Author: Gustave Flaubert
Category: Fiction
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The innkeeper said nothing in reply. Homais continued:
“Do you think that, in order to be an agronomist, you need to till the soil or fatten the poultry yourself? No—but you do need to understand the constitution of the substances involved, the geological strata, the effects of the atmosphere, the quality of soils, minerals, waters, the density of the different bodies, and their capillary attraction! And so forth. And you need to be deeply familiar with all your principles of hygiene, in order to direct and review the construction of the buildings, the regimen of the animals, the feeding of the servants! You must also, Madame Lefrançois, know your botany; be able to distinguish among the plants, you know, tell which are salubrious and which deleterious, which are unproductive and which nutritive, if it’s a good idea to pull them up in this spot and resow them over there, propagate these, destroy those others; in short, you need to keep up with the latest science by reading pamphlets and public papers, you must always keep your hand in, be prepared to point out which improvements …”
The innkeeper had not stopped staring at the door of the Café Français. The pharmacist continued:
“Would to God our farmers were chemists, or at least that they would pay more attention to the advice of the scientists! For instance, I myself recently wrote a rather powerful little work, a treatise of over seventy-two pages, entitled ‘On Cider, Its Fabrication and Its Effects; Followed by a Number of New Reflections on the Subject,’ which I sent to the Agronomic Society of Rouen; and which even earned me the honor of being received among its members—agricultural section, pomology division; well, now, if my work had been made available to the public …”
But the pharmacist stopped, because Madame Lefrançois seemed so preoccupied.
“Just look at them!” she said; “it’s beyond understanding! such a hole-in-the-wall!”
And with shrugs that pulled the stitches of her sweater tight across her chest, she gestured with both hands toward her rival’s establishment, out of which now came the sound of singing.
“Anyway, it won’t be there much longer,” she added; “another few days and that’ll be the end of it.”
Homais drew back in amazement. She descended her three steps and spoke in his ear:
“What! You don’t know? They’re going to shut him down this week. Lheureux’s the one that’s forcing him to sell. He’s killed him with promissory notes.”
“What a dreadful catastrophe!” cried the pharmacist, who was always prepared with expressions to fit every imaginable circumstance.
And so the innkeeper began telling him the story, which she had had from Théodore, Monsieur Guillaumin’s servant, and even though she despised Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was a wheedler, a toady.
“Ah! There—” she said, “there he is now, in the market; he’s bowing to Madame Bovary; she’s got a green hat on. And she’s holding Monsieur Boulanger’s arm.”
“Madame Bovary!” said Homais. “I must go and pay my respects. Perhaps she’d like to have a seat in the enclosure, under the peristyle.”
And without listening to Mère Lefrançois, who was calling him back to tell him more, the pharmacist went off with a quick step, a smile on his lips, and his knees pointing straight ahead, distributing a profusion of greetings right and left and filling a good deal of space with the large skirts of his black coat, which floated in the breeze behind him.
Rodolphe, having spotted him from a distance, had quickened his pace; but Madame Bovary was out of breath; he therefore slowed down and said to her, smiling, in a savage tone:
“I was trying to avoid that coarse fellow—you know, the pharmacist.”
She nudged him with her elbow.
“What does that mean?” he wondered.
And he observed her out of the corner of his eye as they walked on.
Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood out in the bright light, within the oval of her bonnet, whose pale ribbons resembled the leaves of rushes. Her eyes with their long curved lashes were gazing ahead, and, though wide open, they seemed a bit narrowed by her cheekbones, because of the blood that beat gently under her delicate skin. The membrane between her nostrils was of a translucent rose color. She was inclining her head toward her shoulder, and one could see between her lips the nacreous tips of her white teeth.
“Is she making fun of me?” mused Rodolphe.
But that gesture of Emma’s had been no more than a warning; for Monsieur Lheureux was walking alongside them, and he spoke to them from time to time, as though to begin a conversation:
“What a splendid day! Everyone is out! The wind is from the east!”
And Madame Bovary scarcely answered him, no more did Rodolphe, while at their slightest motion the dry-goods merchant would draw closer, saying, “I beg your pardon?” and touching his hat.
When they were in front of the blacksmith’s, instead of following the road all the way to the gate, Rodolphe abruptly turned aside into a path, drawing Madame Bovary along with him; he cried out:
“Goodbye, Monsieur Lheureux! Nice seeing you!”
“How you dismissed him!” she said, laughing.
“Why,” he answered, “should one allow others to push their way in? And since, today, I have the good fortune to be with you …”
Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked about the fine weather and how pleasant it was to walk on the grass. A few late oxeyes had appeared.
“Look at those pretty daisies,” he said. “Enough good oracles for all the girls around here who are in love.”
He added:
“Should I pick one? What do you think?”
“Are you in love?” she asked, coughing a little.
“Well! Who knows!” answered Rodolphe.
