‘Go and get me a cab!’
The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.
‘Ah! Léon! Really – I don’t know – if I ought,’ she whispered. Then with a more serious air, ‘Do you know, it is very improper?’
‘How so?’ replied the clerk. ‘It is done at Paris.’
And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her.
Still the cab did not come. Léon was afraid she might go back into the church. At last the cab appeared.
‘At all events, go out by the north porch,’ cried the beadle, who was left alone on the threshold, ‘so as to see the Resurrection, the Last Judgement, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-flames.’
‘Where to, sir?’ asked the coachman.
‘Where you like,’ said Léon, forcing Emma into the cab.
And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue Grand-Pont, crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoleon, the Pont Neuf, and stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille.
‘Go on,’ cried a voice that came from within.
The cab went on again, and as soon as it reached the Carrefour Lafayette, set off downhill, and entered the station at a gallop.
‘No, straight on!’ cried the same voice.
The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours, trotted quietly beneath the elm trees. The coachman wiped his brow, put his leather hat between his knees, and drove his carriage beyond the side alley by the meadow to the margin of the waters.
It went along by the river, along the towing path paved with sharp pebbles, and for a long while in the direction of Oyssel, beyond the isles.
But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatremares, Sotteville, La Grande-Chaussée, the Rue d’Elbeuf, and made its third halt in front of the Jardin des Plantes.
‘Get on, will you?’ cried the voice more furiously.
And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the Quai des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the bridge, by the Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital gardens, where old men in black coats were walking in the sun along the terrace all green with ivy. It went up the Boulevard Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard Cauchoise, then the whole of Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills.
It came back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, wandered about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont Gargan, at the Rouge-Mare, and the Place du Gaillardbois; in the Rue Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien, Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise – in front of the Customs, at the Basse Vieille Tour, at the Trois Pipes, and the Monumental Cemetery. From time to time the coachman, on his box, cast despairing eyes at the public-houses. He could not understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and depression.
And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb, and tossing about like a vessel.
Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bare hand slipped beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off lighted like white butterflies on a field of red clover in full bloom.
About six o’clock the carriage stopped in a back street of the Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out; she walked away with her veil down, and without turning her head.
2
On reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had at last started.
Yet nothing forced her to go; but she had given her word that she would return that same evening. Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is for some women at once the chastisement and atonement of adultery.
She packed her box quickly, paid her bill, took a cab in the yard, hurrying on the driver, urging him on, every moment enquiring about the time and the miles traversed. He succeeded in catching up the ‘Hirondelle’ as it neared the first houses of Quincampoix.
Hardly was she seated in her corner than she closed her eyes, and opened them at the foot of the hill, when from afar she recognised Félicité, who was on the lookout in front of the farrier’s shop. Hivert pulled in his horses and the servant, climbing up to the window, said mysteriously – ‘Madame, you must go to Monsieur Homais at once. It’s for something important.’
The village was silent as usual. At the corner of the streets were small pink heaps smoking in the air, for this was the time for jam-making, and everyone at Yonville prepared his supply on the same day. But in front of the chemist’s shop might be admired a far larger heap, surpassing the others with the superiority that a laboratory must have over ordinary stores, a general need over an individual fancy.
She went in. The large armchair was upset, and even the Fanal de Rouen lay on the ground, out-spread between two pestles. She pushed open the lobby door, and in the middle of the kitchen, amid brown jars full of picked currants, of powdered sugar and lump sugar, of the scales on the table, and of the pans on the fire, she saw all the Homais, small and large, with aprons reaching to their chins and forks in their hands. Justin was standing up with bowed head, and the chemist was shouting – ‘Who told you to go and fetch it in the capharnaüm?’
‘What is it? What is the matter?’
‘What is it?’ replied the druggist. ‘We are making preserves; they are simmering; but they were about to boil over, because there is too much juice, and I ordered another pan. Then, from indolence, in sheer laziness, he went and took the key of the capharnaüm hanging on its nail in my laboratory.’
