weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had
caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she
found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by
the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the
councillor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run
away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at
her.
Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of
servitude.
"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the
councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president;
and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he
repeated in a fatherly tone--"Approach! approach!"
"Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began
shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal!
Twenty-five francs! For you!"
Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude
spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her
muttering "I’ll give it to our cure up home, to say some masses for me!"
"What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary.
The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had
been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into
the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the
animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green-crown on
their horns.
The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the
town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the
battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe’s
arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about
alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.
The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that
they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for
forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one
stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a
whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated
above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against
the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard
nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty
plates, his neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled
his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing
noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips;
her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the
folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all
infinity before him in the vistas of the future.
He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with
her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the
danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and
give some advice to Binet.
The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess
of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would
not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon
biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meagre Roman-candle
went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the
cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma
silently nestled against Charles’s shoulder; then, raising her chin, she
watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe
gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.
They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops of rain began
to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.
At this moment the councillor’s carriage came out from the inn.
His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from
the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his
body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.
"Truly," said the druggist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously
against drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door
of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the names of all those who during
the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics,
one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to
in case of need. But excuse me!"
*Specifically for that.
And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to
see his lathe again.
"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your
men, or to go yourself--"
"Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It’s all right!"
"Do not be uneasy," said the druggist, when he returned to his friends.
"Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No
sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest."
"Ma foi! I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never
mind; we’ve had a beautiful day for our fete."
Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very
beautiful!"
And having bowed to one another, they separated.
Two days later, in the "Final de Rouen," there was a long article on the
show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next morning.
"Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this
crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical
sun pouring its heat upon our heads?"
Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government
was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand
reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on
the entry of the councillor, he did not forget "the martial air of our
militia;" nor "our most merry village maidens;" nor the "bald-headed old
men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of
our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the
drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury,
and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais,
chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society.
When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of
the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced the son,
the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed
his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good
housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.
"About six o’clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard
brought together the principal personages of the fete. The greatest
cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur
Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays,
Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin
sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant
fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a
veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our
little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of
a dream of the ‘Thousand and One Nights.’ Let us state that no untoward
event disturbed this family meeting." And he added "Only the absence
of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests understand progress in
another fashion. Just as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!"
Chapter Nine
Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he
appeared.
The day after the show he had said to himself--"We mustn’t go back too
soon; that would be a mistake."
And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he
had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned thus--
"If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience to see me
again love me more. Let’s go on with it!"
And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the
room, he saw Emma turn pale.
She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain along
the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on
which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the
meshes of the coral.
Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first
conventional phrases.
"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."
"Seriously?" she cried.
"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it
was because I did not want to come back."
"Why?"
"Can you not guess?"
He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing.
He went on--
"Emma!"
"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.
"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not
to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and
that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the
world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of
another!"
He repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands.
"Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair.
Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far
that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what
force impelled me towards you. For one does not struggle against Heaven;
one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which
is beautiful, charming, adorable."
It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself,
and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly
and fully at this glowing language.
"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least
I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night-every night-I
arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its glimmering in the moon,
the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp,
a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never
knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!"
She turned towards him with a sob.
"Oh, you are good!" she said.
"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one
word--only one word!"
And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground; but
a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the
door of the room was not closed.
"How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humour
a whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and
Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles
came in.
"Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him.
The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into
obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself
together a little.
"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health."
Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife’s
palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if
riding would not be good.
"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There’s an idea! You ought to
follow it up."
And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered
one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit
he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered
from giddiness.
"I’ll call around," said Bovary.
"No, no! I’ll send him to you; we’ll come; that will be more convenient
for you."
"Ah! very good! I thank you."
And as soon as they were alone, "Why don’t you accept Monsieur
Boulanger’s kind offer?"
She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally
declared that perhaps it would look odd.
"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a
pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong."
"And how do you think I can ride when I haven’t got a habit?"
"You must order one," he answered.
The riding-habit decided her.
When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his
wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.
The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles’s door with two
saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin
side-saddle.
Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she
had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his
appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white
corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.
Justin escaped from the chemist’s to see her start, and the chemist also
came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice.
"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are
mettlesome."
She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the windowpanes
to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered
with a wave of her whip.
"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all,
prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear.
As soon as he felt the ground, Emma’s horse set off at a gallop.
Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her
figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out,
she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in
her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head;
they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses
stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.
It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds
hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent
asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the
clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of
Yonville, with the gardens at the water’s edge, the yards, the walls and
the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and
never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the
height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake
sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there
stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose
above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.
By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered
in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco,
deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the
horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.
Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned
away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine
trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy.
The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.
Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.
"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.
"Do you think so?" she said.
"Forward! forward!" he continued.
He "tchk’d" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot.
Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma’s stirrup.
Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. At other
times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt
his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no
longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots
of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were
grey, fawn, or golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves.
Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the
hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks.
They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in
front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way,
although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her,
saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white
stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.
She stopped. "I am tired," she said.
"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"
Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her
veil, that fell sideways from her man’s hat over her hips, her face
appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure
waves.
"But where are we going?"
He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round
him biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice
had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe
began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her
with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy.
Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on
the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the words, "Are not our
destinies now one?"
"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!" She rose
to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having gazed
at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said
hurriedly--
"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back."
He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:
"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"
Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he
advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered:
"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!"
"If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became
respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He
said--
"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were
mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in
a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to live! I must have
your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!"
And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to disengage
herself. He supported her thus as they walked along.
But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.
"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!"
He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness
on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds.
At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide
themselves.
"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!"
"Why? Emma! Emma!"
"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder.
The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw
back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with
a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him--
The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the
branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves
or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying
about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something
sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose
beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a
stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she
heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she
heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing
nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his
penknife one of the two broken bridles.
They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again
the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same
stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her
something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved
in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand
to kiss it.
She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee
bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed by the fresh
air in the red of the evening.
On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People
looked at her from the windows.
At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to
hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there
with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.
"Emma!" he said.
"What?"
"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre’s. He has an old cob,
still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that could be bought; I
am sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might please
you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell me?"
She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later--
"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.
"Yes. Why?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"
And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up
in her room.
At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches,
Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves
rustled and the reeds whistled.
But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never
had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something
subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover!
a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her.
So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness
of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all
would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed
her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary
existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the
interspaces of these heights.
Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the
lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with
the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were,
an actual part of these imaginings, and realised the love-dream of her
youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had
so envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not
suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up
burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse,
without anxiety, without trouble.
The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500