‘I know very well,’ objected the curé, ‘that there are good works, good authors. But with all these people of both sexes assembled in some enchanting apartment decked with worldly adornments, and then these pagan disguises, that rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices – in the long run it is bound to engender a certain laxity of spirit and to kindle base thoughts and temptations to purity. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally,’ he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice while he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, ‘if the Church has condemned the theatre, it is for a good reason; we must submit to her decrees.’
‘Why,’ asked the druggist, ‘should she excommunicate actors? For formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called “Mysteries”, which often offended against the laws of decency.’
The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the chemist went on – ‘It’s like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know, more than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!’
And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien – ‘Ah! you’ll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie – ’
‘But it is the Protestants, and not we,’ cried the other impatiently, ‘who recommend the Bible.’
‘No matter,’ said Homais. ‘I am surprised that in our days, in this century of enlightenment, anyone should still persist in proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it not, doctor?’
‘No doubt,’ replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any ideas.
The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot a Parthian arrow.
‘I’ve known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers kick about.’
‘Come, come!’ said the cure.
‘Ah! I’ve known some!’ And separating the words of his sentence, Homais repeated, ‘I – have – known – some!’
‘Well, they did wrong,’ said Bournisien, resigned to anything.
‘And my word! plenty other wrongs too!’ exclaimed the druggist.
‘Sir!’ replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that the druggist was intimidated.
‘I only mean to say,’ he replied in less brutal a tone, ‘that toleration is the surest way to draw people to religion.’
‘That is true! that is true!’ agreed the worthy man, sitting down again on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments.
Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor – ‘That’s what I call a cockfight. I beat him, did you see, in a way! – Now, take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were only for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If anyone could take my place, I would accompany you myself. Be quick about it. Lagardy is only going to give one performance; he’s engaged to go to England at a high salary. From what I hear, he’s a regular dog; he’s rolling in money; he’s taking three mistresses and a cook along with him. All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that suits the imagination to some extent. But they die at the hospital, because they haven’t the sense when young to lay by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till tomorrow.’
The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary’s head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense, but, for a wonder, Charles did not give in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. He saw nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large, and the falling in of Lheureux’s bills was still so far off that there was no need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight o’clock they set out in the ‘Hirondelle’.
The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go.
‘Well, a pleasant journey!’ he said to them; ‘happy mortals that you are!’
Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with, four flounces – ‘You are as lovely as a Venus. You’ll cut quite a figure in Rouen.’
The diligence stopped at the Croix-Rouge in the Place Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers; – a good old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in Sunday-clothes, has a café on the street, and towards the countryside a kitchen-garden. Charles at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery, the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them; was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.
Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor was much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the theatre, which were still closed.
15
The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills repeated in baroque lettering ‘Lucia di Lammermoor – Lagardy – Opera – etc.’ The weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and then a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black warehouses where they make casks.
For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to have a little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his stomach.
Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child at pushing the large tapestried door with her finger. She breathed as deeply as she could of the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent forward with the air of a duchess.
The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing. They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of business; but ‘business’ was not forgotten; they still talked cotton, spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen, inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or apple-green cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow gloves.
Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But the three knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments played some chords, and the rising curtain discovered a country scene.
It was the crossroads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to Heaven. Another appeared; they went away, and the hunters started afresh. She felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott. She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees, that shook when anyone walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords – all those imaginary things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. She was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucia attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar Lagardy appeared.
He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against his left thigh, and he cast round laughing looks showing his white teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the toreador.
From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucia in his arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of rage, then elegaic gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma lent forward to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognised all the intoxication and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of the prima donna seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit night when they said, ‘Tomorrow! tomorrow!’ The theatre rang with cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last chords.
‘But why,’ asked Bovary, ‘does that gentleman persecute her?’
‘No, no!’ she answered; ‘he is her lover!’
‘Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on before said, “I love Lucia and she loves me!” Besides, he went off with her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn’t he – that ugly little man with a cock’s feather in his hat?’
Despite Emma’s explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucia, thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered very much with the words.
‘What does it matter?’ said Emma. ‘Do be quiet!’
‘Yes, but you know,’ he went on, leaning against her shoulder, ‘I like to understand things.’
‘Be quiet! be quiet!’ she cried impatiently.
Lucia advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of adultery she could have anchored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She knew now the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled inwardly with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak.
His large Spanish hat fell at a sweep of his hand, and immediately the instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; Lucia uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-open mouths. The outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought, must have an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the character, she tried to imagine to herself his life – that life resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With him, through all the kingdoms of Europe, she would have travelled from capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each evening, at the back of the box, behind the golden trellis-work, she would have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked at her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength, as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out, ‘Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!’
The curtain fell.
The smell of the gas mingled with one’s breath; the waving of fans made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her armchair with choking palpitations. Charles, fearing that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water.
He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband, who was a mill-owner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she used her handkerchief to wipe the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement. At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath – ‘My word! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a crowd – such a crowd!’
He added – ‘Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Léon!’
‘Léon?’
‘Himself! He’s coming along to pay his respects.’ And as he finished these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box.
He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Bovary extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will. She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said goodbye standing at the window. But soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a few hurried words.
‘Ah, how do you do! What! you here?’
‘Silence!’ cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning.