The meadow was beginning to fill, and the housewives would bump into you with their great umbrellas, their baskets, and their small children. One often had to give way before a long file of countrywomen, farm maids in blue stockings, flat shoes, and silver rings, who smelled of milk when one passed near them. They walked holding hands and thus covered the entire length of the meadow, from the row of aspens to the banquet tent. But it was time for the judging, and one after another the farmers were entering a kind of arena formed by a long rope supported on posts.
The animals were there, their noses turned to the rope, their unequal hindquarters forming a ragged line. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts; calves were bawling; sheep were bleating; cows, one leg folded in, spread their bellies over the grass and, slowly chewing their cuds, blinked their heavy eyelids under the flies that buzzed around them. Bare-armed carters held the halters of rearing stallions that whinnied with widened nostrils in the direction of the mares, who remained calm, reaching out their heads and hanging manes while their foals rested in their shadow or came now and then to suckle from them; and over the long undulation of all these massed bodies, one could see a white mane rising in the wind, like a wave, or sharp horns thrusting up, and the heads of men running. Off to one side, beyond the enclosure, a hundred paces away, was a big black bull wearing a muzzle and an iron ring in its nose, as motionless as a bronze statue. A child in rags held it by a rope.
Meanwhile, between the two rows, a group of gentlemen were advancing with heavy steps, examining each animal, then conferring with one another in low voices. One of them, who seemed more important, was taking a few notes, as he walked, in a notebook. This was the chairman of the jury: Monsieur Derozerays de la Panville. As soon as he recognized Rodolphe, he came forward briskly and said to him with a friendly smile:
“Why, Monsieur Boulanger, are you deserting us?”
Rodolphe protested that he would be along shortly. But when the chairman had gone off:
“Oh, no,” he said. “Indeed I will not be along shortly; I value your company above his any day.”
And even as he poked fun at the
fair, Rodolphe showed the policeman his blue card so that they could walk about more freely, and he even stopped now and then in front of some handsome specimen, which Madame Bovary did not much admire. He noticed this and then began to make jokes about the ladies of Yonville and the way they dressed; then he asked her forgiveness for the carelessness of his own appearance. It was that incoherent mix of the ordinary and the elegant that common people generally take for evidence of an eccentric lifestyle, chaotic passions, the tyrannical dictates of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, which either charms or exasperates them. Thus, the breast of his cambric shirt, with its pleated cuffs, swelled as the wind caught it in the opening of his vest of gray twill, and his broad-striped trousers revealed at the ankles his low nankeen boots, vamped in patent leather. They were so highly polished they mirrored the grass; and in them he was trampling the horse dung underfoot, one hand in his jacket pocket and his straw hat tipped to the side.
“Besides,” he added, “when you live in the country …”
“It’s all a waste of effort,” said Emma.
“True!” replied Rodolphe. “Just imagine—not one of these good people is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!”
Then they talked about the mediocrity of provincial life, how stifling it was, how fatal to one’s illusions.
“And so I myself,” said Rodolphe, “sink into such melancholy …”
“You!” she broke in, surprised. “But I thought you were very happy.”
“Oh, yes, I seem to be, because when I’m with other people, I’m able to hide my face behind a mask of mockery; and yet how often, at the sight of a cemetery, in the moonlight, have I asked myself if I would not do better to go join those who sleep there …”
“Oh! And your friends?” she said. “You’re not thinking of them.”
“My friends? Which ones? Do I have any? Who cares about me?”
And he accompanied these last words with a kind of whistle between his lips.
But they were obliged to draw apart because of a great tower of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overburdened that one could see only the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two arms, held straight out in front of him. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was transporting the chairs from the church in among the throng of people. Highly imaginative concerning anything to do with his own interests, he had discovered this means of drawing a profit from the fair; and his idea was a success, for he was being accosted on all sides—the villagers, who were hot, were indeed quarreling over these straw-seated chairs with their smell of incense, and they leaned back with a certain veneration against the stout slats soiled by wax from the tapers.
Madame Bovary took Rodolphe’s arm again; he continued as though talking to himself:
“Yes! I’ve missed out on so many things! I’ve been so alone! Ah! If only I’d had some goal in life, if I’d known some affection, if I’d found someone … Oh, I would have expended all the energy I possess, I would have surmounted everything, conquered everything!”
“Yet it seems to me,” said Emma, “that you’re scarcely to be pitied.”
“Oh? You think so?” said Rodolphe.
“Because … well …,” she went on, “you’re free.”
She hesitated:
“Rich.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” he answered.
And she was swearing that she was not making fun of him, when a cannon shot resounded; immediately everyone began crowding, in confusion, toward the village.
It was a false alarm. The prefect had not arrived; and the members of the jury were perplexed, not knowing whether to begin the proceedings or continue to wait.
At last, on the far side of the Square, a large hired landau appeared, drawn by two thin horses being fiercely whipped by a coachman in a white hat. Binet had time enough only to shout, “Fall in!” and the colonel to imitate him. There was a rush toward the stacked rifles. They hurled themselves at them. A few even forgot their collars. But the prefect’s coach-and-pair seemed to sense the difficulty, and the coupled nags, swaying from side to side on their slender chain, drew up at a slow trot in front of the portico of the town hall just at the moment when the national guard and the fire brigade were deploying there, marching in place to the beat of the drums.
