The next day was frightful, and those that came after still more unbearable, because of her impatience again to be grasping her happiness; an ardent lust, inflamed by the images of past experience, and that burst forth freely on the seventh day beneath Léon’s caresses. His ardours were hidden beneath outbursts of wonder and gratitude. Emma tasted this love in a discreet, absorbed fashion, maintained it by all the artifices of her tenderness, and trembled a little lest it should be lost later on.
She often said to him, with her sweet, melancholy voice – ‘Ah! you, too, you will leave me! You will marry! You will be like all the others.’
He asked, ‘What others?’
‘Why, like all men,’ she replied. Then added, repulsing him with a languid movement – ‘You are all scoundrels!’
One day as they were talking philosophically of earthly disillusions, in order to test his jealousy, or yielding perhaps to an over-strong need to pour out her heart, she told him that in the past she had loved someone before him. ‘Not like you,’ she went on quickly, protesting by the head of her child that ‘nothing had passed between them.’
The young man believed her, but none the less questioned her to find out what he was.
‘He was a naval captain, my dear.’
Was not that a safeguard against enquiry, and, at the same time, assuming a higher ground through this pretended fascination exercised over a man who must have been of warlike nature and accustomed to receive homage?
The clerk then felt the lowliness of his position; he longed for epaulettes, crosses, titles. All that would please her – he gathered as much from her spendthrift habits.
Emma nevertheless concealed many of these extravagant fancies, such as her wish to have a blue tilbury to drive into Rouen, drawn by an English horse and driven by a groom in top-boots. It was Justin who had inspired her with this whim, by begging her to take him into her service as valet-de-chambre, and if the privation of it did not lessen the pleasure of her arrival at each rendezvous, it certainly augmented the bitterness of the return.
Often, when they talked together of Paris, she ended by murmuring, ‘Ah! how happy we should be there!’
‘Are we not happy?’ gently answered the young man, passing his hands over her hair.
‘Yes, that is true,’ she said. ‘I am mad. Kiss me!’
To her husband she was more charming than ever. She made him pistachio-creams, and played him waltzes after dinner. So he thought himself the most fortunate of men, and Emma had no cares, when suddenly one evening he said – ‘It is Mademoiselle Lempereur, isn’t it, who gives you lessons?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I saw her just now,’ Charles went on, ‘at Madame Liégeard’s. I mentioned you to her, but she doesn’t know you.’
This was a thunderbolt. However, she replied quite naturally – ‘Oh! she must have forgotten my name.’
‘But perhaps,’ said the doctor, ‘there are several ladies of that name in Rouen who are music-mistresses.’
‘Possibly!’ Then quickly – ‘But I have my receipts here. Look!’
And she went to the writing-table, ransacked all the drawers, rummaged the papers, and at last lost her head so completely that Charles earnestly begged her not to take so much trouble about those wretched receipts.
‘Oh, I will find them,’ she said.
And, in fact, on the following Friday, as Charles was putting on one of his boots in the dark cabinet where his clothes were kept, he felt a piece of paper between the leather and his sock. He took it out and read –
Received, for three months’ lessons and several pieces of music, the sum of sixty-three francs. –
FÉLICIE LEMPEREUR, Professor of Music
‘How the devil did it get into my boots?’
‘It must have fallen from the old box of bills that is on the edge of the shelf.’
From that moment her existence was simply one long tissue of lies, in which she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a craving, a mania, a pleasure, reaching such a pitch that if she said she had the day before walked on the right side of a road, one might be sure that she had taken the left.
One morning, when she had gone, as usual, rather lightly clad, it suddenly began to snow, and as Charles was watching the weather from the window, he caught sight of Monsieur Bournisien in the chaise of Monsieur Tuvache, who was driving him to Rouen. So he went down to give the priest a thick shawl which he was to hand over to Emma as soon as he reached the Croix-Rouge. When Monsieur Bournisien got to the inn, he asked for the wife of the Yonville doctor. The landlady replied that she very rarely came to her establishment. So that evening, recognising Madame Bovary in the ‘Hirondelle’, the curé told her his dilemma, without, however, appearing to attach much importance to it, for he began praising a preacher who was doing wonders at the cathedral, and whom all the ladies were flocking to hear.
Still, if he did not ask for any explanation, others, later on, might prove less discreet. So she thought well to get down each time at the Croix-Rouge, so that the good folk of her village who saw her on the stairs should suspect nothing.
One day, however, Monsieur Lheureux met her coming out of the Hôtel de Boulogne on Léon’s arm; and she was frightened, thinking he would gossip. He was not such a fool. But three days after he came to her room, shut the door, and said, ‘I must have some money.’
She declared she could not give him any. Lheureux burst into lamentations, and reminded her of all the kindnesses he had shown her.
In fact, of the two bills signed by Charles, Emma up to the present had paid only one. As to the second, the shopkeeper, at her request, had consented to replace it by another, which again had been renewed for a long date. Then he drew from his pocket a list of goods not paid for; to wit the curtains, the carpet, the material for the armchairs, several dresses, and divers articles of dress, the bills for which amounted to about two thousand francs.
She bowed her head. He went on – ‘But if you haven’t any ready money, you have an estate.’ And he reminded her of a miserable little hovel situated at Barneville, near Aumale, that brought in almost nothing. It had formerly been part of a small farm sold by Monsieur Bovary senior; for Lheureux knew everything, even to the number of acres and the names of the neighbours.
‘If I were in your place,’ he said, ‘I should clear myself of my debts, and have some money left over.’
She pointed out the difficulty of getting a purchaser. He held out the hope of finding one; but she asked him how she should manage to sell it.
‘Haven’t you your power of attorney?’ he replied.
The phrase came to her like a breath of fresh air. ‘Leave me the bill,’ said Emma.
‘Oh, it isn’t worth while,’ answered Lheureux.
He came back the following week and boasted of having, after much trouble, at last discovered a certain Langlois, who, for a long time, had had an eye on the property, but without mentioning his price.
‘Never mind the price!’ she cried.
