Author: Gustave Flaubert
Category: Fiction
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Charles said nothing more. He was walking back and forth, waiting for Emma to finish dressing.
He saw her from behind in the mirror, between two candles. Her dark eyes seemed darker. Her bands of hair, gently swelling out over her ears, shone with a blue luster; a rose in her chignon trembled on its pliant stem, with artificial drops of water at the tips of its leaves. Her dress was pale saffron, set off by three sprays of pompon roses mingled with greenery.
Charles came to kiss her on the shoulder.
“Leave me alone!” she said. “You’re rumpling me.”
One could hear a violin ritornello and the sounds of a horn. She went down the stairs, resisting an impulse to run.
The quadrilles had begun. People were arriving. They were pushing one another. She positioned herself near the door, on a bench.
When the contra dance was over, the floor was left free for the men who stood around chatting in groups and the liveried servants carrying large trays. Along the line of seated women, painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half concealed smiling faces, and little gold-stoppered bottles twirled in half-open hands whose white gloves showed the outlines of their nails and hugged their flesh at the wrist. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets trembled on bodices, sparkled on chests, clinked on bare arms. Hair well pressed down over the forehead and twisted at the nape bore garlands, bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, wheatears, or cornflowers. Red-turbaned mothers scowled serenely in their seats.
Emma’s heart beat a little faster when, her partner holding her by the tips of her fingers, she took her place in line and waited for the stroke of the bow to start them off. But her anxiety soon vanished and swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with gentle motions of her neck. A smile would rise to her lips at certain subtleties from the violin, which sometimes played alone when the other instruments were silent; one could hear the bright sound of gold louis being flung down on the cloth surfaces of the tables in the next room; then everything would start up again at the same time, the cornet would send forth a resonant note, feet would tread rhythmically again, skirts balloon out and brush the floor, hands join together, part; and the same eyes that had lowered before you one moment would come back to stare into your own.
A few of the men (perhaps fifteen) between the ages of twenty-five and forty, scattered among the dancers or chatting in doorways, were distinguished from the rest of the crowd by a family resemblance, despite their differences in age, dress, or feature.
Their coats, better cut, seemed made of suppler cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls at their temples, glazed by finer pomades. They had the complexion of wealth, that white skin which is set off by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the finish of handsome furniture, and which is maintained in its health by a prudent regimen of exquisite foods. Their necks turned comfortably in low cravats; their long side-whiskers rested upon downturned collars; they wiped their lips on handkerchiefs embroidered with large monograms and redolent of a pleasing scent. Those who were beginning to age had a youthful look, while a touch of maturity overlay the faces of the younger. In their indifferent gazes floated the tranquillity of passions daily gratified; and beneath their gentle manners was visible that particular brutality imparted by domination in rather easy things, in which one’s strength is exerted and one’s vanity tickled, the handling of thoroughbred horses and the company of fallen women.
A few steps from Emma, a gentleman in a blue coat was deep into Italy with a pale young woman in pearls. They were marveling over the size of the pillars in Saint Peter’s, over Tivoli, Vesuvius, Castellammare, and the Cascine, the roses of Genoa, the Colosseum by moonlight. Emma was listening with her other ear to a conversation full of words she did not understand. People were gathered around a very young man who, the week before, had beaten Miss Arabella and Romulus and won two thousand louis by jumping a ditch in England. One man was complaining about his racers getting fat; another, that printing mistakes had garbled the name of his horse.
The air in the ballroom was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. People were drifting back into the billiards room. A servant climbing up onto a chair broke two windowpanes; at the noise of the shattered glass, Madame Bovary turned her head and noticed in the garden, against the window, the faces of countrypeople looking in. Then the memory of Les Bertaux returned to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a smock under the apple trees, and she saw herself as she used to be, skimming cream with her finger from the pans of milk in the milk house. But under the dazzling splendors of the present hour, her past life, so distinct until now, was vanishing altogether, and she almost doubted that she had ever lived it. She was here; and then, surrounding the ball, there was nothing left but darkness, spread out over all the rest. She was at that moment eating a maraschino ice, holding it with her left hand in a silver-gilt shell and half closing her eyes, the spoon between her teeth.
Near her, a lady dropped her fan. A dancer was passing.
“I wonder if you would be so kind, sir,” said the lady, “as to pick up my fan for me. It’s here behind the couch!”
The gentleman bowed, and as he was extending his arm, Emma saw the hand of the young lady toss something white, folded in a triangle, into his hat. The gentleman, retrieving the fan, gave it to the lady respectfully; she inclined her head in thanks and inhaled her bouquet.
After supper, at which there were many Spanish wines and Rhine wines, soups made of shellfish and soups made of almond milk, Trafalgar puddings and all sorts of cold meats with jellies around them that quivered in the platters, the carriages, one after another, began to leave. By drawing aside a corner of the muslin curtain, one could see the glow of their lamps slipping away into the darkness. The benches cleared; a few card players still remained; the musicians cooled the tips of their fingers on their tongues; Charles was half asleep, his back resting against a door.