“Mark time!” shouted Binet.
“Halt!” shouted the colonel. “File to the left!”
And after a present-arms in which the rattling of the rifle bands sounded like a copper cauldron tumbling down a flight of stairs, all the rifles were lowered.
They then saw, descending from the carriage, a gentleman dressed in a short coat embroidered in silver, bald over his forehead, his hair tufted on the crown of his head, with a pallid complexion and a most benign expression. He half closed his large, heavy-lidded eyes in order to study the crowd, at the same time lifting his sharp nose and arranging his sunken mouth into a smile. He recognized the mayor by his sash and explained to him that the prefect had been unable to come. He himself was a prefectural councilor. Then he added some excuses; Tuvache responded to these with civilities; the other confessed himself overwhelmed; and they remained thus, face-to-face, their foreheads almost touching, surrounded by the members of the jury, the town council, the local dignitaries, the national guard, and the crowd. The councilor, resting his little black tricornered hat against his chest, reiterated his salutations, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, smiled in turn, stammered, searched for words, protested his devotion to the monarchy and his recognition of the honor that was being bestowed on Yonville.
Hippolyte, the stableboy at the inn, came forward to take the horses by their bridles from the coachman and, limping on his clubfoot, led them through the gateway of the Lion d’Or, where many of the countryfolk had gathered to examine the carriage. The drum rolled, the howitzer boomed, and the gentlemen filed up to sit on the platform in the armchairs of red Utrecht velvet lent by Madame Tuvache.
These men all looked alike. Their soft, fair faces, a little tanned by the sun, were the color of sweet cider, and their fluffy side-whiskers escaped from high, stiff collars held straight by white cravats tied in broad bows. Every vest was of velvet, shawl style; every watch bore, at the end of a long ribbon, some sort of oval seal made of carnelian; and every man rested his hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the crotch of his trousers, whose hard-finished fabric shone more brilliantly than the leather of his stout boots.
The ladies of the party stayed in back, under the portico, between the columns, while the crowd of common folk was opposite, standing, or sitting in chairs. Indeed, Lestiboudois had brought over all those he had moved out of the meadow, and he kept running to the church to get even more, causing such congestion with his commerce that it was very difficult for anyone to reach the little flight of steps up to the platform.
“What I think,” said Monsieur Lheureux (addressing the pharmacist, who was passing him on his way to his seat), “is that they should have set up a pair of Venetian masts there: hung with something a bit severe and sumptuous, it would have made a very pretty sight.”
“Certainly,” answered Homais. “But what can you expect! The mayor took everything into his own hands. He doesn’t have much taste, poor Tuvache, and in fact he hasn’t a trace of what’s called artistic sense.”
Meanwhile, Rodolphe, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the second floor of the town hall, into the council chamber, and since it was empty, he had declared that here they would be in a good position to enjoy the spectacle more comfortably. He took three stools from around the oval table, under the bust of the king, and having brought them over to one of the windows, they sat down side by side.
There was some agitation on the platform, prolonged whisperings, confabulations. Finally the Councilor stood up. They now knew that his name was Lieuvain, and this name was repeated from one to another in the crowd. After he had che
cked over several sheets of paper and applied his eye to them the better to see, he began:
“Gentlemen,
“May I first be permitted (before speaking to you about the object of today’s gathering, and this sentiment, I am sure, will be shared by all of you)—may I first be permitted, I say, to pay tribute to the higher administration, the government, the monarch, gentlemen, our sovereign, that beloved king to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who with a hand at once so firm and so wise guides the Chariot of State amid the unceasing perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to command a respect for peace as well as for war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts.”
“I really ought,” said Rodolphe, “to move back a bit.”
“Why?” said Emma.
But at this moment, the Councilor’s voice rose to an extraordinary pitch. He was declaiming:
“The time is past, gentlemen, when civil discord bloodied our public squares, when the landowner, the businessman, even the worker, drifting off at night into a peaceful sleep, trembled lest he be brutally awakened by the sound of incendiary alarms, when the most subversive of maxims were boldly undermining the foundations …”
“Because,” Rodolphe went on, “I might be seen from down below; and then I’d have to apologize for the next two weeks, and what with my bad reputation …”
“Oh, you’re slandering yourself!” said Emma.
“No, no, it’s deplorable, I swear.”
“But, gentlemen,” the Councilor went on, “if I dismiss these dark pictures from my memory and return my gaze to the present situation of our fair nation, what do I see? Commerce and the arts are flourishing everywhere; everywhere new lines of communication, like so many new arteries in the State’s body, are establishing new relationships; our great manufacturing centers have resumed their activity; religion, now more firmly established, smiles in every heart; our ports are full, our confidence reborn, and France breathes again at last! …”