Author: Gustave Flaubert
Category: Fiction
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When they left Tostes, in March, Madame Bovary was pregnant.
PART II
[1]
Yonville-l’Abbaye (so named for an old abbey of Capuchin friars of which even the ruins no longer exist) is a market town eight leagues from Rouen, between the Abbeville and the Beauvais roads, in the bottom of a valley watered by the Rieule, a small river that flows into the Andelle after working three mills near its mouth, and in which there are a few trout that boys like to fish with lines on Sundays.
You leave the highway at La Boissière and continue level as far as the top of Les Leux hill, from which you first discern the valley. The stream that runs through it creates two regions distinct in physiognomy: everything on the left is in pasture, everything on the right is tillage. The grassland extends under a fold of low hills to join at the far end the pastures of the Bray country, while to the east, the plain, rising gently, broadens out and extends its blond wheat fields as far as the eye can see. The water that runs along the edge of the grass divides with its line of white the color of the meadows from the color of the furrows, so that the countryside resembles a great mantle, unfolded, its green velvet collar edged with silver braid.
On the horizon before you, when you arrive, you have the oaks of the Argueil forest and the escarpments of the Saint-Jean hill, streaked from top to bottom by long, irregular trails of red; these are the marks left by the rains, and their brick-red tones, standing out so clearly in slender threads against the gray of the mountain, come from the abundance of ferruginous springs that flow beyond, in the surrounding countryside.
Here you are on the borders of Normandy, Picardy, and Île-de-France, a mongrel region where the language is without expressive emphasis, just as the landscape is without character. It is here that they make the worst Neufchâtel cheeses in the whole district, while farming is costly, because a good deal of manure is needed to enrich this crumbly soil full of sand and stones.
Until 1835, there was no passable road for reaching Yonville; but at about that time they established a major local route that connects the Abbeville road to that of Amiens and is sometimes used by carters going from Rouen into Flanders. Nevertheless, Yonville-l’Abbaye has stood still, despite its new outlets. Instead of improving the cultivated lands, the people here persist in maintaining the pastures, however depreciated they may be, and the lazy town, moving away from the plain, has continued naturally to grow toward the river. You can see it from far off, stretched out along the bank, like a cowherd taking his nap at the water’s edge.
At the foot of the hill, after the bridge, and planted with young aspens, begins a roadway leading you in a straight line to the first houses of the area. They are enclosed within hedges, in the middle of yards full of scattered outbuildings, presses, cart sheds, and distilleries standing here and there under dense trees bearing ladders, poles, or scythes hooked over their branches. The thatched roofs cover the top third or so of the low windows, like fur caps pulled down over eyes, and the thick, bulging panes are garnished with a nub in the middle, like the base of a bottle. Against the plaster wall, which is traversed diagonally by black timbers, there sometimes clings a thin pear tree, and the ground floors have at their door a little swing gate to guard them against the chicks, who come to the doorsill to peck at the crumbs of brown bread soaked in cider. Meanwhile, the yards become narrower, the habitations draw closer together, the hedges disappear; a bundle of ferns dangles below a window at the end of a broom handle; there is a farrier’s forge and then a cartwright with two or three new carts outside, jutting into the road. Then through the railings appears a white house beyond a circle of lawn decorated with a Cupid, its finger on its mouth; two cast-iron urns stand at either end of the flight of front steps; brass plates gleam at the door; it is the notary’s house, and the handsomest in the region.
The church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther on, at the entrance to the square. The little cemetery that surrounds it, enclosed by an elbow-high wall, is so filled with graves that the old stones, flush with the ground, form a continuous pavement on which the grass has drawn regular green rectangles. The church was rebuilt new in the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden vault is beginning to rot at the top and has cavities of black, here and there, in its blue. Above the door, where the organ would be, is a gallery for the men, with a spiral staircase that echoes under their wooden shoes.
The daylight, coming in through the plain glass windows, falls obliquely on the pews set at right angles to the wall, on which is nailed here and there a piece of straw matting with these words below it in large letters: “Pew of Monsieur So-and-So.” Farther on, at the point where the nave narrows, the confessional stands opposite a small statue of the Virgin wearing a satin gown, coiffed in a tulle veil spangled with silver stars, and colored crimson on the cheeks like an idol from the Sandwich Islands; lastly, a copy of The Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior, hanging over the main altar between four candlesticks, closes the perspective at the far end. The choir stalls, of pine, have remained unpainted.
The market, that is, a tile roof supported by about twenty posts, takes up about half of the large Yonville square. The town hall, built from designs by a Paris architect, is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner, next door to the pharmacist’s house. It has on the ground floor three Ionic columns and, on the second floor, a semicircular gallery, while the tympanum at its top is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one foot on the Charter and holding in the other the scales of justice.