At three o’clock in the morning, the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz. Everyone was waltzing, even Mademoiselle d’Andervilliers, and the marquise; no one was left but the guests of the château, a dozen people or so.
Nevertheless, one of the waltzers, whom they familiarly called vicomte and whose very low-cut vest seemed molded to his chest, came up to Madame Bovary and for the second time invited her to dance, assuring her that he would guide her and that she would manage perfectly well.
They began slowly, then went faster. They were turning: everything was turning around them, the lamps, the furniture, the paneled walls, the parquet floor, like a disk on a spindle. As they passed close to the doors, the hem of Emma’s dress would catch against his pants; their legs would slip in between one another; he lowered his gaze to her, she raised hers to him; a numbness came over her, she stopped. They set off again; and with a quicker motion, the vicomte, drawing her along, disappeared with her to the far end of the gallery, where, breathing hard, she nearly fell and, for a moment, leaned her head on his chest. And then, still whirling, but more gently, he returned her to her seat; she leaned back against the wall and put her hand over her eyes.
When she opened them, a lady was sitting on a stool in the middle of the drawing room with three waltzers on their knees in front of her. She chose the vicomte, and the violin began again.
People were looking at them. They would pass by and then return, she holding her body motionless and her chin lowered, and he in the same posture as before, his back arched, his elbow rounded, his mouth forward. That woman certainly could waltz! They went on for a long time and wore out everyone else.
People chatted for another few minutes, and after the goodbyes, or rather the good-mornings, the guests of the château went to bed.
Charles was dragging himself up by the banister, his knees were giving way under him. He had spent five straight hours standing by the tables, watching them play whist without understanding anything about it. And so
he gave a great sigh of contentment after pulling off his boots.
Emma put a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leaned on her elbows.
The night was dark. A few drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the damp wind, which cooled her eyelids. The music of the dance was still humming in her ears, and she made an effort to stay awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to leave behind.
The first light of dawn appeared. She looked at the windows of the château for a long time, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those people she had observed the night before. She would have liked to know what their lives were like, to enter into them, to become part of them.
But she was shaking with cold. She undressed and curled up between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.
There were many people at breakfast. The meal lasted ten minutes; no liquor was served, which surprised the doctor. Then Mademoiselle d’Andervilliers collected some pieces of brioche in a little basket, to carry to the swans on the ornamental pond, and they went off to stroll through the greenhouse, where strange plants bristling with hairs rose in pyramidal tiers under hanging vases, which, like overcrowded nests of serpents, let fall from their rims long interlaced ropes of green. The orangery, which lay at the far end, led, under cover, to the outbuildings of the château. The Marquis, to entertain the young woman, took her to see the stables. Above the basket-shaped racks, porcelain plaques bore in black the names of the horses. Each animal moved restlessly in its stall when they passed near it clucking their tongues. The floor of the saddle room gleamed to the eye like a drawing-room parquet. The carriage harness rose in the middle on two revolving posts, and the bits, whips, stirrups, curb chains were arranged in a line all the way down the wall.
Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a servant to harness his boc. It was brought out in front of the steps, and after all the bundles had been stowed away in it, the Bovary couple said their thank-yous to the Marquis and Marquise and started back to Tostes.
Emma, silent, was watching the wheels turn. Charles, poised on the very edge of the seat, was driving with his arms apart, and the little horse was going along at an ambling trot between the shafts, which were too wide for it. The slack reins slapped against its rump, soaking up the foam, and the box tied on behind struck the body of the carriage with loud, regular thumps.
They were on the heights of Thibourville when before them, suddenly, several horsemen rode past laughing, cigars in their mouths. Emma thought she recognized the vicomte: she turned around and saw on the horizon only the motion of their heads dipping and rising, with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop.
A quarter of a league farther on, they had to stop and mend the breeching, which had broken, with some rope.
But Charles, giving the harness one last glance, saw something on the ground, between the legs of his horse; and he picked up a cigar case with a green silk border all around it and a coat of arms in its center like a carriage door.
“There are even two cigars in it,” he said; “that’ll be for tonight after dinner.”
“So you smoke?” she asked.
“Sometimes, when I get the chance.”
He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the pony.
When they reached home, dinner was far from ready. Madame flew into a rage. Nastasie answered rudely.
“Get out!” said Emma. “What impertinence. I’m discharging you.”
For dinner there was onion soup, and a piece of veal with sorrel. Charles, sitting opposite Emma, said, rubbing his hands together happily:
“How nice it is to be back home!”
They could hear Nastasie weeping. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She had kept him company on many an idle evening, in earlier days, when he was a widower. She was his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the area.
“Have you really let her go?” he said at last.
“Yes. What’s to stop me?” she answered.
Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their bedroom was being prepared. Charles began smoking. He smoked with his lips thrust forward, spitting constantly, recoiling at each puff.
“You’ll make yourself ill,” she said scornfully.
He put down his cigar and ran to the pump to swallow a glass of cold water. Emma, seizing the cigar case, flung it quickly to the back of the cupboard.
