Author: Gustave Flaubert
Category: Fiction
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“Besides,” added Rodolphe, “perhaps, from society’s point of view, they may be right?”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“Why, don’t you know,” he said, “that there exist souls who endure endless torment? They are driven now to dream, now to take action, driven to experience the purest passions, then the most extreme joys, and so they hurl themselves into every sort of fantasy, every sort of folly.”
She looked at him, then, the way one contemplates a traveler who has journeyed through mythical lands, and she said:
“We poor women haven’t even that diversion!”
“A sad diversion, for one doesn’t find happiness in it.”
“But can one ever find happiness?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, you happen upon it one day,” he answered.
“And this,” the Councilor was saying, “is what you have come to realize. You farmers and workers of the fields; you peace-loving pioneers in an endeavor so essential to civilization! You men of progress and morality! You have realized, I say, that the storms of politics are truly even more to be feared than the disturbances of the atmosphere …”
“You happen upon it one day,” Rodolphe repeated, “one day, suddenly, when you had despaired of it. Then new horizons open out; it’s like a voice crying, ‘Here it is!’ You feel the need to confide your whole life to this person, to give her everything, to sacrifice everything for her! You don’t have to explain anything; you sense each other’s thoughts. You’ve seen each other in your dreams.” (And he was looking at her.) “Here it is at last, the treasure you’ve been seeking for so long, here it is before you; it shines, it sparkles. Yet still you doubt it, you don’t dare believe in it; you’re still dazzled by it, as if you were coming out of the darkness into the light.”
And as he finished speaking, Rodolphe added pantomime to his words. He passed his hand across his face, like a man overcome with dizziness; then he let it fall on Emma’s hand. She withdrew hers. But the Councilor was still reading:
“And who would be surprised, gentlemen? Only one who is so blind, so deeply immersed (I’m not afraid to say it)—so deeply immersed in the prejudices of another age that he still fails to appreciate the spirit of our farming population. Where, indeed, can one find more patriotism than in rural areas, more devotion to the common good, more—in a word—intelligence? And by intelligence, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, that vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and reasonable intelligence that applies itself above all else to the pursuit of useful goals, contributing thus to the good of every man, to the betterment of all, and to the preservation of the State, fruit of respect for the law and performance of duty …”
“Ah! Again!” said Rodolphe. “They’re always going on about one’s duty—I’m bored to death by the word. They’re a bunch of old drivelers in flannel vests, church hens with foot warmers and rosaries forever singing in our ears: ‘Duty! Duty!’ Lord help me! Our duty is to feel what is great, cherish what is beautiful—not to accept all of society’s conventions, with the humiliations it imposes on us.”
“And yet … and yet …,” objected Madame Bovary.
“No! Why rant against the passions? Aren’t they the only beautiful thing on earth, the source of heroism, enthusiasm, poetry, music, the arts—everything, in fact?”
“But still,” said Emma, “we have to pay some attention to society’s opinions and abide by its morality.”
“Ah! In fact there are two moralities,” he replied. “The petty one, the conventional one, the one devised by men, that keeps changing and bellows so loudly, making a commotion down here among us, in a perfectly pedestrian way, like that gathering of imbeciles you see out there. But the other one, the eternal one, is all around and above us, like the landscape that surrounds us and the blue sky that gives us light.”
Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with his pocket handkerchief. He went on:
“And why would I presume, gentlemen, to demonstrate to you here, today, the usefulness of agriculture? Who furnishes us our needs? Who provides our sustenance? Is it not the farmer? The farmer, gentlemen, who sows with his diligent hand the fecund furrows of our countryside, causes the wheat to sprout, which, ground and reduced to powder by ingenious machinery, emerges under the name of flour, and, thence transported to our cities, is soon delivered to the baker, who creates from it a food for the poor man as well as for the rich. Is it not also the farmer who fattens his plentiful flocks in the pastures to provide us with clothing? For how would we clothe ourselves, how would we feed ourselves, without the farmer? In fact, gentlemen, is there any need to go even so far in search of examples? Who among you has not reflected many a time on the great benefit we derive from that modest creature, that ornament of our poultry yards, which furnishes at once a downy pillow for our beds, succulent flesh for our tables, and also eggs? But I would never come to an end if I had to enumerate one after the other all the different products that the earth, when it is well cultivated, lavishes like a generous mother on her children. Here, we have the vineyard; there, the cider orchard; yonder, rapeseed; elsewhere, cheeses; and flax—gentlemen, let us not forget flax! which in recent years has enjoyed a considerable increase, to which I would like most particularly to call your attention.”
He did not need to ask for their attention: for every mouth in the crowd hung open, as though to drink in his words. Tuvache, next to him, was listening wide-eyed; Monsieur Derozerays, from time to time, quietly closed his eyelids; and farther off, the pharmacist, with his son Napoléon between his knees, was cupping his hand around his ear in order not to lose a single syllable. The other members of the jury kept slowly dipping their chins into their vests to signal their approval. The members of the fire brigade, below the platform, were leaning on their bayonets; and Binet stood motionless, his elbow out, the tip of his sword in the air. He could perhaps hear, but he could not have seen anything, because the visor of his helmet was descending onto his nose. His lieutenant, Monsieur Tuvache’s youngest son, had gone even further with his own; for he was wearing one so enormous that it rocked back and forth on his head, allowing the end of his calico kerchief to protrude. Under it, he was smiling with a quite childlike gentleness, and his pale little face, on which drops of moisture shimmered, wore an expression of drowsy bliss and exhaustion.
