‘I am mad,’ he said; ‘no doubt they kept her to dinner at Monsieur Lormeaux’s.’ But the Lormeaux no longer lived at Rouen.
‘She probably stayed to look after Madame Dubreuil. Why, Madame Dubreuil has been dead these ten months! Where can she be?’
An idea occurred to him. At a café he asked for a Directory, and hurriedly looked for the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived at No. 74 Rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers.
As he was turning into the street, Emma herself appeared at the other end of it. He threw himself upon her rather than embraced her, crying – ‘What kept you yesterday?’
‘I was not well.’
‘What was it? Where? How?’
She passed her hand over her forehead and answered, ‘At Mademoiselle Lempereur’s.’
‘I was sure of it! I was going there.’
‘Oh, it isn’t worth while,’ said Emma. ‘She went out just now; but in future don’t worry. I don’t feel free, you see, if I think that the least delay upsets you like this.’
This was a sort of permission that she gave herself, so as to get perfect freedom in her escapades. And she profited by it freely and fully. When seized with the desire to see Léon, she set out upon any pretext; and as he was not expecting her on that day, she went to fetch him at his office.
It was a great joy at first, but soon he no longer concealed the truth, which was, that his master complained very much about these interruptions.
‘Pshaw! come along,’ she said.
And he slipped out.
She wanted him to dress all in black, and grow a pointed beard, to look like the portraits of Louis XIII. She wanted to see his lodgings; thought them poor. He blushed at them, but she did not notice this, then advised him to buy some curtains like hers, and as he objected to the expense – ‘Ah, ha! you have an eye for your sixpences!’ she said laughing.
Each time Léon had to tell her everything that he had done since their last meeting. She asked him for some verses – some verses ‘for herself’, a ‘love-poem’ in her honour. But he never succeeded in getting a rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying a sonnet in a ‘Keepsake’. This was less from vanity than from the one desire of pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profundity and dissimulation?
6
During the journeys he made to see her, Léon had often dined at the chemist’s, and he felt obliged from politeness to invite him in turn.
‘With pleasure!’ Monsieur Homais replied; ‘besides, I must invigorate my mind, for I am getting rusty here. We’ll go to the theatre, to the restaurant; we’ll make a night of it!’
‘Oh, my dear!’ tenderly murmured Madame Homais, alarmed at the vague perils he was preparing to brave.
‘Well, what? Do you think I’m not sufficiently ruining my health living here amid the continual emanations of the pharmacy? But there! that is the way with women! They are jealous of science, and then are opposed to our taking the most legitimate distractions. No matter! Count upon me. One of these days I shall turn up at Rouen, and we’ll have a fling together.’
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.
