraniums, with her dressing gown hanging loosely about her. Charles, in the street, would be buckling his spurs, his foot on the guard stone, while she talked to him from above, tearing off with her teeth and blowing down to him some scraps of flower or leaf, which eddying, floating, made half circles in the air like a bird, till caught, before reaching the ground, in the ill-combed mane of the old white mare, standing motionless at the door. Charles on horseback would send her a kiss; she would answer with a wave, then close the window, and he would set off. And then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes over which the trees bent like an arbour, along paths where the corn reached up to his knees, with the sun shining on his back and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his spirit at peace, his flesh content, he would ride on, ruminating over his happiness, like a man continuing to chew after dinner the truffles he is digesting.

Up to now what good had he had in life? His time at school? When he remained shut within those high walls, alone among companions richer or better at studies than he, who laughed at his accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school with pastries in their muffs? Or later on, when he studied medicine? With never enough in his purse to treat some little working girl who would have become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he possessed this beautiful woman, for always, whom he utterly adored. For him the universe did not extend beyond the silky circumference of her petticoats, and he reproached himself for not loving her enough. Longing to see her again, he would turn back quickly, run up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing; he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.

He could not refrain from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her fichu; sometimes he gave her great full-lipped resounding kisses on her cheeks, or else a string of little ones all along her bare arm, from the tips of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she would push him away half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do to a child who hangs about you too much.

Before marriage, she had thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have resulted from this love not having followed, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out just what was meant exactly in life by the words “felicity”, “passion”, “rapture”, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.

Chapter Six

She had read Paul et Virginie, and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the Negro Domingo, the dog Fidèle, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird’s nest.

When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quartier, where they were served their supper on painted plates that depicted the story of Mademoiselle de la Vallière. The explanatory legends, chipped here and there and scratched by knives, all glorified religion, tenderness of heart, and the splendour of Court.

Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire’s difficult questions. Living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she would gaze at the pious vignettes in her prayer book, with their azure borders, and she loved the sick lamb, the Sacred Heart pierced with sharp arrows, or poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he was carrying. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing for a whole day. She puzzled her head for some vow to fulfill.

When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The metaphors that recurred in sermons of “betrothed”, “husband”, “celestial lover”, and “marriage everlasting”, stirred unexpectedly sweet sensations in the depths of her soul.

In the evening, before prayers, some religious work was read aloud in Study Hall. During the week, it was an abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbé Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the Génie du Christianisme, as a recreation. How intensely she listened at first to these sonorous lamentations of romantic melancholy re-echoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlour of some commercial sector of town, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us through writers’ translations, in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the bleating of flocks, the lowing of cattle, the milking, the plowing.

Accustomed to the calm aspects of life, she turned, instead, towards the more tumultuous ones. She loved the sea only for its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins.

She wanted to derive some personal gain from things, and — being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, in search of emotions rather than landscapes — rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate gratification of her heart.

At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew love songs of the last century off by heart, and sang them in a low voice as she plied her needle.

She told stories, brought news, did errands in the town, and on the sly, lent the older girls some of the novels she always carried in her apron pockets, whole chapters of which the good lady would devour herself in the intervals of her work. They were always and only about love, about lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, troubled hearts, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, “gentlemen” brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever is, always well dressed, and weeping like tombstone urns. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, soiled her hands with books from old lending libraries.

Later, with Walter Scott, she became enamored of things historical, dreamed of studded leather chests, of guard-rooms and wandering minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the trefoiled shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone sill, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from across the distant fields. At this time she worshipped Mary Stuart and felt an ardent veneration for illustrious or ill-fated women. Joan of Arc, Héloïse, Agnès Sorel, La Belle Ferronière, and Clémence Isaure stood out, for her, like comets in the dark immensity of history, where there could also be glimpsed, here and there but less visible in the shadows, and quite unrelated, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, certain atrocities of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew’s Day, the plume of the Béarnais, and always the memory of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV.

In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagoons, gondoliers — mild compositions that allowed her to glimpse through the silliness of the style and the weakness of the music, the enticing phantasmagoria of real feelings. Some of her companions brought keepsake albums back to the convent given to them as New Year’s presents. These had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts.