How long the next day was! She walked in her little garden, going and coming along the same paths, stopping in front of the flower beds, the espaliered tree, the plaster curé, contemplating with amazement all these things from the past that she knew so well. How distant the ball already seemed to her! What was it that put such a distance between the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of this day? Her trip to La Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like those great chasms that a storm, in a single night, will sometimes open in the mountains. Yet she resigned herself: reverently she put away in the chest of drawers her beautiful dress and even her satin shoes, whose soles had been yellowed by the slippery wax of the dance floor. Her heart was like them: contact with wealth had laid something over it that would not be wiped away.
And so remembering that ball became an occupation for Emma. Each time Wednesday returned, she would say to herself as she woke: “Ah! A week ago … two weeks ago … three weeks ago, I was there!” And little by little, the faces became confused in her memory, she forgot the tunes of the contra dances, she no longer saw the liveries and the rooms as distinctly; some of the details vanished, but her longing remained.
[9]
Often, when Charles was out, she would go to the cupboard and take the green silk cigar case from between the folds of the linen, where she had left it.
She would look at it, open it, and even sniff the fragrance of its lining, a mingling of verbena and tobacco. Who did it belong to? … The vicomte. Perhaps it was a gift from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some rosewood frame, a dainty little implement kept hidden from all other eyes, the occupation of many hours, and over it had hung the soft curls of the pensive worker. A breath of love had passed among the stitches of the canvas; each stroke of the needle had fastened into it a hope or a memory, and all those interlaced threads of silk were merely an extension of the same silent passion. And then, one morning, the vicomte had taken it away with him. What had people talked about, as it lay on one of those broad mantelpieces, between the vases of flowers and the Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes. And he—he was in Paris, now; out there! What was it like—Paris? The name itself was so vast! She would repeat it to herself softly, to give herself pleasure; it would resound in her ears like the great bell of a cathedral; it would blaze before her eyes even on the labels of her jars of pomade.
At night, when the fishmongers, in their carts, passed under her windows singing the “Marjolaine,” she would wake up; and as she listened to the noise of the iron-rimmed wheels, which, when they reached the edge of town, would quickly be deadened by the earth:
“They’ll be there tomorrow!” she would say to herself.
And she would follow them in her thoughts as they climbed and descended the hills, passed through the villages, filed along the highway by the light of the stars. After an indeterminate distance, there was always a confused place where her dream died away.
She bought herself a map of Paris, and, with the tip of her finger on the map, she would take walks in the capital. She would go along the boulevards, stopping at each corner, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses. Her eyes tired at last, she would close her lids, and in the darkness she would see gas jets twisting in the wind, and carriage steps unfolding with a clatter before the theater colonnades.
She took out a subscription to Corbeille, a women’s magazine, and to Le Sylphe des Salons. Skipping nothing, she would devour all the reports of first nights, horse races, and soirée
s, would take an interest in a singer’s debut, the opening of a shop. She knew the latest fashions, the addresses of the good tailors, the days for going to the Bois and the Opéra. In Eugène Sue, she studied descriptions of furnishings; she read Balzac and George Sand, seeking in them the imagined satisfaction of her own desires. She would bring her book with her even to the table, and she would turn the pages while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Vicomte would always return to her as she read. She would find similarities between him and the invented characters. But the circle of which he was the center gradually grew larger around him, and the halo he wore, separating from his face, spread farther out, illuminating other dreams.
And so Paris, vaster than the Ocean, glimmered before Emma’s eyes in a rosy haze. But the teeming life of that tumultuous place was divided into separate parts, sorted into distinct tableaux. Emma saw only two or three, which concealed the rest from her and themselves alone represented all of humanity. The world of ambassadors walked over gleaming parquet floors, through drawing rooms lined with mirrors, around oval tables covered with velvet cloths fringed with gold. Here were trailing gowns, high mysteries, anguish concealed behind a smile. Next came the society of duchesses: here, one was pale; one rose at four o’clock; the women, poor angels! wore Brussels lace at the hems of their petticoats, and the men, their abilities unappreciated beneath their frivolous exteriors, rode their horses to death for the enjoyment of it, went to spend the summer season at Baden, and eventually, at about forty years of age, married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants, where one has supper after midnight, the motley crowd of literary folk and actresses would laugh by candlelight. They were as prodigal as kings, full of idealistic ambitions and delirious fantasies. Theirs was a life elevated above others, between heaven and earth, among the storm clouds, something sublime. As for the rest of the world, it was lost, without any exact place, as though it did not exist. The closer things were to her, anyway, the more her thoughts shrank from them. Everything that immediately surrounded her—the tiresome countryside, the idiotic petits bourgeois, the mediocrity of life—seemed to her an exception in the world, a particular happenstance in which she was caught, while beyond, as far as the eye could see, extended the immense land of felicity and passion. In her desire, she confused the sensual pleasures of luxury with the joys of the heart, elegance of manner with delicacy of feeling. Didn’t love, like a plant from India, require a prepared soil, a particular temperature? Sighs in the moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over hands yielded to a lover, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness thus could not be separated from the balconies of great châteaux filled with idle amusements, a boudoir with silk blinds, a good thick carpet, full pots of flowers, and a bed raised on a dais, nor from the sparkle of precious stones and shoulder knots on servants’ livery.