She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a present could so move anyone. At last he went out. Félicité remained. She could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting-room as if to take the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her, Emma flew to her room terrified.
Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second-floor she stopped before the attic-door, which was closed.
Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! ‘Ah, no! here,’ she thought, ‘I shall be all right.’
Emma pushed open the door and went in.
The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples, stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap.
Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it was lost to sight. Down beneath her, the village square was empty; the stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses stood motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower storey, rose a kind of humming with strident modulations. It was Binet turning his lathe.
She leant against the embrasure of the window and reread the letter, gulping with anger. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled him with her arms, and the throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a sledgehammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven intervals. She looked about her with a wish that the earth might crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was free. She advanced, looked at the paving-stones, saying to herself, ‘Come! come!’
The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls, and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her.
‘Emma! Emma!’ cried Charles.
She stopped.
‘Wherever are you? Come!’
The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a hand on her sleeve; it was Félicité.
‘Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table.’
And she had to go down to sit at table.
She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced these words in a strange manner: ‘We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems.’
‘Who told you?’ she said, shuddering.
‘Who told me!’ he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. ‘Why, Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Café Français. He has gone on a journey, or is to go.’
She gave a sob.
‘What surprises you in that? He goes off like that from time to time for a change, and my word! I think he’s right when you’re a bachelor and well-off too. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend. He’s a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me – ’
He stopped for propriety’s sake because the servant came in. She put back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles, without noticing his wife’s colour, had them brought to him, took one, and bit into it.
‘Ah! perfect!’ said he; ‘just taste!’
And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently.
‘Do just smell! What an odour!’ he remarked, passing it under her nose several times.
‘I’m choking,’ she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the spasm passed; then – ‘It is nothing,’ she said, ‘it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down and go on with your meal.’ For she was afraid of his beginning to question her, and look after her, and not leave her alone.
Charles obediently sat down again, and spat the stones of the apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate.
Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground.
In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma had recognised him by the rays of the lanterns, as they flashed like lightning through the dusk.
The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house, ran in. The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles was calling for help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and Félicité, whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively.
‘I’ll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar,’ said the druggist.
Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle – ‘I was sure of it,’ he remarked; ‘that would wake a dead man for you!’
‘Speak to us,’ said Charles; ‘collect yourself; it is I – your Charles, who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss her!’
The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice – ‘No, no! no one!’
She fainted again. They carried her to her bed, where she lay stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from her eyes and trickled on to the pillow.
Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the serious occasions of life.
‘Do not be uneasy,’ he said, touching his elbow; ‘I think the paroxysm is past.’
‘Yes, she is resting a little now,’ answered Charles, watching her sleep. ‘Poor girl! poor girl! She has gone off now!’
Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots.
‘Extraordinary!’ continued the chemist. ‘But it might be that the apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies, – a thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than the other. There are cases cited of people fainting at the smell of burnt hartshorn, of new bread – ’
‘Take care; you’ll wake her!’ said Bovary in a low voice.
‘And not only,’ the druggist went on, ‘are human beings subject to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity I can answer for, Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuffbox to him. He often even makes the experiment before his friends at his summerhouse at Guillaume Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could produce such ravages in the organism of a quadruped? It is extremely curious, is it not?’