She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. Some were shown lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white knee breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas beside an unsealed letter, would be gazing at the moon through a window, slightly ajar and half draped by a black curtain. Innocents, with a tear on their cheeks, would kiss the beak of a turtledove through the bars of a Gothic birdcage, or, smiling, their heads practically on their shoulders, would be plucking the leaves off a daisy with tapering fingers that curved at the tips like Turkish slippers. And you were there too, you Sultans with long pipes swooning under the arbors in the arms of bayadères; Giaours, Turkish sabres, Greek fezzes; and you especially, wan panoramas of dithyrambic lands, that often reveal to us both palm trees and pines, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon, Roman ruins in the foreground, then crouching camels; — the whole framed by a tidy virgin forest, with a great perpendicular sunbeam shimmering on the water, where, standing out in relief like white scratches on a steel-grey ground, swans swim about.

And the shade of the Argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma’s head lit up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one after the other in the silence of the dormitory, to the distant clatter of some belated hackney cab still rolling along the Boulevards.

When her mother died she cried a great deal for the first few days. She had a memorial picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sorrowful reflections on life, she asked to be buried in the same grave, later on. The good man thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at her first attempt, that rare ideal of pale lives never to be attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself slide into Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to the song of every dying swan, to the fall of every leaf, to pure virgins rising to the heavens and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, then out of vanity, and was surprised at last to feel herself quite soothed, and with no more sadness in her heart than wrinkles on her brow.

The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed lavished upon her so many prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as horses do when too tightly reined; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This nature of hers, pragmatic in the midst of its enthusiasms, loving the church for its flowers, music for the words of the songs, and literature for its power to stir the passions, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as she grew increasingly irritated by discipline, which was antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Mother Superior even thought that she had lately become somewhat irreverent towards the community.
Once back at home, Emma first took pleasure in ordering the servants about, then grew sick of the country and missed her convent. When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel.

But her impatience for change, or perhaps her nervous excitation caused by the presence of this man, was enough to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, had hovered like a great rosy-feathered bird in the splendour of poetic skies; — and now she could not believe that the calm in which she lived was the happiness of which she had dreamed.

Chapter Seven

She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life — the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, she would doubtless have had to fly off to those lands with sonorous names where the days after a wedding would be full of soft ease and indolence. Riding slowly up steep roads in a post chaise under blue silk curtains; listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the tinkle of goat bells and the muffled sound of a waterfall; breathing in the perfume of lemon trees at sunset, along the shore of some bay; then in the evening on the terrace of a villa, gazing up at the stars hand in hand and making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to that soil, which cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could she not lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her — the opportunity, the courage.

If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once read her thoughts, it seemed to her that a sudden abundance would have spilled out from her heart, as the ripe fruit falls from a tree at the touch of a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater she felt the gulf to be that separated them.

Charles’s conversation was as flat as a pavement, and everyone’s ideas passed over it in ordinary, everyday clothes, without exciting any emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel.

But shouldn’t a man know everything, excel in all manner of activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all kinds of mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.

Sometimes she would draw; and it fascinated Charles to stand there bolt upright and watch her bending over her pad, with eyes half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling little bread-pellets between her fingers. As for the piano, the faster her fingers flashed across it the more he marveled. She struck the notes with aplomb, and raced from the top to the bottom of the keyboard without a break. Under this kind of assault, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the far end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff’s clerk, passing along the main road, bare-headed and in felt slippers, would pause to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.

Emma, on the other hand, knew how to manage her house. She sent the patients’ their accounts in well-phrased letters that gave no hint of being a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she was able to present the dishes in a stylish manner, could pile up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves, serve preserves turned out onto plates, and even spoke of buying mouth-rinsing glasses for the dessert. All this caused much consideration to be extended to Bovary.

Charles began to rise in his own esteem for possessing such a wife. He showed off her two small pencil sketches with pride in the parlour, which he had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at his door in his fine tapestried slippers.

He came home late — at ten o’clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited on him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay on his back and snored.

As he had long been accustomed to wearing nightcaps, his scarf would not stay over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was all tumbled and tousled about his face and whitened with down from the pillow whose strings came undone during the night. He always wore thick boots, with two long creases over the instep running obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that “was quite good enough for the country.”

His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly when there had been some violent row at her place; and yet Madame Bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought “her ways too fine and fancy for their means”; the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappeared “as if this was a grand house,” and the amount of charcoal used in the kitchen would have been enough to cook for twenty-five! She re-ordered her linens for her in the press, and instructed her to keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words “daughter” and “mother” were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger.

