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!’
Madame Homais came forward.
‘No, do not touch it!’
The children wanted to look at the pictures.
‘Leave the room,’ he said imperiously; and they went out.
First he walked up and down with the open volume in his hand, rolling his eyes, choking, tumid, apoplectic. Then he came straight to his pupil, and planting himself in front of him with crossed arms – ‘Have you all the vices, then, you little wretch? Take care! You are on the downward path. Didn’t you reflect that this infamous book might fall in the hands of my children, kindle a spark in their minds, tarnish the purity of Athalie, corrupt Napoléon. He is already shaping into a man. Are you quite sure, anyhow, that they have not read it? Can you certify to me – ’
‘But really, sir,’ said Emma, ‘you wished to tell me – ’
‘Ah! yes! madame. Your father-in-law is dead.’
And it was so: Monsieur Bovary, senior, had expired suddenly the evening before from an attack of apoplexy on rising from table, and by way of greater precaution, on account of Emma’s sensibility, Charles had begged Homais to break the horrible news to her gradually. Homais had thought over his speech; he had rounded it, polished it, made it rhythmical; it was a masterpiece of prudence and transitions, of subtle turns and delicacy; but anger had got the better of rhetoric.
Emma, giving up all chance of hearing any details, left the pharmacy; for Monsieur Homais had taken up the thread of his vituperations. However, he was growing calmer, and was now grumbling in a paternal tone whilst he fanned himself with his skullcap.
‘It is not that I entirely disapprove of the work. Its author was a doctor! There are certain scientific points in it that it is not ill a man should know, and I would even venture to say that a man must know. But later – later! At any rate, not till you are a man yourself and your temperament is formed.’
When Emma knocked at the door, Charles, who was waiting for her, came forward with open arms and said to her with tears in his voice – ‘Ah! my dear one!’
And gently he bent over to kiss her. But at the contact of his lips the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her hand over her face shuddering.
But she made answer, ‘Yes, I know, I know!’
He showed her the letter in which his mother told the event without any sentimental hypocrisy. She only regretted her husband had not received the consolations of religion, as he had died at Daudeville, in the street, at the door of a café after a patriotic dinner with some ex-officers.
Emma gave him back the letter; then at dinner, for appearance’s sake, she affected a certain repugnance. But as he urged her to try, she resolutely began eating, while Charles opposite her sat motionless in a dejected attitude.
Now and then he raised his head and gave her a long look full of distress. Once he sighed, ‘I should have liked to see him again!’
She was silent. At last, understanding that she must say something, ‘How old was your father?’ she asked.
‘Fifty-eight.’
‘Ah!’
And that was all.
A quarter of an hour after he added, ‘My poor mother! what will become of her now?’
She made a gesture that signified she did not know. Seeing her so taciturn, Charles imagined her much affected, and forced himself to say nothing, not to reawaken this sorrow which moved him. And, shaking off his own – ‘Did you enjoy yourself yesterday?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
When the cloth was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma; and, as she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher – in a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an interminable evening! Something stupefying like the fumes of opium seized her.
They heard in the passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the boards. It was Hippolyte bringing back Emma’s luggage. In order to put it down he described painfully a quarter of a circle with his stump.
‘He doesn’t even remember any more about it,’ she thought, looking at the poor devil, whose coarse red hair was wet with perspiration.
Bovary was searching at the bottom of his purse for a centime, and without appearing to understand all there was of humiliation for him in the mere presence of this man, who stood there like a personified reproach to his incurable incapacity.
‘Hallo! you’ve a pretty bouquet,’ he said, noticing Léon’s violets on the chimney.
‘Yes,’ she replied indifferently; ‘it’s a bouquet I bought just now from a beggar.’
Charles picked up the flowers, and freshening his eyes, red with tears, against them, smelt them delicately.
