Part I: Chapter Five

by Gustave Flaubert

　　The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather theroad. Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle,and a black leather cap, and on the floor, in a corner, were apair of leggings, still covered with dry mud. On the right wasthe one apartment, that was both dining and sitting room. Acanary yellow paper, relieved at the top by a garland of paleflowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly stretched canvas;white calico curtains with a red border hung crossways at thelength of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock witha head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two platecandlesticks under oval shades. On the other side of the passagewas Charles's consulting room, a little room about six paceswide, with a table, three chairs, and an office chair. Volumes ofthe "Dictionary of Medical Science," uncut, but the bindingrather the worse for the successive sales through which they hadgone, occupied almost along the six shelves of a deal bookcase.

　　The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls when hesaw patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the peoplecoughing in the consulting room and recounting their histories.

　　Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a largedilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar,and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agriculturalimplements past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use itwas impossible to guess.

　　The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls withespaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it fromthe field. In the middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal;four flower beds with eglantines surrounded symmetrically themore useful kitchen garden bed. Right at the bottom, under thespruce bushes, was a cure in plaster reading his breviary.

　　Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in thesecond, which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in analcove with red drapery. A shell box adorned the chest ofdrawers, and on the secretary near the window a bouquet of orangeblossoms tied with white satin ribbons stood in a bottle. It wasa bride's bouquet; it was the other one's. She looked at it.Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it up to the attic,while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were putting her thingsdown around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in abandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them ifshe were to die.

　　During the first days she occupied herself in thinking aboutchanges in the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks,had new wallpaper put up, the staircase repainted, and seats madein the garden round the sundial; she even inquired how she couldget a basin with a jet fountain and fishes. Finally her husband,knowing that she liked to drive out, picked up a second-handdogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard in stripedleather, looked almost like a tilbury.

　　He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A mealtogether, a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of herhands over her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from thewindow-fastener, and many another thing in which Charles hadnever dreamed of pleasure, now made up the endless round of hishappiness. In bed, in the morning, by her side, on the pillow, hewatched the sunlight sinking into the down on her fair cheek,half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen thus closely,her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on waking up,she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the shade,dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths ofdifferent colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towardsthe surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in thesedepths; he saw himself in miniature down to the shoulders, withhis handkerchief round his head and the top of his shirt open. Herose. She came to the window to see him off, and stayed leaningon the sill between two pots of geranium, clad in her dressinggown hanging loosely about her. Charles, in the street buckledhis spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while she talked tohim from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of flower orleaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating,described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caughtbefore it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the oldwhite mare standing motionless at the door. Charles fromhorseback threw her a kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut thewindow, and he set off. And then along the highroad, spreadingout its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the treesbent over as in arbours, along paths where the corn reached tothe knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air in hisnostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his mindat rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness,like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which theyare digesting.

　　Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school,when he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in themidst of companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, wholaughed at his accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whosemothers came to the school with cakes in their muffs? Later on,when he studied medicine, and never had his purse full enough totreat some little work-girl who would have become his mistress?Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the widow, whosefeet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life thisbeautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did notextend beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and hereproached himself with not loving her. He wanted to see heragain; he turned back quickly, ran up the stairs with a beatingheart. Emma, in her room, was dressing; he came up on tiptoe,kissed her back; she gave a cry.

　　He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her ring,her fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with allhis mouth on her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all alongher bare arm from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, andshe put him away half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child whohangs about you.

　　Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happinessthat should have followed this love not having come, she must,she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out whatone meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion,rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.