One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and that she would get through it very well.

They began slowly, then went faster. They turned; all around them was turning — the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like a disk on a spindle. On passing near the doors the hem of Emma’s dress caught against his trousers.

Their legs became entangled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands.

When she opened them again, she saw three of the waltzers kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool in the middle of the room.

She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.

Everyone watched them. They passed and re-passed, she with her body immobile, her chin lowered, and he always in the same position, his back arched, his elbow rounded, his jaw thrust forward. That woman knew how to waltz! They kept it up for a long time, and wore out all the other dancers.

Then people chatted idly a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or rather good mornings, the guests of the château retired to bed.

Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His “knees were giving way.” He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots.

Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.

The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still throbbing in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would have to give up all too soon.

Day was breaking. She looked at the windows of the château for a long time, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the night before. She would have liked to know their lives, to have entered into them, become a part of them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and curled up between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.

There were a great many people at breakfast. The meal lasted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor.

Afterwards, Mademoiselle d’Andervilliers collected some pieces of brioche in a small basket to take to the swans on the ornamental pond, and they strolled in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases that were like nests seething with serpents, and from which fell long, green tangled ropes. The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the château. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables.

Above the basket-shaped racks, porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when anyone clicked his tongue nearby — “Tchk! tchk!” The floor boards of the saddle room shone like drawing room parquet. The carriage harness was piled up in the middle against two revolving posts, and the bits, the whips, the stirrups and curb chains, were all lined up along the wall.

Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to please harness his horse. The dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the bundles being stowed inside, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and Marquise and set out again for Tostes.

Emma watched the wheels turn in silence. Charles, sitting on the edge of his seat, held the reins with arms apart, and the little horse ambled along between shafts that were too wide. The slack reins slapped against its rump wet with foam, and the box fastened behind bumped against the dog-cart with loud, regular thuds.

They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen with cigars between their lips rode past, laughing. Emma thought she recognized the Viscount: she turned back but could only catch the movement of their heads on the horizon, rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop.

A mile farther on they had to stop to mend the traces that had broken, with some rope.

But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the ground between his horse’s legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a green silk border and emblazoned in the centre like the door of a carriage.

“There are even two cigars in it,” said he; “they’ll do for this evening after dinner.”

“Why, do you smoke?” she asked.

“Sometimes, when I get a chance.”

He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.

When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper. Nastasie answered rudely.

“Get out!” said Emma. “You are impertinent! I’m giving you notice.”

For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.

Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.

“How good it is to be at home again!”

Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place.

“Have you given her notice for good?” he asked at last.

“Yes. Who is to prevent me?” she replied.

Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding, spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.

“You’ll make yourself ill,” she said scornfully.

He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back of the cupboard.

How long the next day was! She walked about her little garden, up and down the same paths, stopping before the flower beds, before the espalier, before the plaster curé, looking with amazement at all these things of the past that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed already! What was it that had put such a distance between the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like one of those great chasms that a storm will sometimes cause to appear in the mountains in a single night. Still she was resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced.

The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma.

Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, “Ah! I was there a week — a fortnight — three weeks ago.”

And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance.

She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and apartments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained.

Chapter Nine

Often when Charles was away, she would take out the green silk cigar case from the cupboard, where she had left it between the folds of the linen. She would look at it, open it, and even smell the odour of the lining — a mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount’s? Perhaps it was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on a rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, that had occupied many hours hidden from all eyes, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away with him. What had people said, seeing it lying on one of those wide mantelpieces, between the flower-vases and the Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at Paris now, out there, far away! What was it like, this Paris? What a vague, vast name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even on the labels of her pomade-pots.

At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts singing the “Marjolaine,” she awoke, and listened to the noise of the iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon deadened by the soil. “They’ll be there to-morrow!” she said to herself.

And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into which her dream died.

She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles of theatres.

She subscribed to La Corbeille, a lady’s journal, and the Sylphe des Salons. She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirées, took interest in the debut of a singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In Eugène Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires. Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages while Charles ate and talked. The memory of the Viscount always returned as she read. She compared him to the invented characters. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened round him, and the aura, fading from his figure, rippled beyond him casting gleams over her other dreams.