But what chiefly strikes the eye, across from the Lion d’Or inn, is the pharmacy belonging to Monsieur Homais! In the evening, particularly, when his lamp is lit and the red and green jars that embellish his shop window cast the glow of their two colors far out over the ground; then, through them, as if through Bengal lights, the shadow of the pharmacist can be seen leaning his elbows on his desk. His house, from top to bottom, is placarded with inscriptions in running script, in round hand, in block capitals: “Vichy, Seltzer, and Barèges Waters, Depurative Syrups, Raspail’s Medicine, Arabian Racahout, Darcet’s Pastilles, Regnault’s Ointment, Bandages, Baths, Medicinal Chocolates, etc.” And the shop sign, which occupies the entire width of the shop, bears the gold letters: Homais, Pharmacist. Then, at the back of the shop, behind the large scales fastened to the counter, the word Laboratory unfurls above a glass door that repeats yet one more time, halfway up, the word Homais in gold letters on a black background.
After that, there is nothing more to see in Yonville. The street (the only one), the length of a rifle shot and lined by a few shops, ends abruptly where the road bends. If you leave it on your right and follow the base of Saint-Jean hill, you soon reach the cemetery.
At the time of the cholera outbreak, in order to enlarge it, they knocked down a section of wall and bought three acres of land next to it; but that whole new portion is almost uninhabited, the graves, as before, continuing to pile up near the gate. The caretaker, who is at the same time gravedigger and beadle in the church (thus deriving from the parish corpses a twofold profit), has taken advantage of the empty piece of ground to plant potatoes in it. Year by year, however, his little field shrinks, and when an epidemic occurs, he does not know whether he ought to rejoice at the deaths or lament the graves.
“You’re feeding off the dead, Lestiboudois!” the curé said to him at last, one day.
This grim remark made him think; it stopped him for a time; but even today he continues to cultivate his tubers, and even maintains coolly that they come up by themselves.
Since the events that are about to be recounted here, nothing, indeed, has changed in Yonville. The tin tricolored flag still turns on top of the church steeple; the dry-goods shop still waves its two calico streamers in the wind; the pharmacist’s fetuses, like bundles of white punk, decay more and more in their cloudy alcohol; and above the main door of the inn, the aged gold lion, faded by the rains, still displays to the
passersby its poodle ringlets.
The evening the Bovarys were to arrive in Yonville, the widow Madame Lefrançois, mistress of the inn, was so very busy that she was sweating large drops as she stirred her pots. The following day was market day in the town. The meats had to be cut up in advance, the chickens gutted, soup and coffee prepared. In addition, she had the meal to get for her boarders and for the doctor, his wife, and their maid; the billiards room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers, in the small parlor, were calling for eau-de-vie; the wood was blazing, the charcoal was crackling, and on the long kitchen table, among the quarters of raw mutton, stood stacks of plates trembling to the jolts of the block where the spinach was being chopped. From the poultry yard, one could hear the squawking of the chickens as the servant girl chased them down in order to cut their throats.
A man in green leather slippers, his skin slightly pitted by smallpox, wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the fireplace. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he seemed as much at peace with life as the goldfinch suspended above his head in a wicker cage: this was the pharmacist.
“Artémise!” shouted the mistress of the inn, “cut some kindling, fill the carafes, and bring some eau-de-vie! And hurry up! If only I knew what dessert to give these people you’re waiting for! Lord! The moving men are starting up that racket in the billiards room again! And their cart is still planted right in front of the gate! The Hirondelle is quite liable to smash into it when it comes! Call Polyte and tell him to put it in the shed! … To think that since this morning, Monsieur Homais, they’ve played perhaps fifteen games and drunk eight pots of cider! … Oh, they’re going to tear my cloth,” she went on, watching them from a distance, her skimmer in her hand.
“No great harm in that,” answered Monsieur Homais; “you’d buy another!”
“Another billiards table!” exclaimed the widow.
“That one is falling to pieces, Madame Lefrançois; I tell you again, you’re hurting yourself! You’re only hurting yourself! And besides, nowadays players want narrow pockets and heavy cues. They don’t play billiards anymore; everything has changed! You’ve got to keep up with the times! Look at Tellier, now …”
The innkeeper turned red with vexation. The pharmacist added:
“Whatever you may say, his billiards table is nicer than yours; and supposing they organized a patriotic tournament for Poland, for example, or the flood victims of Lyon …”
“Beggars like him don’t scare us!” interrupted the innkeeper, shrugging her fat shoulders. “Look here, Monsieur Homais! As long as the Lion d’Or exists, people will come. Don’t worry, we’ve got hay in our boots! And one of these mornings you’ll see the Café Français closed, and a nice big notice stuck up on the shutters! … Change my billiards table,” she continued, talking to herself, “when this one’s so handy for folding my wash, and it’s slept six travelers at once in hunting season! … Now, what’s keeping that slowpoke Hivert!”
“Are you going to wait for him before you give your gentlemen their dinner?” asked the pharmacist.
“Wait for him? What about Monsieur Binet! You’ll see him come in on the stroke of six, because there’s no one on this earth as punctual as he is. He always has to sit in his own place in the little dining room! He’d rather you kill him than make him eat his dinner anywhere else! And how finicky he is! And how fussy about his cider! He’s not like Monsieur Léon; now, that one comes in sometimes at seven o’clock, seven-thirty; he doesn’t even look at what he’s eating. What a good young man! Never one word louder than the last.”
