The yellow curtains all along the window softly let in a heavy, blondish light. Emma groped her way in, blinking, while the dew drops clinging to her hair formed a sort of topaz halo around her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to his chest.

Then she would examine the apartment, open the drawers of the tables, comb her hair with his comb, and look at herself in his shaving-mirror. Often, she would even put the big pipe into her mouth that lay on his bedside table, amongst lemons and sugar lumps next to the carafe of water.

It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then Emma wept. She wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than her was impelling her to go to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as though annoyed.

“What is the matter with you?” she said. “Are you ill? Tell me!”

At last he declared, with a grave air, that her visits were becoming imprudent — that she was compromising herself.

Chapter Ten

Gradually Rodolphe’s fears took possession of her. At first, love had intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond it. But now that it was indispensable to her life, she was afraid of losing it, any part of it, or even disturbing it. Whenever she returned from his house, she kept glancing anxiously all about her, watching every shape that passed on the horizon, and every dormer window in the village from which she might be seen. She would listen for footsteps, shouts, the noise of the passing ploughs, and would stop short, more pale and trembling than the aspen leaves swaying over her head.

One morning as she was returning in this state, she suddenly thought she saw the long shaft of a rifle pointing at her. It was sticking out sideways above the rim of a small barrel hidden in the grass on the edge of a ditch. Half-fainting with terror, Emma kept on, and a man stepped out of the barrel, like a Jack-in-the-box. He had gaiters buckled up to the knees, a cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for wild ducks.

“You ought to have called out long before!” he exclaimed. “When you see a gun, you should always give warning.”

The tax-collector was actually trying to hide his own fright; since a prefectorial order prohibited duck hunting except in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them, so he was expecting to see the rural guard turn up at every moment. But this anxiety sharpened his pleasure; alone in his barrel, he congratulated himself on his luck and on his cunning. At the sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon conversation.

“Not very warm, is it? Rather nippy.”

Emma answered nothing. He went on —

“And you’re out early?”

“Yes,” she said stammering; “I am just coming from the nurse where my child is.”

“Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I’m here, just as you see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the — ”

“Good evening, Monsieur Binet,” she interrupted him, turning on her heel.

“Your servant, Madame,” he replied drily; and he went back into his barrel.

Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the little Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet, then, must guess where she was coming from, and he would not keep quiet; he would talk, that was certain. All day long, till evening, she racked her brains concocting every conceivable lie, with the image constantly before her eyes of that imbecile with his game-bag.

After dinner, seeing her so gloomy, Charles proposed to take her to the chemist’s as a distraction, and the first person she caught sight of in the shop was him again — the tax collector! He was standing in front of the counter, in the glow of the red glass jar, and was saying —

“Please give me half an ounce of vitriol.”

“Justin,” cried the druggist, “bring us the sulphuric acid.” Then to Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais’ room, “No, stay here; it isn’t worth going up; she’s just coming down. Warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, Doctor,” (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word “doctor,” as if addressing another by it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). “Now, Justin, take care not to upset the mortars! Fetch some chairs from the little parlour; you know very well that the arm-chairs of the drawing-room are not to be taken out.”

And in order to put his own arm-chair back in its place he was hurrying from behind the counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid.

“Sugar acid!” said the chemist contemptuously, “don’t know it; I’m ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid, isn’t it?”

Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make a metal polish to remove the rust from his hunting gear.

Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying —

“Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp.”

“Nevertheless,” replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, “some people seem to like it.”

She felt she would suffocate.

“And give me — ”

“Will he never go?” thought she.

“Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and three half ounces of bone black, if you please, to clean the patent leather on my gear.”

The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared, Irma in her arms, Napoléon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels, making up parcels. Everyone was silent around him; only the weights were heard clinking in the scales from time to time, and a few low words from the chemist giving instructions to his apprentice.

“And how’s your little one?” suddenly asked Madame Homais.

“Silence!” exclaimed her husband, who was entering some calculations in his note-book.

“Why didn’t you bring her?” she went on in a low voice.

“Hush! hush!” said Emma, pointing with her finger to the druggist.