Paris, vaster than the ocean, glimmered before Emma’s eyes in a crimson haze. The myriad lives that stirred amid this tumult were, however, divided into separate parts and classified into distinct portraits. Emma perceived only two or three that concealed the rest, and represented all of humanity to her. The world of ambassadors moved over polished floors in drawing rooms lined with mirrors, circling around oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There the dresses trailed long trains, mysteries were deep, anguish was hidden under smiles. Then came the society of the duchesses; this one was pale; that one rose at four o’clock; the women, poor angels, wore Brussels lace on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous exterior, rode horses to death for the sheer pleasure of it, spent the summer season at Baden, and married heiresses in their forties. In the private rooms of restaurants, where one supped after midnight, the motley crowd of artists, men of letters and actresses, would laugh by candlelight. They were as prodigal as kings, full of idealistic ambitions, fantastic frenzies. Theirs was an existence elevated above others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of storm clouds, like something sublime. As for the rest of the world, it was lost, non-existent, with no particularity or place. The nearer things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. All her immediate surroundings — the wearisome country, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence — seemed to her an exception, a peculiar mischance that had caught hold of her, while beyond it stretched, as far as the eye could see, an immense land of felicity and passion. In her desire, she confused the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, the elegance of manners with the delicacy of feeling. Didn’t love, like some plant from India, require a special soil, a particular temperature? Sighs by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielding hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, from well-filled flower-stands and a bed raised on a dais, or from the flashing of precious stones and the shoulder-knots of servants’ liveries.

The lad from the posting house who came to groom the mare every morning plodded through the hall in his heavy wooden clogs; he had holes in his smock and bare feet in his slippers. And this was the groom in knee-breeches with whom she had to be content! His work done, he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return stabled the horse himself, took off the saddle and put on the halter, while the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and heaved it, as best as she could, into the manger.

To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face. She forbade her to wear cotton caps, taught her to address her in the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her — in an attempt to turn her into a lady’s-maid. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not to be sent away; and as Madame usually left the key in the sideboard, Félicité would help herself to a small supply of sugar which she ate alone in bed after she had said her evening prayers.

Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions.

Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice, a pleated chemisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with heavy tassels, and she wore small garnet coloured slippers with a large cluster of ribbons that flopped over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting pad, a writing case, a pen-holder, and envelopes, though she had no one to write to; she dusted her shelves, looked at herself in the mirror, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop to her knees. She longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wanted both to die and to live in Paris.

Charles trotted across the countryside through snow and through rain. He ate omelettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he would return to a blazing fire, a ready dinner, a soft chair, and a woman dressed with such elegance, such charm, and with such an odour of freshness about her, that one could hardly say where the fragrance came from, or if it were not her very skin that perfumed her chemise.

Her numerous niceties enchanted him; now it was some new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles, then a flounce that she altered on her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore clusters of charms on their watches; she bought some for hers. After that, she wanted two large blue glass vases for her mantelpiece, and some time later, an ivory nécéssaire with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life.

He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established.

The country-folk genuinely loved him because he was not proud. He petted the children, never went to taverns, and, moreover, inspired confidence with his morals. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact only prescribed sedatives, from time to time an emetic, a footbath, or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the “devil’s own wrist.”

Finally, to keep up with the times, he subscribed to La Ruche Médicale, a new journal whose prospectus had been sent to him. He read a little after dinner, but in about five minutes the warmth of the room added to the effects of digestion, sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was her husband not one of those men of taciturn passion who work at their books all night, and who, by the time rheumatism finally sets in, at the age of sixty, might be wearing a row of decorations on their ill-fitting black coats? She would have liked this name of Bovary, which was hers, to become famous, to see it displayed at the booksellers’, echoed in the newspapers, known across all France. But Charles had no ambition.

An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives. When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma inveighed loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.

“What a man! What a man!” she said in a low voice, biting her lips.

Besides, she was becoming increasingly irritated with him. With age, his manners were getting coarser; at dessert he cut up the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; when swallowing soup he made gurgling noises with every spoonful; and, as he was growing stout, his eyes, which were already small, seemed to be pushed up towards his temples by his rotund cheeks.

Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest into his waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the dirty gloves he was going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for his sake; it was for hers, the extension of her egotism, the result of her nervous irritation. Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the “upper ten” that she had seen in a feuilleton for, after all, Charles was something, an ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock.

Deep in her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a shipwrecked sailor, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it to her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.

Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear trees began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.

From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d’Andervilliers would give another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or visits.

After the misery of this disappointment passed, her heart felt drained and then the same round of days began all over again. So now they would follow one another like this forever, always the same, always empty, and numberless. Other peoples’ lives, however flat, at least had some consequence. One chance event could sometimes result in infinite shifts and changes of scene. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it so! The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.

She gave up music. What was the point of playing? Who would hear her? Since she could never perform at a concert, in a short-sleeved velvet gown, striking the ivory keys of an Érard with her light fingers, feeling a murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth boring herself with practicing. Her drawing board and her tapestry work she abandoned in the cupboard. What was the use of it? What was the good? Sewing irritated her. “I have read everything,” she said to herself. And she sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.

How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away over the fields.

But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed children skipping along in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door of the inn.

The winter was severe that year. The windows were covered with frost every morning, and the light falling dimly through them, as through ground-glass, sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o’clock the lamp had to be lighted.

On fine days, she went down into the garden. The dew had left silvery lace on the cabbages, with long translucent threads stretching from one to the other. No birds could be heard; everything seemed asleep, the espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent under the coping of the wall, along which, when you drew close, you could see woodlice crawling about on multiple legs. Under the spruces by the hedge, the curé in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary, had lost his right foot, and the plaster, flaking off with the frost, had left white scabs on his face.

Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever. She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of shame restrained her.

Every day, at the same hour, the schoolmaster in a black silk cap opened the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, would pass by wearing his sabre over his smock. Evening and morning, the post-horses, would cross the street three by three, to be watered at the pond. From time to time, the tavern door bell would tinkle, and when it was windy one could hear the little copper basins, that served as a sign for the hairdresser’s shop creaking on their two rods. This shop had an old fashion-plate glued to the windowpane as decoration, and the wax bust of a woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted career, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big town — at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour, near the theatre — he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church, gloomily waiting for customers. Whenever Madame Bovary looked up, she would see him there, like a sentinel on duty, in his worsted jacket with his tarbouche over one ear.

Sometimes in the afternoon outside the parlor windows, a man's head would appear, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, a broad, gentle smile that revealed white teeth. A waltz would immediately start up and in a miniature drawing room on top of the organ, tiny dancers the size of your finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolean men in cutaway jackets, monkeys in frock coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned round and round between the sofas and the consoles, multiplied in fragments of looking glass held together at their corners by a filigree of gold paper. The man cranked his handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and again, as he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, he would raise his instrument up on his knee, for its hard straps tired his shoulder; and the music, now doleful and drawling, now gay and giddy, would buzz and drone out of the box, through the grid of brass arabesques and a curtain of pink taffeta. They were airs from other places, played at the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted chandeliers, echoes of the world that even reached Emma. Endless sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him going.

But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the boiled beef there rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth table cover with the point of her knife.

She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now passed whole days without dressing, wore grey cotton stockings, and burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good woman did not interfere again.

Emma was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, the next cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light dresses. After she had well scolded her servant she gave her presents or sent her out to see neighbours, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily touched by the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of paternal hands.

Towards the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his recovery, arrived in person, with a superb turkey for his son-in-law, and stayed three days at Tostes. Since Charles was with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the room, spat on the firedogs, talked about crops, calves, cows, poultry, and the town council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with a feeling of relief that surprised even herself. Indeed, she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times would express the most singular opinions, condemning what others usually approved, and approving of what was perverse and immoral, all of which made her husband stare at her, wide-eyed.

Would this misery last for ever? Would she never escape from it? Yet she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she execrated the injustice of God. She leaned her head against the walls to weep; she envied tumultuous lives, masked balls, violent pleasures, and longed for all the wild emotions she did not know but these would surely inspire.

She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart.

Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried only seemed to irritate her the more.