“That’s because there’s a good deal of difference, you see, between someone who’s had an education and an old cavalryman turned tax collector.”
The clock struck six. Binet came in.
He was dressed in a blue frock coat that hung straight down all around his thin body, and a leather cap with ear flaps tied up on top of his head by strings, revealing, under the raised visor, a bald forehead flattened by the long presence of a helmet. He wore a black wool vest, a horsehair collar, gray trousers, and, in all seasons, highly polished boots with two parallel bulges caused by the upward pressure of his toes. Not a hair passed beyond the line of his blond chin whisker, which, outlining his jaw, framed, like the edging of a flower bed, his long, gloomy face with its small eyes and hooked nose. He was skilled at all card games and a good hunter, he wrote in a beautiful hand, and in his home he had a lathe on which he spent his time fashioning napkin rings with which he cluttered his house, with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois.
He headed for the small dining room; but first the three millers had to be gotten out of there; and during the whole of the time his place was being set, Binet remained silently in his seat next to the stove; then he closed the door and took off his cap as usual.
“If he wears out his tongue, it won’t be from making polite conversation!” said the pharmacist, as soon as he was alone with the innkeeper.
“He never talks any more than that,” she answered; “last week I had two cloth salesmen here, lively fellows, and they told such funny stories that night I laughed till I cried; well, he just sat there like a dead fish, and didn’t say a word.”
“Yes,” said the pharmacist, “he has no imagination, no wit, none of those qualities that make a man good company!”
“And yet they say he has abilities,” the innkeeper objected.
“Abilities!” replied Monsieur Homais. “He! Abilities? In his own line of work, perhaps,” he added more calmly.
And he went on:
“Ah! That a businessman with considerable connections, or a lawyer, a doctor, a pharmacist, should be so engrossed that they become odd or even surly—I can understand that; history is full of such examples! But at least they’re thinking about something. Take me, for instance—how many times have I searched my desk looking for my pen so as to write a label, and found, at last, that I have put it behind my ear!”
Meanwhile, Madame Lefrançois had gone to the door to see if the Hirondelle was coming. She gave a start. A man dressed in black suddenly entered the kitchen. One could make out, in the last gleams of twilight, his florid face and athletic body.
“What may I offer you, Monsieur le curé?” asked the mistress of the inn, reaching to the mantelpiece for one of the brass candlesticks lined up there, with their candles, in a colonnade. “Will you have something to drink? A drop of cassis, a glass of wine?”
The clergyman refused very civilly. He had come to pick up his umbrella, which he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent; and after asking Madame Lefrançois if she would be so kind as to send it around to him at the presbytery that evening, he left for the church, where the Angelus was tolling.
When the pharmacist could no longer hear the sound of his shoes on the square, he pronounced the curé’s behavior of a moment before to have been quite unsuitable. This refusal to accept any refreshment seemed to him the most odious sort of hypocrisy; all the priests tippled where no one could see them, and they were trying to bring back the days of the tithe.
The innkeeper came to her curé’s defense:
“Anyway, he could take four like you and bend them over his knee. Last year, he helped our people get in the straw; he could carry as many as six bundles at once—he’s that strong!”
“Bravo!” said the pharmacist. “Then go ahead and send your girls to confession to strapping fellows with temperaments like his! Personally, if I were the government, I’d want the priests to be bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrançois, every month an ample phlebotomy, in the interests of law and order and morality!”
“Quiet, Monsieur Homais! You’re ungodly! You have no religion!”
The pharmacist answered:
“I do have a religion, my own religion; in fact, I have even more than any of them, with their masquerades and their hocus-pocus! Unlike them, I worship
God! I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whoever he may be, I don’t really care, who has put us here on earth to perform our duties as citizens and family men; but I don’t need to go into a church and kiss a silver platter and reach into my pocket to fatten a pack of humbugs who eat better than we do! Because one can honor him just as well in a forest, in a field, or even by gazing up at the ethereal vault, like the ancients. My own God is the God of Socrates, Franklin, Voltaire, and Béranger! I favor The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar and the immortal principles of ’89! I cannot, therefore, accept the sort of jolly old God who strolls about his flower beds cane in hand, lodges his friends in the bellies of whales, dies uttering a groan and comes back to life after three days: things absurd in themselves and completely opposed, what is more, to all physical laws; which simply goes to show, by the way, that the priests have always wallowed in a shameful ignorance in which they endeavor to engulf the peoples of the world along with them.”
He fell silent, looking around for an audience, for in his excitement the pharmacist had for a moment believed he was in the middle of a town-council meeting. But the innkeeper was no longer listening to him; she was straining her ears toward a distant sound of wheels. The noise of a carriage could be heard mingled with the clatter of loose horseshoes striking the ground, and at last the Hirondelle stopped in front of the door.
It was a yellow box carried by two great wheels that came up as high as the canopy, blocking the travelers’ view of the road and spattering their shoulders. The little panes of its narrow hatch windows trembled in their frames when the carriage was closed, and retained patches of mud, here and there, on their ancient coating of dust, which even the rainstorms did not entirely wash away. It was hitched to three horses, the first alone in front, and when they went down a hill, it would bump against the ground.