But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh.

“How hard you are breathing!” said Madame Homais.

“Well, you see, it’s rather warm,” she replied.

So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendez-vous. Emma wanted to bribe her maid with a present, but it would be better to find some remote house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one.

All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night he came to the garden. Emma had deliberately taken the key of the gate, which Charles thought was lost.

To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But Charles, who was in bed, would call to her.

“Come, now, Emma,” he would say, “it’s time.”

“Yes, I’m coming,” she would answer.

Then, as the candles dazzled him, he would turn to the wall and fall asleep. She would escape, smiling, trembling, practically undressed. Rodolphe had a large cloak; he would wrap her in it, and putting his arm around her waist, would lead her silently to the bottom of the garden.

It was to the arbour they went, to the same seat of rotting sticks on which formerly Léon had sat to look at her so amorously, on summer evenings. She never thought of him now.

The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow loomed out in the darkness here and there which would sometimes shudder with a single movement, rise up and tower over like immense black waves, pressing forward to engulf them. The night cold made them clasp each other closer; the sighs on their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes, which could hardly be seen, seemed larger; and in the midst of the silence, low words were spoken that fell on their souls with a crystalline sonority that reverberated in multiple echoes.

When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room between the shed and the stable. She would light one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. And Rodolphe would settle down there as if at home. The sight of the bookcase, of the desk, of the whole room, in fact, tickled him greatly, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley.

“Someone is coming!” she said.

He blew out the light.

“Have you your pistols?”

“Why?”

“Why, to defend yourself,” replied Emma.

“From your husband? Oh, poor devil!” And Rodolphe finished his sentence with a gesture that implied, “I could crush him with a snap of the fingers.”

She was filled with wonder at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort of coarse indecency, a naive vulgarity that scandalised her.

Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and indeed, Emma had made a solemn promise to him on this subject, that he did not think in the best of taste.

Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring — a real wedding-ring, as a symbol of eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening church bells, or the “voices of nature.” Then she talked to him of her mother and of his! Rodolphe had lost his twenty years before. Emma none the less consoled him in mawkish terms, as one would have done to a bereaved orphan, and she sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon —

“I’m sure that above there together they approve of our love.”

But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. This love affair, free of debauchery, was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, at once flattered his pride and aroused his sensuality. Emma’s raptures, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts, rather charming, since they were lavished on him. And so, confident of being adored, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways began to change.

He no longer had, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her weep, nor caresses so passionate that made her wild, and consequently, their great love, which had so engrossed her life, seemed to be seeping away beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the mud below. She would not believe it; she redoubled her tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less.

She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or if, on the contrary, she wanted to enjoy him all the more. The humiliation of feeling weak was turning into rancour, tempered by voluptuous pleasure. It was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him.

Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame.

It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter. Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following lines: —

“My Dear Children — I hope this will find you well, and that this one will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time, for a change, I’ll give you a turkeycock, unless you have a preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I have had a mishap with my cart-shed; the roof flew off into the trees one windy night. The harvest has not been that good either. So I don’t know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor Emma.”

Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped his pen to dream a little while.

“As for me, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other day at the fair at Yvetot, where I went to hire a shepherd, having sacked mine because he was too fussy over food. How much there is to complain about with such bands of thieves! Besides, he was also dishonest. I heard from a pedlar, who travelled through your parts this winter and had a tooth drawn, that Bovary was working hard as usual. That doesn’t surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if he’d seen you, and he said not, but that he’d seen two horses in the stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So much the better, my dear children, and may God send you every imaginable happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter, Berthe Bovary. I’ve planted a black plum-tree for her in the garden under your room, and I won’t have it touched unless it’s to make some compote for her bye and bye, which I’ll keep in the cupboard just for her when she comes.

“Goodbye, my dear children. I kiss you, my daughter, you too, my son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with my very best wishes, your loving father.

“Théodore Rouault.”