The Square was packed right up to the housefronts. People could be seen leaning on their elbows at every window, standing in every doorway, and Justin, in front of the display window of the pharmacy, seemed completely transfixed by the contemplation of what he was gazing at. Despite the silence, Monsieur Lieuvain’s voice dissipated in the air. It came to you in shreds of phrases, interrupted now and then by the scraping of the chairs in the crowd; then one would suddenly hear, emanating from behind, the prolonged bellow of an ox, or the bleats of the lambs answering one another at the street corners. For the animals had been driven in that close by the cowherds and shepherds, and they lowed from time to time even as they reached out with their tongues and tore off a scrap of foliage hanging down over their muzzles.
Rodolphe had drawn close to Emma, and he was saying rapidly, in a low voice:
“Doesn’t it revolt you, the way society conspires? Is there a single feeling it doesn’t condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies, are persecuted, maligned, and if at last two poor souls should find each other, everything is organized to prevent their coming together. They’ll try, all the same, they’ll beat their wings, they’ll call out to each other. Oh, even so! —sooner or later, in six months, in ten years, they’ll come together, they’ll love each other, because fate demands it and they were born for each other.”
He sat with his arms crossed over his knees, and, lifting his face toward Emma, he looked at her fixedly from very near. She could distinguish in his eyes little lines of gold radiating out all around his black pupils, and she could even smell the sce
nt of the pomade with which his hair was glazed. Then a languor came over her; she recalled the vicomte who had waltzed with her at La Vaubyessard, whose beard had given off the same smell of vanilla and lemon as this hair; and reflexively she half closed her eyelids the better to breathe it in. But as she did this, straightening in her chair, she saw in the distance, on the farthest horizon, the old stagecoach, the Hirondelle, slowly descending the hill of Les Leux, trailing a long plume of dust behind it. It was in that yellow carriage that Léon had so often returned to her; and by that very road he had left forever! She believed she could see him across the square, at his window; then everything blurred together, some clouds passed; it seemed to her that she was still circling in the waltz, under the blaze of the chandeliers, in the arms of the vicomte, and that Léon was not far off, that he was coming … and yet she could still sense Rodolphe’s head next to her. And so the sweetness of this sensation permeated her desires of earlier times, and like grains of sand before a gust of wind, they whirled about in the subtle whiff of the fragrance that was spreading through her soul. Again and again she opened wide her nostrils to breathe in the freshness of the ivy around the capitals. She drew off her gloves, she dried her hands; then, with her handkerchief, she fanned her face, while through the pulsing at her temples she could hear the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the Councilor intoning his phrases.
He was saying:
“Persist! Persevere! Listen neither to the promptings of routine nor to the rash counsels of reckless empiricism! Apply yourselves above all to improving the soil, to enriching manures, to developing fine breeds—equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine! Let this agricultural fair be for you a sort of peaceful arena in which the victor, as he leaves, will hold out his hand to the vanquished and fraternize with him, wishing him better success next time! And you, venerable servants! humble workers in our households, whose arduous labors no government until this day has acknowledged, come forward and receive the recompense for your silent virtues, and be persuaded that the State, henceforth, has its eyes fixed upon you, that it encourages you, that it protects you, that it will accede to your just demands and lighten, insofar as it can, the burden of your arduous sacrifices!”
Then Monsieur Lieuvain sat down; Monsieur Derozerays stood up and began another speech. His was perhaps not as flowery as the Councilor’s; but it merited respect for its more positive style, that is, for its more specialized knowledge and loftier considerations. Thus, less space was taken up by praise of the government; religion and agriculture occupied more. Clearly shown was the relationship between the two, and how they had always contributed to civilization. Rodolphe was talking with Madame Bovary about dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of human society, the orator was depicting those primitive times in which men lived on acorns deep in the forest. Then they had left off their animal skins, donned cloth, dug furrows, planted vines. Was this a good thing? Weren’t there more drawbacks than advantages in this discovery? This was the problem Monsieur Derozerays had set himself. From magnetism, Rodolphe had gradually moved on to affinities, and while the chairman cited Cincinnatus at his plow, Diocletian planting his cabbages, and the emperors of China inaugurating the new year by sowing seed, the young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible attractions had their source in some previous existence.
“You and I, for instance—” he was saying, “why did we meet? What chance decreed it? It must be that, like two rivers flowing across the intervening distance and converging, our own particular inclinations impelled us toward each other.”
And he grasped her hand; she did not withdraw it.
“For all-around good farming!—” cried the chairman.
“A few days ago, for example, when I came to your house …”
“To Monsieur Bizet, of Quincampoix—”
“Did I know that I would be coming here with you?”
“Seventy francs!”
