Part I: Chapter Eight

by Gustave Flaubert

　　The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with twoprojecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot ofan immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing amonggroups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while largebeds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses bulgedout their irregular clusters of green along the curve of thegravel path. A river flowed under a bridge; through the mist onecould distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered overthe field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered hillocks,and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel linesthe coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined oldchateau.

　　Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps;servants appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering hisarm to the doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule.

　　It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound offootsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church.

　　Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a galleryoverlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whosedoor one could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossedit to go to the drawing room, Emma saw standing round the tablemen with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats. Theyall wore orders, and smiled silently as they made their strokes.

　　On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore atthe bottom names written in black letters. She read:"Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count de laVaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnay, killed at the battle ofCoutras on the 20th of October, 1857." And on another:"Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard,Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael,wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th ofMay, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693." Onecould hardly make out those that followed, for the light of thelamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round theroom. Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up againstthese in delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish,and from all these great black squares framed in with gold stoodout here and there some lighter portion of the painting--a palebrow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over andpowdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above awell-rounded calf.

　　The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (theMarchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down byher on an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if shehad known her a long time. She was a woman of about forty, withfine shoulders, a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on thisevening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu thatfell in a point at the back. A fair young woman sat in ahigh-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers intheir buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.

　　At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority,sat down at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at thesecond in the dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness.

　　Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, ablending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of thefumes of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silverdish covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra,the cut crystal covered with light steam reflected from one tothe other pale rays; bouquets were placed in a row the wholelength of the table; and in the large-bordered plates eachnapkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop's mitre, heldbetween its two gaping folds a small oval shaped roll. The redclaws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in openbaskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage;smoke was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, whitecravat, and frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge,offering ready carved dishes between the shoulders of the guests,with a touch of the spoon gave you the piece chosen. On the largestove of porcelain inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of awoman, draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room full oflife.

　　Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their glovesin their glasses.

　　But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women,bent over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck likea child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip fromhis mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queuetied with black ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, theold Duke de Laverdiere, once on a time favourite of the Countd'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil hunting-parties at theMarquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover ofQueen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieurde Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels,bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightenedall his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him inhis ear the dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantlyEmma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanginglips, as to something extraordinary. He had lived at court andslept in the bed of queens! Iced champagne was poured out. Emmashivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had neverseen pomegranates nor tasted pineapples. The powdered sugar evenseemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere.

　　The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for theball.

　　Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress onher debut. She did her hair according to the directions of thehairdresser, and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed.

　　Charles's trousers were tight across the belly.

　　"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said.

　　"Dancing?" repeated Emma.

　　"Yes!"

　　"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep yourplace. Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added.

　　Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma tofinish dressing.

　　He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her blackeyes seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards theears, shone with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled onits mobile stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tip of theleaves. She wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with threebouquets of pompon roses mixed with green.

　　Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.

　　"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me."

　　One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of ahorn. She went downstairs restraining herself from running.

　　Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing.

　　She sat down on a form near the door.

　　The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of menstanding up and talking and servants in livery bearing largetrays. Along the line of seated women painted fans werefluttering, bouquets half hid smiling faces, and gold stopperedscent-bottles were turned in partly-closed hands, whose whitegloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh at thewrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion braceletstrembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms.

　　The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape,bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of mytosotis, jasmine,pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmlyseated in their places, mothers with forbidding countenances werewearing red turbans.

　　Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her bythe tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with thedancers, and waited for the first note to start. But her emotionsoon vanished, and, swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, sheglided forward with slight movements of the neck. A smile rose toher lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin, thatsometimes played alone while the other instruments were silent;one could hear the clear clink of the louis d'or that were beingthrown down upon the card tables in the next room; then allstruck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note, feetmarked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched andparted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again.

　　A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty,scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at thedoorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by a certainair of breeding, whatever their differences in age, dress, orface.

　　Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and theirhair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy withmore delicate pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--thatclear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain,the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that anordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Theirnecks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fellover their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips uponhandkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave forth a subtleperfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air ofyouth, while there was something mature in the faces of theyoung. In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions dailysatiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced thatpeculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things,in which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management ofthoroughbred horses and the society of loose women.

　　A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking ofItaly with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.

　　They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's,Tivoly, Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa,the Coliseum by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listeningto a conversation full of words she did not understand. A circlegathered round a very young man who the week before had beaten"Miss Arabella" and "Romolus," and won two thousand louis jumpinga ditch in England. One complained that his racehorses weregrowing fat; another of the printers' errors that had disfiguredthe name of his horse.