She held the coarse paper between her fingers for some minutes. It was a tangle of spelling mistakes, and Emma followed the kindly thoughts that clucked and cackled through it like a hen half hidden in a hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-corner, burning the end of a stick in the great flames of the crackling furze! She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when anyone passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had spent them all on her soul’s journey, in all those successive stages she had passed through, her virginity, her marriage, and her love — losing them continuously all her life long, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road.

But what then was making her unhappy? What was the extraordinary catastrophe that had overturned her life? And she lifted her head and looked around as if to seek the cause that made her suffer so.

A ray of April sunshine was dancing on the china of the cabinet; the fire was burning; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter.

In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt. Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she lent forward, beating the air with both her arms.

“Bring her to me,” said her mother, rushing to embrace her. “How I love you, my poor child! How I love you!”

Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite thunderstricken at this excess of tenderness.

That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual.

“It’ll pass,” he concluded; “it’s a whim:”

And he missed three rendez-vous running. When he did come, she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous.

“Ah! you’re losing your time, my lady!”

And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the handkerchief she took out.

Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was feeling quite baffled by this inclination towards self-sacrifice, when the druggist happened to provide her with a timely opportunity.

Chapter Eleven

He had recently read an article in praise of a new method for curing club-foot, and as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that Yonville, in order to “keep abreast of the times”, ought to have some operations for strephenopodia.

“After all” he said to Emma, “what risk is there? See —” (and he enumerated on his fingers the advantages of the attempt), “success, almost certain relief and beautifying of the patient, and celebrity acquired by the surgeon. Why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor Hippolyte of the Lion d’Or? Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all the travellers, and then” — (Homais lowered his voice and looked around him) — “who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? Who knows?”

In fact, Bovary might make a success of it. There was no reason for Emma to doubt his skill; and what a satisfaction for her to have set him on a path that would increase his reputation and his fortune! All she wished for at that moment was to lean on something more solid than love.

Charles, urged by the druggist and by her, allowed himself to be persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval’s volume, and every evening, holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it.

While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say, katastrephopody, endostrephopody, and exostrephopody (or better, the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with hypostrephopody and anastrephopody), otherwise torsion downwards and upwards, Monsier Homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the lad at the inn to submit to the operation.

“You may possibly feel just a slight pain; it is a simple prick, like a mild blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns.”

Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.

“However,” continued the chemist, “it doesn’t concern me. It’s for your sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my friend, rid of your hideous claudication, together with that waddling of the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere in the exercise of your calling.”

Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily. Then he attacked him through his vanity:

“Aren’t you a man, hang it? what would you have done if you had had to go into the army, and fight for the flag? Ah! Hippolyte!”

And Homais would walk away, declaring that he could not understand this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefits of science.

The poor fellow gave in, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet, who never interfered with other people’s business, Madame Lefrançois, Artémise, the neighbours, even the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache — everyone persuaded him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it would cost him nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the mechanism for the operation. This generosity was Emma’s idea, and Charles agreed to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel.

So with the suggestions of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a kind of box made by the carpenter in collaboration with the locksmith, that weighed about eight pounds and consisted of no end of iron, wood, sheet-metal, leather, screws, and nuts.

But to know which of Hippolyte’s tendons to cut, it was necessary first of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had.

He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which, however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with a strong tendency to equinus. But on this pes equinus, wide as a hoof, with roughened skin, stringy tendons, and large toes whose black nails looked like those of an iron horse shoe, the strephenopod was able to leap about like a deer from morning till night. He was constantly to be seen on the square, skipping around the carts, his unequal limb thrust forward. He seemed even stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and energy; and when he was given some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its fellow.

Now, as it was a pes equinus, it was necessary to cut the Achilles tendon first; only then could the anterior tibial muscle be dealt with, to remove the varus; for the doctor did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was quaking with fear already at the thought of injuring some important region that he did not know.

Neither Ambrose Paré, applying a ligature to an artery for the first time since Celsus, fifteen centuries earlier, nor Dupuytren, about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, his tenotomy knife between his fingers. Just as in a hospital, there was a pile of lint on a table near by, with some waxed threads and a great many bandages, a pyramid of bandages, indeed, every bandage to be found at the druggist’s. It was Monsieur Homais who had been making these preparations since morning, as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his own illusions. Charles pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the operation over. Hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over Bovary’s hands to cover them with kisses.