“A hundred times I’ve tried to leave you, and yet I’ve followed you, I’ve stayed with you.”
“For manures—”
“As I would stay with you tonight, tomorrow, every day, my whole life!”
“To Monsieur Caron, of Argueil, a gold medal!”
“For never before have I been so utterly charmed by anyone’s company.”
“To Monsieur Bain, of Givry-Saint-Martin!—”
“So that I’ll carry the memory of you away with me …”
“For a merino ram …”
“Whereas you’ll forget me. I will have passed like a shadow.”
“To Monsieur Belot, of Notre-Dame …”
“No! I will—won’t I—have a place in your thoughts, in your life?”
“Porcine breed, prize ex aequo: to Messieurs Lehérissé and Cullembourg, sixty francs!”
Rodolphe squeezed her hand, and he felt it warm and trembling like a captive dove that wants to fly away again; but whether because she was trying to free it or because she was responding to that pressure, she moved her fingers; he exclaimed:
“Oh, thank you! You’re not rejecting me! How good you are! I’m yours; you know that! Let me look at you, let me gaze at you!”
A gust of wind coming in through the windows ruffled the cloth on the table, and in the Square down below, all the tall headdresses of the countrywomen lifted like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.
“Use of oilseed cakes,” continued the chairman.
He was hurrying:
“Liquid manure … cultivation of flax … drainage … long-term leases … domestic service.”
Rodolphe had stopped speaking. They were gazing at each other. Intense desire made their dry lips quiver; and softly, effortlessly, their fingers intertwined.
“Catherine-Nicaise-Élisabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerrière, for fifty-four years of service on the same farm, a silver medal—value twenty-five francs!”
“Where is she—where’s Catherine Leroux?” repeated the Councilor.
She did not come forward, and one could hear voices whispering:
“Go on!”
“No.”
“To the left!”
“Don’t be afraid!”
“Oh, how stupid she is!”
“Well, is she here or not?” shouted Tuvache.
“Yes! … Here she is!”
“Well, get her to come up!”
Then they watched as she went up onto the platform: a frightened-looking little old woman who seemed to shrink within her shabby clothes. She had thick wooden clogs on her feet, and a large blue apron over her hips. Her thin face, surrounded with a borderless bonnet, was more creased with wrinkles than a withered pippin, and from the sleeves of her red blouse hung two long hands with gnarled joints. Barn dust, caustic washing soda, and wool grease had so thoroughly encrusted, chafed, and hardened them that they seemed dirty even though they had been washed in clear water; and from the habit of serving, they remained half open, as though offering their own testimony to the great suffering they had endured. A kind of monkish rigidity dignified the expression on her face. Nothing sad or tender softened those pale eyes. Living so much among animals, she had taken on their muteness and their placidity. This was the first time she had ever been surrounded by so many people; and, inwardly terrified by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in black suits, and the Councilor’s Legion of Honor medal, she remained completely motionless, not knowing whether to move forward or run away, nor why the crowd was urging her on or why the members of the jury were smiling at her. Thus did she stand there in front of those beaming citizens—this half century of servitude.
“Come here, venerable Catherine-Nicaise-Élisabeth Leroux!” said the Councilor, who had taken the list of laureates from the chairman’s hands.
And examining by turns the sheet of paper and the old woman, he repeated in a fatherly tone:
“Come here, come here!”
&
nbsp; “Are you deaf?” said Tuvache, leaping up from his chair.
And he began shouting in her ear:
“Fifty-four years of service! A silver medal! Twenty-five francs! It’s for you!”
Then, when she had her medal, she studied it. Finally, a beatific smile spread over her face, and one could hear her murmuring as she went away:
“I’ll give it to our curé, so that he will say some masses for me.”
“What fanaticism!” exclaimed the pharmacist, leaning toward the notary.
The ceremony was over; the crowd dispersed; and now that the speeches had been read, everyone was resuming his usual rank, and everything was returning to normal: the masters were bullying the servants, and the servants were beating the animals, those indolent conquering heroes heading back to the stables with a green crown between their horns.
Meanwhile, the national guard had gone up to the second floor of the town hall, brioches impaled on their bayonets, the battalion drummer carrying a basket of bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe’s arm; he accompanied her back home; they separated in front of her door; then, alone, he strolled about in the meadow, waiting for the banquet to begin.
The feast was long, noisy, badly served; they were packed in together so tightly they had trouble moving their elbows, and the narrow boards that served as benches nearly broke under the weight of the guests. They ate abundantly. Each person helped himself to his fair share. The sweat ran down every forehead; and a whitish vapor, like the mist over a river on an autumn morning, hovered over the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning his back against the canvas of the tent, was thinking so hard about Emma that he heard nothing. Behind him, on the lawn, servants were stacking dirty plates; his neighbors were talking, he did not answer them; someone filled his glass, and a silence settled over his thoughts, despite the increases in the din. He was dreaming of what she had said and of the shape of her lips; her face, as though in so many magic mirrors, shone out from the badges of the shakos; the folds of her dress hung down the walls; and days of love stretched endlessly ahead in the vistas of the future.