The druggist would formerly have taken good care not to use such an expression, but he was cultivating a gay Parisian style, which he thought in the best taste; and, like his neighbour Madame Bovary, he questioned the clerk curiously about the customs of the capital; he even talked slang to dazzle the bourgeois, using a number of current ‘flash’ phrases.
So one Thursday Emma was surprised to meet Monsieur Homais in the kitchen of the Lion d’Or, wearing travelling clothes, that is to say, wrapped in an old cloak which no one knew he had, while he carried a valise in one hand and the foot-warmer of his establishment in the other. He had confided his intentions to no one, for fear of his absence causing public anxiety.
The idea of again seeing the place where his youth had been spent no doubt excited him, for during the whole journey he never ceased talking, and instantly on arrival he jumped out of the diligence to go in search of Léon. In vain the clerk tried to get rid of him. Monsieur Homais dragged him off to the large Café de la Normandie, which he entered majestically, not raising his hat, thinking it very provincial to uncover in any public place.
Emma waited for Léon three-quarters of an hour. At last she ran to his office, and, lost in all sorts of conjectures, accusing him of indifference, and reproaching herself for her weakness, she spent the afternoon, her face pressed against the windowpanes.
At two o’clock they were still at table opposite each other. The large room was emptying; the stovepipe, in the shape of a palm tree, spread its gilt leaves over the white ceiling, and near them, outside the window, in the bright sunshine, a little fountain gurgled in a white basin, where, in the midst of watercress and asparagus, three torpid lobsters stretched across to some quails that lay heaped up in a pile on their sides.
Homais was enjoying himself. Although he was even more intoxicated with the luxury than the rich fare, the Pomard wine all the same rather excited his faculties; and when the omelette au rhum appeared, he began propounding immoral theories about women. What seduced him above all else was chic. He admired an elegant toilette in a well-furnished apartment, and, as to bodily qualities, he didn’t dislike a young girl.
Léon watched the clock in despair. The druggist went on drinking, eating, and talking.
‘You must be very lonely,’ he said suddenly, ‘here at Rouen. To be sure your lady-love doesn’t live far away.’
And the other blushed – ‘Come, now, be frank. Can you deny that at Yonville – ’
The young man stammered something.
‘At Madame Bovary’s, you’re not making love to – ’
‘To whom?’
‘The servant!’
He was not joking; but, vanity getting the better of all prudence, Léon, in spite of himself, protested. Besides, he only liked dark women.
‘I approve of that,’ said the chemist; ‘they are more passionate.’
And, whispering into his friend’s ear, he detailed the symptoms by which one could find out if a woman had passion. He even launched into an ethnographic digression: the German woman was vapourish, the French licentious, the Italian passionate.
‘And negresses?’ asked the clerk.
‘They are an artistic taste!’ said Homais. ‘Waiter! two cups of coffee!’
‘Are we going?’ at last asked Léon impatiently.
‘Yes!’ he answered in English.
But before leaving he wanted to see the proprietor of the establishment and made him a few compliments. Then the young man, to be alone, alleged he had some business engagement.
‘Ah! I will escort you,’ said Homais.
And all the while he was walking through the streets with him he talked of his wife, his children, of their future, and of his business; told him in what a decayed condition it had formerly been, and to what a degree of perfection he had raised it.
Arrived in front of the Hôtel de Boulogne, Léon left him abruptly, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress in great excitement. At mention of the chemist she flew into a passion. He, however, piled up good reasons; it wasn’t his fault; didn’t she know Homais – did she believe that he would prefer his company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and, sinking on his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous pose, full of concupiscence and supplication.
She was standing up, her large flashing eyes looked at him seriously, almost terribly. Then tears obscured them, her red eyelids were lowered, she gave him her hands, and Léon was pressing them to his lips when a servant appeared to tell the gentleman that he was wanted.
‘You will come back?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘But when?’
‘Immediately.’
‘It’s a trick,’ said the chemist, when he saw Léon. ‘I wanted to interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you. Let’s go and have a glass of garus at Bridoux’s.’
Léon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the druggist joked him about quill-drivers and the law.
‘Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil prevents you? Be a man! Let’s go to Bridoux’s. You’ll see that dog of his. It’s very interesting.’
And as the clerk still insisted – ‘I’ll go with you. I’ll read a paper while I wait for you, or turn over the leaves of a “Code”.’
Léon, bewildered by Emma’s anger, Monsieur Homais’s chatter, and, perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was undecided, and, as it were, fascinated by the chemist, who kept repeating – ‘Let’s go to Bridoux’s. It’s just by here, in the Rue Malpalu.’
Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through that indefinable feeling that drags us into the most distasteful acts, he allowed himself to be led off to Bridoux’s, whom they found in his small yard, superintending three workmen, who panted as they turned the large wheel of a machine for making seltzer-water. Homais gave them some good advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took some garus. Twenty times Léon tried to escape, but the other seized him by the arm saying – ‘Presently! I’m coming! We’ll go to the Fanal de Rouen to see the fellows there. I’ll introduce you to Thomassin.’
At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight to the hotel. Emma was no longer there. She had just left in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, commonplace, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, and cowardly.
Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had, no doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. Idols must not be touched; the gilt sticks to the fingers.
They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naïve resources of a waning passion striving to keep itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey. Then she confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake. She went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see once more that the door was closed, then, pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one movement, she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.
Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms, something vague and dreary that Léon felt gliding subtly between them as if to part them.
He did not dare question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she must have passed, he thought, through every experience of suffering and of pleasure. What once had charmed now frightened him a little. Besides, he rebelled against his absorption, daily more marked, by her personality. He grudged Emma this constant victory. He even strove not to love her; then, when he heard the creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like drunkards at the sight of strong drinks.
Indeed, she did not fail to lavish all sorts of attentions upon him, from delicacies of food to coquetries of dress and languishing looks. She brought roses in her breast from Yonville, and threw them into his face; was anxious about his health, gave him advice as to his conduct; and, in order the more surely to keep her hold on him, hoping perhaps that heaven would take her part, she tied a medal of the Virgin round his neck. She enquired about his companions like a virtuous mother. She said to him –
‘Don’t see them; don’t go out; think only of ourselves; love me!’
She would have liked to be able to watch over his life, and the idea occurred to her of having him followed in the streets. Near the hotel there was always a kind of loafer who accosted travellers, and who would not refuse. But her pride revolted at this.
‘Bah! so much the worse. Let him deceive me! What does it matter to me? As if I cared for him!’
One day, when they had parted early and she was returning alone along the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; then she sat down on a form in the shade of the elm trees. How calm that time had been! How she longed for the ineffable sentiments of love that she had tried to figure to herself out of books! The first month of her marriage, her rides in the wood, the viscount who waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all passed again before her eyes. And Léon suddenly appeared to her as far off as the others.
‘Yet I love him,’ she said to herself.
No matter! She was not happy – she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency in life – this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she leant? But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet’s heart in an angel’s form, a lyre with sounding chords, ringing out elegaic epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.
A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were heard from the convent clock. Four o’clock! And it seemed to her that she had been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity of passions may be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small space.
Emma lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no more about money matters than an archduchess.
Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund and bald, came to her house, saying he had been sent by Monsieur Vinçart of Rouen. He took out the pins that held together the side-pockets of his long green overcoat, stuck them into his sleeve, and politely handed her a paper.