“Come now, calm down,” said the druggist. “You’ll show your gratitude to your benefactor later on.”

And he went down to tell the result to five or six curious inquirers who were waiting in the yard, imagining that Hippolyte would reappear walking properly. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the mechanical device, went home, where Emma, all anxiety, was waiting for him at the door. She threw her arms round his neck; they sat down to table; he ate hugely, and at dessert even wanted a cup of coffee, a luxury he only permitted himself on Sundays when there was company.

The evening was charming, full of chatter and shared dreams. They talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in their house; he saw people’s estimation of him growing, his comforts increasing, his wife loving him always; and she was happy to be reinvigorated by a new sentiment, a healthier one, a better one, to feel at last some tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought of Rodolphe passed through her mind for a moment, but her eyes turned back to Charles again; she even noticed with surprise that his teeth weren’t at all bad.

They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the cook, suddenly entered the room, holding in his hand a freshly written sheet of paper. It was the paragraph he was going to send to the “Fanal de Rouen.” He brought it for them to read.

“Read it yourself,” said Bovary.

He read —

“‘Despite the prejudices that still partially cover the face of Europe like a veil, light is nevertheless beginning to penetrate the countryside. Thus on Tuesday, our little town of Yonville found itself the scene of a surgical experiment that was simultaneously an act of pure philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners — ’”

“Oh, that is too much! too much!” said Charles, choking with emotion.

“No, no! not at all! Come now!”

“‘ — Performed an operation on a club-footed man.’ I have not used the scientific term, because you know in a newspaper everyone would not perhaps understand. The masses must — ’”

“No doubt,” said Bovary; “go on!”

“I proceed,” said the chemist. “‘Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man called Hippolyte Tautain, stableman for the last twenty-five years at the hotel of the Lion d’Or, kept by Widow Lefrançois, at the Place d’Armes. The novelty of the undertaking, and the interest incident to its subject, attracted such a concourse of persons that there was a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as if to announce that the rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The patient, strangely enough — we affirm it de visu — professed no pain. His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired. There is every indication that his convelescence will be brief; and who knows even if at our next village festivity we shall not see our good Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and his capers his complete cure? Honour, then, to the generous savants! Honour to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honour, thrice honour! Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to the successive phases of this remarkable cure.’”

This did not prevent Mère Lefrançois, from coming in five days later, calling out in terror —

“Help! he’s dying! I’m at my wit’s end!”

Charles rushed to the Lion d’Or, and the chemist, who caught sight of him crossing the square without a hat, abandoned his shop. He appeared himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking everyone who was going up the stairs —

“Why, what’s the matter with our interesting strephenopod?”

The strephenopod was writhing in hideous convulsions, so much so that the mechanism in which his leg was encased, was being hit against the wall, hard enough to smash it.

With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb, the box was removed, and a horrifying sight met their eyes. The shape of the foot had disappeared completely, in a swelling so extreme that the skin seemed about to split, and the entire surface was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the highly vaunted mechanism. Hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. No attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But, hardly had the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten matters. At last, three days later, Hippolyte being unable to endure it any longer, they removed the mechanism once more, and were much astonished at what they observed. The livid tumefaction had now spread up the leg, with pistules here and there, from which a black liquid was oozing. It was taking a serious turn. Hippolyte was beginning to despair, and Mère Lefrançois had him installed in the small parlour near the kitchen, so that he might at least have some distraction.

But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room. He lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale with long beard, sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. Madame Bovary would go to see him. She would bring him linen for his poultices and comfort him, encourage him. He had no lack of company, in any case, especially on market-days, when the peasants surrounded him, knocking about the billiard-balls, sparring with cue sticks, smoking, drinking, singing, brawling.

“How’re you doing?” they would say, clapping him on the shoulder. “Ah! Looks like you’re not up to much, but it’s your own fault. You should do this! you should’ve done that!” And then they would tell him stories of people who had all been cured by remedies different from his. Then by way of consolation they would add —