One day she drew six small silver-gilt spoons from her bag (they were old Rouault’s wedding present), begging him to pawn them at once for her, and Léon obeyed, though the proceeding annoyed him. He was afraid of compromising himself.
Then, on reflection, he began to think his mistress’s ways were growing odd, and that perhaps they were not wrong in wishing to separate him from her.
In fact someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her that he was ‘ruining himself with a married woman,’ and the good lady at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Monsieur Dubocage the lawyer who employed him. He behaved perfectly in the affair. He kept him for three-quarters of an hour trying to open his eyes, to warn him of the abyss into which he was falling. Such an intrigue would damage him later on, when he set up for himself. He implored him to break with her, and, if he would not make this sacrifice in his own interest, to do it at least for his, Dubocage’s, sake.
At last Léon swore he would not see Emma again, and he reproached himself with not having kept his word, considering all the worry and lectures this woman might still draw down upon him, without reckoning the jokes made by his companions as they sat round the stove in the morning. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk, it was time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most paltry libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the débris of a poet.
He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast, and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.
They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession that increase its joys a hundredfold. She was as sick of him as he was weary of her. In adultery Emma was finding again all the platitudes of marriage.
But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might fee humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption; and every day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Léon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind to it herself.
Nevertheless, she continued to write him love letters, simply because a woman is supposed to write to her lover.
But whilst she wrote, it was another man she saw, a phantom fashioned out of her most ardent memories, of her finest reading, her most ardent desires, and at last he became so real, and tangible, that she panted in wonderment, without, however, having the power to imagine him clearly, so lost was he, like a god, beneath the abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in the azure land where silk ladders hang from balconies under breathing flowers, in the light of the moon. She felt him near her; he was coming, he would carry her right away in a kiss.
Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of shadowy love wearied her more than great indulgence.
She now felt a constant aching all over her. Often she even received summonses, stamped paper that she barely looked at. She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.
At Mid-Lent she did not return to Yonville, but went to a masked ball in the evening. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a club wig, and three-cornered hat cocked on one side. She danced all night to the blaring of trombones; people gathered round her, and in the morning she found herself on the steps of the theatre together with five or six masks, woodcutters and sailors, Léon’s comrades, who were talking about having supper.
The neighbouring cafés were full. They caught sight of one on the quay, a very indifferent restaurant, whose proprietor showed them to a little room on the fourth floor.
The men were whispering in a corner, no doubt consulting about expenses. There were a clerk, two medical students, and a shopman – what company for her! As to the women, Emma soon perceived from the tone of their voices that they must almost belong to the lowest class. Then she was frightened, pushed back her chair, and cast down her eyes.
The others began to eat; she ate nothing. Her head was on fire, her eyes smarted, and her skin was ice-cold. In her head she seemed to feel the floor of the ballroom rebounding again beneath the rhythmical pulsation of the thousands of dancing feet. And now the smell of the punch, the smoke of the cigars, made her giddy. She fainted, and they carried her to the window.
Day was breaking, and a great stain of purple colour broadened out in the pale horizon over the St Catherine hill. The livid river was shivering in the wind; there was no one on the bridges; the street lamps were going out.
She revived, and began thinking of Berthe asleep yonder in the servant’s room. Then a cart filled with long strips of iron passed by, and made a deafening metallic vibration against the walls of the houses.
She slipped away suddenly, threw off her costume, told Léon she must get back, and at last was alone at the Hôtel de Boulogne. Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.
She went out, crossed the Boulevard, the Place Cauchoise and the Faubourg, as far as an open street overlooking some gardens. She walked rapidly, the fresh air calming her; and, little by little, the faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the lights, the supper, those women, all, disappeared like mists fading away. Then, reaching the Croix-Rouge, she threw herself on the bed in her little room on the second floor, where there were pictures of the ‘Tour de Nesle’. At four o’clock Hivert awoke her.
When she got home, Félicité showed her behind the clock a grey paper. She read – ‘In virtue of the seizure in execution of a judgment’.
What judgment? As a matter of fact, the evening before another paper had been brought that she had not yet seen, and she was stunned by these words – ‘By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame Bovary’, Then, skipping several lines, she read, ‘Within twenty-four hours, without fail – ’ But what? ‘To pay the sum of eight thousand francs’. And there was even at the bottom, ‘She will be constrained thereto by every form of law, and notably by a writ of distraint on her furniture and effects’.
What was to be done? In twenty-four hours – tomorrow. Lheureux, she thought, wanted to frighten her again; for she saw through all his devices, the object of his kindnesses. What reassured her was the very magnitude of the sum.
However, by dint of buying and not paying, of borrowing, signing bills, and renewing these bills that grew at each new falling-in, she had ended by preparing a capital for Monsieur Lheureux which he was impatiently awaiting for his speculations.
She presented herself at his place with an offhand air.
‘You know what has happened to me? No doubt it’s a joke!’
‘No.’
‘How so?’
He turned away slowly, and folding his arms, said to her: ‘My good lady, did you think I should go on to all eternity being your purveyor and banker, for the love of God? Now be just. I must get back what I’ve laid out. Now be just.’
She cried out against the debt.
‘Ah! so much the worse. The court has admitted it. There’s a judgment. It’s been notified to you. Besides, it isn’t my fault. It’s Vinçart’s.’
‘Could you not – ?’
‘Oh, nothing whatever.’
‘But still, now talk it over.’
And she began beating about the bush; she had known nothing about it; it was a surprise.
‘Whose fault is that?’ said Lheureux, bowing ironically. ‘While I’m slaving like a nigger, you go gallivanting about.’
‘Ah! no lecturing.’
‘It never does any harm,’ he replied.
She turned coward; she implored him; she even pressed her pretty white and slender hand against the shopkeeper’s knee.
‘There, that’ll do! Anyone’d think you wanted to seduce me!’
‘You are a wretch!’ she cried.