It was thus the druggist called a small room under the leads, full of the utensils and goods of his trade. He often spent long hours there alone, labelling, decanting, and doing up again; and he looked upon it not as a simple store, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there afterwards issued, elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses, infusions, lotions, and potions, that would bear his fame far and wide. No one soul set foot there, and such was his own respect for it that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers, was the spot where he displayed his pride, the capharnaüm was the refuge where, egoistically concentrating himself, Homais delighted in the exercise of his predilections, so that Justin’s thoughtlessness seemed to him a monstrous piece of irreverence, and redder than the currants, he repeated – ‘Yes, from the capharnaüm! The key that locks up the acids and caustic alkalis! To go and get a spare pan! a pan with a lid! and that I shall perhaps never use! Everything is of importance in the delicate operations of our art! But, devil take it! one must make distinctions, and not employ for almost domestic purposes that which is meant for pharmaceutical! It is as if one were to carve a fowl with a scalpel; as if a magistrate – ’
‘Now be calm,’ said Madame Homais.
And Athalie, pulling at his coat, cried ‘Papa! papa!’
‘No, let me alone,’ went on the druggist, ‘let me alone, hang it! My word! One might as well set up for a grocer. That’s it! go it! respect nothing! break, smash, let loose the leeches, burn the mallow-paste, pickle the gherkins in the window jars, tear up the bandages!’
‘I thought you had – ’ said Emma.
‘Presently! Do you know to what you exposed yourself? Didn’t you see anything in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer, articulate something.’
‘I – don’t – know,’ stammered the young fellow.
‘Ah! you don’t know! Well, then, I do know! You saw a bottle of blue glass, sealed with yellow wax, that contains a white powder, on which I have even written ‘Dangerous!’ And do you know what is in it? Arsenic! And you go and touch it! You take a pan that was next to it!’
‘Next to it!’ cried Madame Homais, clasping her hands. ‘Arsenic! You might have poisoned us all.’
And the children began howling as if they already had frightful pains in their entrails.
‘Or poison a patient!’ continued the druggist. ‘Do you want to see me in the prisoner’s dock with criminals, in a court of justice? To see me dragged to the scaffold? Don’t you know what care I take in managing things, although I am so thoroughly used to it? Often I am horrified myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes us, and the absurd legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles’ sword over our heads.’
Emma no longer dreamed of asking what they wanted her for, and the druggist went on in breathless phrases – ‘That is your return for all the kindnesses we have shown you! That is how you recompense me for the really paternal care that I lavish on you! For without me where would you be? What would you be doing? Who provides you with food, education, clothes, and all the means of figuring one day with honour in the ranks of society? But you must pull hard at the oar if you’re to do that, and get, as people say, callosities upon your hands. Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.’
He was so exasperated that he quoted Latin. He would have quoted Chinese or Eskimo had he known those languages, for he was in one of those crises in which the whole soul shows indistinctly what it contains, like the ocean, which, in the storm, opens itself from the seaweeds on its shores down to the sands of its abysses.
And he went on – ‘I am beginning to repent terribly of having taken you up! I should certainly have done better to have left you to rot in your poverty and the dirt in which you were born. Oh, you’ll never be fit for anything but to herd animals with horns! You have no aptitude for science! You hardly know how to stick on a label! And there you are, dwelling with me snug as a parson, living in clover, taking your ease!’
But Emma, turning to Madame Homais, ‘I was told to come here – ’
‘Oh, dear me!’ interrupted the good woman, with a sad air, ‘how am I to tell you? It is a misfortune!’
She could not finish, the druggist was thundering – ‘Empty it! Clean it! Take it back! Be quick!’
And seizing Justin by the collar of his blouse, he shook a book out of his pocket. The lad stooped, but Homais was the quicker, and, having picked up the volume, contemplated it with staring eyes and open mouth.
‘Married – Love!’ he said, slowly separating the two words. ‘Ah! very good! very good! very pretty! And illustrations! Oh, this is too much!’
