Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.
‘No, no! Down there, in our home!’
And they went to their room at the Hôtel de Boulogne.
On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She said to him – ‘Léon, will you do me a service?’
And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added – ‘Listen, I want eight thousand francs.’
‘But you are mad!’
‘Not yet.’
And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she explained her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it; her mother-in-law detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but he, Léon, he would set about finding this indispensable sum.
‘How on earth can I?’
‘What a coward you are!’ she cried.
Then he said stupidly, ‘You are exaggerating the difficulty. Perhaps a thousand crowns or so could stop the fellow.’
All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible that they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Léon could be security instead of her.
‘Go, try, try! I will love you so!’
He went out, and came back an hour later, saying, with solemn face – ‘I have been to three people with no success.’
Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney corners, motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as she stamped her feet. He heard her murmuring – ‘If I were in your place I should soon get some.’
‘But where?’
‘At your office.’ And she looked at him.
An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their lids drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look, so that the young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute will of this woman who was urging him to a crime. Then he was afraid, and to avoid any explanation he smote his forehead, crying – ‘Morel is to come back tonight; he will not refuse me, I hope’ (this was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant); ‘and I will bring it you tomorrow,’ he added.
Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had expected. Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing – ‘However, if you don’t see me by three o’clock do not wait for me, my darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!’
He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no strength left for any sentiment.
Four o’clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville, mechanically obeying the force of old habits.
The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and sharp, when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen folk were walking about in Sunday clothes with happy looks. She reached the Place du Parvis. People were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed out through the three doors like a stream through the three arches of a bridge, and in the middle one, motionless as a rock, stood the beadle.
Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had entered that vast nave; it had opened out before her, less profound than her love; and she walked on weeping beneath her veil, giddy, staggering, almost fainting.
‘Take care!’ cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard that was thrown open.
She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between the shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who was it? She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.
Why, it was he – the Viscount. She turned away; the street was empty. She was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean against a wall to keep herself from falling.
Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know. All within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost, sinking at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on reaching the Croix-Rouge, she saw the good Homais, who was watching a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the ‘Hirondelle’. In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchief six cheminots for his wife.
Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped loaves, that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige of Gothic food that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the Crusades, and with which the robust Normans gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the table, in the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of hippocras and huge boars’ heads, the heads of Saracens to be devoured. The druggist’s wife crunched them up as they had done – heroically, despite her wretched teeth. And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never failed to bring her home some that he bought at the great baker’s in the Rue Massacre.
‘Charmed to see you,’ he said, offering Emma a hand to help her into the ‘Hirondelle’. Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords of the netting, and remained bareheaded in a pensive, Napoleonic attitude.
But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill he exclaimed – ‘I can’t understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to work. Progress, my word! creeps at a snail’s pace. We are floundering about in mere barbarism.’
The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door, as if it were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.
‘This,’ said the chemist, ‘is a scrofulous affection.’
And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first time, murmured something about ‘cornea’, ‘opaque cornea’, ‘sclerotic’, ‘facies’, then asked him in a paternal tone – ‘My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of getting drunk at the wine-shop, you’d do better to diet yourself.’
He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The blind man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost idiotic. At last Monsieur Homais opened his purse – ‘Now there’s a sou; give me back two liards, and don’t forget my advice: you’ll be the better for it.’
Hivert openly cast some doubt on its efficacy. But the druggist said that he would cure him himself with an antiphlogistic ointment of his own composition, and he gave his address: ‘Monsieur Homais, near the market, pretty well known.’
‘Now,’ said Hivert, ‘for all this trouble you’ll give us your performance.’
The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown back, whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue, and rubbed his stomach with both hands, as he uttered a kind of hollow yell like a famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw him over her shoulder a five franc piece. It was her whole fortune. It struck her as superb to fling it away like this.
The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant out through the window, crying – ‘No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose the diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries.’
The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable fatigue overwhelmed her, and she reached home stupefied, discouraged, almost asleep.
‘Come what may come!’ she said to herself. ‘And then, who knows? Why, at any moment could not some extraordinary event occur? Lheureux might even die!’