In Madame Dubuc’s time the old woman had felt that she was still the favorite; but now Charles’ love for Emma seemed like a desertion of her affection, an encroachment on what was hers, and she stared at her son’s happiness in sad silence, like a ruined man gazes at people dining through the windows of his old house. She reminded him, through recollections of the past, of her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with Emma’s negligence, tried to show him that it was unreasonable to adore her so exclusively.

Charles did not know what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madame Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his patients.

And yet, in accordance with theories she believed right, she wanted to try to be in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.

After making several attempts like this to strike the flint against her heart without getting a single spark, incapable as she was, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience, as of believing anything that did not assume conventional expression, she persuaded herself without much difficulty that Charles’s passion was nothing so extraordinary. His effusions were predictable; he embraced her at fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner.

A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of congestion of the lungs, had given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her on walks, for she did sometimes go out in order to be alone for a while, and not have to just stare at the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amid the grasses of the deep ditch there, grew tall reeds with sharp, cutting edges.

She began by looking around her to see if anything had changed since the last time she had come. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield.

Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to herself, “Good heavens! Why did I marry?”

She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would have not been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would have been these unrealised events, this different life, this unknown husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the lights of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands, the senses bourgeon out. But she — her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows; the music master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all of this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long delicate head, saying, “Come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles.”

Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.

Occasionally there were sudden gusts of wind, squalls from the sea sweeping over the whole plateau of the Caux country, bringing a salt freshness even as far as these fields. The rushes were pressed to the ground, and whistled; the trembling beech leaves rustled round her, while the tree tops, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur overhead. Emma would pull her shawl tight round her shoulders and rise.

A green light in the lane dimmed by the leaves lit up the smooth moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky glowed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, all uniform, all planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out against a background of gold. A fear would take sudden hold of her; she would call Djali, hurriedly return to Tostes by the main road, throw herself into an armchair, and for the rest of the evening, say nothing.

But towards the end of September, something extraordinary occurred in her life; she was invited by the Marquis d’Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.

Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to re-enter political life, had set about preparing for his candidature to the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In winter, he distributed large amounts of firewood, and at the Conseil Général always enthusiastically demanded new roads for his district. During the dog-days of summer, he had suffered from an abscess, which Charles had miraculously cured, by giving it a timely little touch of the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some superb cherries in the doctor’s little garden. Now cherry trees did not thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some cuttings; made it his business to thank him personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty figure, and noticed that she did not greet him like a peasant; so that it was decided, at the château, that it would not be going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other hand, be making a gaffe, to invite the young couple.

On Wednesday at three o’clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles held a bandbox between his knees.

They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lit to show the way for the carriages.

Chapter Eight

The château, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the far end of an immense green-sward, on which a few cows were grazing among widely-spaced clumps of tall trees, while bouquets of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses raised irregular tufts of green along the curve of the gravel drive. A river flowed under a bridge; through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping, wooded hills, and in the back, in two parallel lines amid the groves of trees stood the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the old ruined château.

Charles’s dog-cart pulled up before the central flight of steps; servants appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering his arm to the doctor’s wife, conducted her to the entrance hall.

It was paved with marble flagstones and very lofty; the sound of footsteps and voices echoed through it as in a church.

Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the drawing room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore medals, and smiled silently as they made their shots.

Against the dark wainscoting of the walls hung large gilded frames bearing names written in black letters along their lower edges. She read: “Jean-Antoine d’Andervilliers d’Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October, 1587.” And on another: “Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d’Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693.” One could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the horizontal canvases, it broke over them in delicate lines where cracks appeared in the varnish, and from all these great black squares framed in gold, stood out here and there some lighter portion of the painting — a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, powdery wigs flowing over red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf.

The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the Marquise herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.

At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down at the first table in the entrance hall; the ladies at the second in the dining room with the Marquis and Marquise.

Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silver dish covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal glasses, suffused with a light mist, cast pale gleams across to each other; bouquets of flowers lined the whole length of the table; and in the broad-rimmed plates, each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop’s mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the platters; rich fruit in open baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; steam was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and frilled shirt, the butler, grave as a judge, serving ready carved dishes between the shoulders of the guests, offered you, with a touch of the spoon, the piece you had chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with copper bands, the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room full of life.