Madame Bovary

As to the inscription, Homais could think of nothing so fine as Sta viator*, and he got no further; he racked his brain, he constantly repeated Sta viator. At last he hit upon Ama- bilen conjugem calcas**, which was adopted. * Rest traveler. ** Tread upon a loving wife. A strange thing was that Bovary, while continually thinking of Emma, was forgetting her. He grew desperate as he felt this image fading from his memory in spite of all efforts to retain it. Yet every night he dreamt of her; it was always the same dream. He drew near her, but when he was about to clasp her she fell into decay in his arms. For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Monsieur Bournisien even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up. Moreover, the old fellow was growing intoler- ant, fanatic, said Homais. He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows. In spite of the economy with which Bovary lived, he was far from being able to pay off his old debts. Lheureux refused to renew any more bills. A distraint became immi- nent. Then he appealed to his mother, who consented to let him take a mortgage on her property, but with a great many recriminations against Emma; and in return for her sacri- fice she asked for a shawl that had escaped the depredations of Felicite. Charles refused to give it her; they quarrelled. She made the first overtures of reconciliation by offering to have the little girl, who could help her in the house, to live with her. Charles consented to this, but when the time Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 451

for parting came, all his courage failed him. Then there was a final, complete rupture. As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the love of his child. She made him anxious, however, for she coughed sometimes, and had red spots on her cheeks. Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the fam- ily of the chemist, with whom everything was prospering. Napoleon helped him in the laboratory, Athalie embroi- dered him a skullcap, Irma cut out rounds of paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited Pythagoras’ table in a breath. He was the happiest of fathers, the most fortunate of men. Not so! A secret ambition devoured him. Homais han- kered after the cross of the Legion of Honour. He had plenty of claims to it. ‘First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished myself by a boundless devotion; second, by having pub- lished, at my expense, various works of public utility, such as’ (and he recalled his pamphlet entitled, ‘Cider, its manu- facture and effects,’ besides observation on the lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy; his volume of statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis); ‘without count- ing that I am a member of several learned societies’ (he was member of a single one). ‘In short!’ he cried, making a pirouette, ‘if it were only for distinguishing myself at fires!’ Then Homais inclined towards the Government. He se- cretly did the prefect great service during the elections. He sold himself—in a word, prostituted himself. He even ad- 452 Madame Bovary

dressed a petition to the sovereign in which he implored him to ‘do him justice”; he called him ‘our good king,’ and compared him to Henri IV. And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to see if his nomination were in it. It was never there. At last, unable to bear it any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden designed to represent the Star of the Cross of Honour with two little strips of grass running from the top to imitate the ribband. He walked round it with folded arms, meditating on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men. From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on his investigations slowly, Charles had not yet opened the secret drawer of a rosewood desk which Emma had generally used. One day, however, he sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All Leon’s letters were there. There could be no doubt this time. He devoured them to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the fur- niture, all the drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He found a box and broke it open with a kick. Rodolphe’s portrait flew full in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters. People wondered at his despondency. He never went out, saw no one, refused even to visit his patients. Then they said ‘he shut himself up to drink.’ Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on to the garden hedge, and saw with amazement this long- bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man, who wept aloud as he walked up and down. In the evening in summer he took his little girl with him Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 453

and led her to the cemetery. They came back at nightfall, when the only light left in the Place was that in Binet’s win- dow. The voluptuousness of his grief was, however, incomplete, for he had no one near him to share it, and he paid visits to Madame Lefrancois to be able to speak of her. But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having troubles like himself. For Lheureux had at last established the ‘Favorites du Commerce,’ and Hivert, who enjoyed a great reputation for doing errands, insisted on a rise of wag- es, and was threatening to go over ‘to the opposition shop.’ One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to sell his horse—his last resource—he met Rodolphe. They both turned pale when they caught sight of one another. Rodolphe, who had only sent his card, first stam- mered some apologies, then grew bolder, and even pushed his assurance (it was in the month of August and very hot) to the length of inviting him to have a bottle of beer at the public-house. Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar as he talked, and Charles was lost in reverie at this face that she had loved. He seemed to see again something of her in it. It was a marvel to him. He would have liked to have been this man. The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling out with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip in. Charles was not listening to him; Rodolphe noticed it, and he followed the succession of memories that crossed his face. This gradually grew redder; the nostrils 454 Madame Bovary

throbbed fast, the lips quivered. There was at last a moment when Charles, full of a sombre fury, fixed his eyes on Rodol- phe, who, in something of fear, stopped talking. But soon the same look of weary lassitude came back to his face. ‘I don’t blame you,’ he said. Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his hands, went on in a broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow— ‘No, I don’t blame you now.’ He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made— ‘It is the fault of fatality!’ Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the re- mark very offhand from a man in his position, comic even, and a little mean. The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was suffocat- ing like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled his aching heart. At seven o’clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the afternoon, went to fetch him to dinner. His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair. ‘Come along, papa,’ she said. And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 455

He fell to the ground. He was dead. Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist’s request, Mon- sieur Canivet came thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing. When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy- five centimes remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary’s going to her grandmother. The good woman died the same year; old Rouault was paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her. She is poor, and sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living. Since Bovary’s death three doctors have followed one another at Yonville without any success, so severely did Homais attack them. He has an enormous practice; the au- thorities treat him with consideration, and public opinion protects him. He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour. 456 Madame Bovary

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