　　The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim.

　　Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon achair and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glassMadame Bovary turned her head and saw in the garden the faces ofpeasants pressed against the window looking in at them. Then thememory of the Bertaux came back to her. She saw the farm again,the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple trees, andshe saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger thecream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the refulgence ofthe present hour her past life, so distinct until then, fadedaway completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She wasthere; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all therest. She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with herleft hand in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and thespoon between her teeth.

　　A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing.

　　"Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan thathas fallen behind the sofa?"

　　The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emmasaw the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in atriangle, into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan,offered it to the lady respectfully; she thanked him with aninclination of the head, and began smelling her bouquet.

　　After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soupsa la bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la Trafalgar, andall sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes,the carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising thecorners of the muslin curtain, one could see the light of theirlanterns glimmering through the darkness. The seats began toempty, some card-players were still left; the musicians werecooling the tips of their fingers on their tongues. Charles washalf asleep, his back propped against a door.

　　*With almond milk20

　　At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the Marquis;only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about adozen persons.

　　One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount,and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came asecond time to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that hewould guide her, and that she would get through it very well.

　　They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; allaround them was turning--the lamps, the furniture, thewainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. On passing nearthe doors the bottom of Emma's dress caught against his trousers.

　　Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyesto his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, andwith a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her alongdisappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where panting,she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon hisbreast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided herback to her seat. She leaned back against the wall and coveredher eyes with her hands.

　　When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing roomthree waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool.

　　She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.

　　Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she withrigid body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose,his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward.That woman knew how to waltz! They kept up a long time, and tiredout all the others.

　　Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights,or rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired tobed.

　　Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His "knees weregoing up into his body." He had spent five consecutive hoursstanding bolt upright at the card tables, watching them playwhist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with adeep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots.

　　Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, andleant out.

　　The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathedin the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of theball was still murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keepherself awake in order to prolong the illusion that thisluxurious life that she would soon have to give up.

　　Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of thechateau, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those shehad noticed the evening before. She would fain have known theirlives, have penetrated, blended with them. But she was shiveringwith cold. She undressed, and cowered down between the sheetsagainst Charles, who was asleep.

　　There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted tenminutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor.

　　Next, Mademoiselle d"Andervilliers collected some pieces of rollin a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamentalwaters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strangeplants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hangingvases, whence, as from over-filled nests of serpents, fell longgreen cords interlacing. The orangery, which was at the otherend, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the chateau. TheMarquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables.

　　Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names ofthe horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked itstail when anyone went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards ofthe harness room shone like the flooring of a drawing room. Thecarriage harness was piled up in the middle against two twistedcolumns, and the bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, wereranged in a line all along the wall.

　　Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. Thedog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all theparcels being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to theMarquis and Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.

　　Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on theextreme edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wideapart, and the little horse ambled along in the shafts that weretoo big for him. The loose reins hanging over his crupper werewet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the chaise gavegreat regular bumps against it.

　　They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly somehorsemen with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emmathought she recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught onthe horizon only the movement of the heads rising or falling withthe unequal cadence of the trot or gallop.

　　A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string thetraces that had broken.

　　But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something onthe ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up acigar-case with a green silk border and beblazoned in the centrelike the door of a carriage.

　　"There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for thisevening after dinner."

　　"Why, do you smoke?" she asked.

　　"Sometimes, when I get a chance."

　　He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.

　　When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost hertemper. Nastasie answered rudely.

　　"Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I giveyou warning."

　　For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.

　　Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.

　　"How good it is to be at home again!"

　　Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poorgirl. She had formerly, during the wearisome time of hiswidowhood, kept him company many an evening. She had been hisfirst patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place.

　　"Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last.

　　"Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied.

　　Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room wasbeing made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lipsprotruding, spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.

　　"You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully.

　　He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water atthe pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly tothe back of the cupboard.

　　The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden,up and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before theespalier, before the plaster curate, looking with amazement atall these things of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How faroff the ball seemed already! What was it that thus set so farasunder the morning of the day before yesterday and the eveningof to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard had made a hole in herlife, like one of those great crevices that a storm willsometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was resigned.She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down tothe satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery waxof the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its frictionagainst wealth something had come over it that could not beeffaced.

　　The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma.

　　Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as sheawoke, "Ah! I was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago."

　　And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance.

　　She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw theliveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escapedher, but the regret remained with her.