On certain days she chattered with feverish abandon, and this over-excitement was suddenly followed by a torpor, in which she remained without speaking, without moving. All that revived her at such times was a bottle of eau-de-cologne poured over her arms.

As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea, began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere.

From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and completely lost her appetite.

It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and “when he was beginning to get on there.” Yet if it must be! He took her to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of air was needed.

After looking about him, here and there, Charles learnt about a considerable market town called Yonville-l’Abbaye, in the Neufchatel region, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped the week before. So he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the size of the population, the distance from the nearest medical colleague, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma’s health did not improve.

One day when she was tidying a drawer, in anticipation of her departure, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin ribbons had frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up quicker than dry straw. Then it lay, like a red bush in the embers, slowly being consumed. She watched it burn.

The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, finally flew up the chimney.

When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant.

Part II

Chapter One

Yonville-l’Abbaye (so named after an old Capuchin abbey of which not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen, between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle, after turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout which the lads like to fish for on Sundays.

You leave the highroad at La Boissière and keep straight on to the hill top of Les Leux, from where the valley can be seen. The river running through it creates two distinct regions with different physiognomies — all on the left being pasture, all on the right arable land. At the far end, the pasture lands extend under a low row of hills to join the meadows of the Bray country, while to the east, the gently rising plain broadens out into blond cornfields, as far as the eye can see. The water, flowing along the edge of the grasses, is like a white line dividing the colour of the meadows from that of the furrows, so that the countryside unfolds like a great mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver.

Before you, on the far horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of Argueil, and the cliffs of Saint-Jean, whose sides are scored with irregular red lines from top to bottom; these are stains left by the rain and the brick tones of the thin streaks, standing out so vividly against the grey of the mountain, are caused by innumerable iron springs that flow beyond, in the neighboring country.

Here you are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Île-de-France, a mongrel land whose language lacks expression just as much as its landscape lacks character. It is here that they make the worst Neufchâtel cheeses of the whole region; while here too, farming is costly because so much manure is needed to enrich the crumbling soil full of sand and flintstones.

Up until 1835 there was no viable road for getting to Yonville, but at about that time a major cross country highway was constructed linking the Abbeville road to that of Amiens. It is occasionally used by carters going from Rouen to Flanders, although Yonville-l’Abbaye has remained static despite this “new access.” Instead of improving the soil for cultivation, the people here persist in maintaining the pastures, however depreciated they may be, and the lazy town, turning away from the plain, has naturally extended towards the river instead. You can see it from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking a nap by the water-side.

At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge is the beginning of a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses of the place. These are fenced in by hedges, in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries, and stand under thick trees here and there, that have ladders, poles, or scythes hooked over the branches. The thatched roofs, hanging down like fur caps over the eyes, cover about a third of the low windows, whose thick, convex panes have as a finishing touch, a nub in the middle like the bottom of a bottle. A meagre pear-tree sometimes clings to the plaster wall crossed diagonally by black beams, and the ground-floor doors have a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come to pilfer crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. However the courtyards soon grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the hedges disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; a blacksmith’s forge and then a wheelwright’s, with two or three new carts sticking out onto the road partly blocking the way. Then through the railings appears a white house beyond a circle of grass ornamented by a Cupid, his finger on his lips; two cast-iron urns stand at each end of a flight of steps; scutcheons blaze upon the door. It is the notary’s house, and the finest in the place.

The church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds it, enclosed by a wall elbow-high, is so full of graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the grass has marked out regular green squares. The church was rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof is beginning to rot at the top, and here and there black gaps appear in the blue slates. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a gallery for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden clogs.

The daylight coming in through the plain glass windows falls obliquely over the pews ranged at right angles to the walls, on which is nailed a straw mat here and there bearing large letters beneath it that announce: “Pew of Mr. So-and-so.” Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, stands the confessional opposite a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, to complete the perspective, a copy of The Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior, hanging over the high altar, between four candlesticks. The choir stalls, of pine, have been left unpainted.

The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts, fills about half the public square of Yonville. The town hall, constructed “from the designs of a Paris architect,” is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner, next to the chemist’s shop. On the ground-floor are three Ionic columns and on the first floor a semi-circular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the Charte and holding in the other the scales of justice.

But what most catches the eye is the chemist’s shop of Monsieur Homais, opposite the Lion d’Or inn! In the evenings, especially when his oil lamp is lit and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front cast their two streams of colour far across the street, you can see through them, as if through Bengal lights, the shadowy silhouette of the chemist leaning on his desk. His house is placarded from top to bottom with inscriptions written in block capitals in a large round hand: “Vichy, Seltzer, Barège Waters, Blood Purifiers, Raspail Patent Medicine, Arabian Racahout, Darcet Lozenges, Regnault Paste, Trusses, Baths, Hygienic chocolate,” etc. And the shop sign, which takes up the entire width of the shop, bears the gilt letters, Homais, Chemist. While at the far end, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word Laboratory unfurls on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up repeats once more the word Homais, in gold letters on a black background.

Beyond this there is nothing else to see at Yonville. The street (the only one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops short at the turn of the highway. If you leave it to your right and follow the foot of the Saint-Jean hill you soon reach the cemetery.

At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge the place, a section of wall was pulled down, and three acres of land purchased next to it; but this new portion has remained almost tenantless; the graves, as before, continue to crowd together near the gate. The caretaker, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has taken advantage of the empty plot to plant potatoes in it. From year to year, however, his small field grows smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.

“You’re feeding off the dead, Lestiboudois!” the curé told him at last one day. This grim remark made him think; it checked him for some time; but to this day he carries on cultivating his little tubers, and now even maintains, casually, that they grow by themselves.

Since the events that are about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at Yonville. The tin tricolore flag still swings at the top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linen-draper’s; the chemist’s fetuses, like spongey white lumps, decompose more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the inn, the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows off its poodle curls to passers-by.

The evening the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow Lefrançois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she was perspiring great drops of sweat as she stirred her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls gutted, the soup and coffee made. Moreover, she had the boarders’ meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their maid; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the charcoal was crackling, and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped.

From the poultry-yard was heard the squawking of the chickens which the servant girl was chasing in order to wring their necks.

A man, his skin slightly pitted by small-pox, wearing green leather slippers and a velvet tarbouche with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the fireplace. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.

“Artémise!” shouted the landlady, “chop some wood, fill the water bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to offer the guests you’re expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has been left before the front door! The Hirondelle might run into it when it draws up. Call Polyte! Tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur Homais, that since morning they’ve had about fifteen games, and drunk eight jars of cider! Why, they’ll tear my cloth for me,” she went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand.

“That wouldn’t be much of a loss,” replied Monsieur Homais. “You would buy another.”

“Another billiard-table!” exclaimed the widow.

“Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrançois. I tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren’t played now; everything is changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!”

The landlady turned red with vexation. The chemist went on —

“You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or the sufferers from the Lyons floods — ”

“It isn’t beggars like him that’ll frighten us,” interrupted the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. “Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as long as the Lion d’Or exists, people will come to it. We know how to keep hay in our boots. And one of these days you’ll find the Café Français closed with a nice big notice on the shutters. “Change my billiard-table!” she went on, speaking to herself, “the table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I’ve slept six visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn’t come!”

“Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen’s dinner?”

“Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six you’ll see him come in, for he hasn’t his equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He’d rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Léon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn’t so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!”

“Well, you see, there’s a considerable difference between an educated man and an old soldier turned tax-collector.”

Six o’clock struck. Binet came in.

He wore a blue frock-coat that hung straight down around his thin frame, and a leather cap, with ear flaps knotted with string at the top of his head, displaying a bald forehead under its upturned visor flattened by the permanent pressure of a helmet. He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a coarse horsehair collar, grey trousers, and in all seasons, well-polished boots with two parallel bulges caused by his upturned big-toes. Not a hair of his blond chin whiskers was out of place, which following his jaw line, framed, like the border of a flower bed, his long, morose face with small eyes and a hooked nose. Clever at card games, a good hunter, and writing a fine hand, he kept a lathe at home with which he amused himself by turning out napkin rings, that he hoarded with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois.

He headed straight for the small parlour, but the three millers had to be evicted first, and during the entire time it took for his place to be set, Binet remained silent in his seat near the stove. Then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual fashion.