Part I: Chapter Seven

by Gustave Flaubert

　　She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiesttime of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To tastethe full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtlessto fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days aftermarriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behindblue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening tothe song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along withthe bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; atsunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemontrees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand inhand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemedto her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as aplant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Whycould not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrineher melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in ablack velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hatand frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all thesethings to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness,variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failedher--the opportunity, the courage.

　　If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his lookhad but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a suddenplenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit fallsfrom a tree when shaken by a hand. But as the intimacy of theirlife became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separatedher from him.

　　Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, andeveryone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb,without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never hadthe curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to thetheatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, norfence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term ofhorsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel.

　　A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel inmanifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion,the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taughtnothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; andshe resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the veryhappiness she gave him.

　　Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charlesto stand there bolt upright and watch her bend over hercardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see her work, orrolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to thepiano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more hewondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top tobottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the oldinstrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other endof the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff'sclerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in listslippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.

　　Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. Shesent the patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had nosuggestion of a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner onSundays, she managed to have some tasty dish--piled up pyramidsof greengages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned out intoplates--and even spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert. Fromall this much consideration was extended to Bovary.

　　Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing sucha wife. He showed with pride in the sitting room two small pencilsketched by her that he had had framed in very large frames, andhung up against the wallpaper by long green cords. Peoplereturning from mass saw him at his door in his wool-workslippers.

　　He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then heasked for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed,Emma waited on him. He took off his coat to dine more at hisease. He told her, one after the other, the people he had met,the villages where he had been, the prescriptions ha had written,and, well pleased with himself, he finished the remainder of theboiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the cheese, munched anapple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay onhis back and snored.

　　As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, hishandkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so that his hairin the morning was all tumbled pell-mell about his face andwhitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings cameuntied during the night. He always wore thick boots that had twolong creases over the instep running obliquely towards the ankle,while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line as ifstretched on a wooden foot. He said that "was quite good enoughfor the country."

　　His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him asformerly when there had been some violent row at her place; andyet Madame Bovary senior seemed prejudiced against herdaughter-in-law. She thought "her ways too fine for theirposition"; the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappeared as"at a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in thekitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She puther linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keepan eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up withthese lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words"daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompaniedby little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle wordsin a voice trembling with anger.

　　In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still thefavorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her adesertion from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what washers, and she watched her son's happiness in sad silence, as aruined man looks through the windows at people dining in his oldhouse. She recalled to him as remembrances her troubles and hersacrifices, and, comparing these with Emma's negligence, came tothe conclusion that it was not reasonable to adore her soexclusively.

　　Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and heloved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the oneinfallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the otherirreproachable. When Madam Bovary had gone, he tried timidly andin the same terms to hazard one or two of the more anodyneobservations he had heard from his mamma. Emma proved to him witha word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his patients.

　　And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she wantedto make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden sherecited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and,sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she foundherself as calm after as before, and Charles seemed no moreamorous and no more moved.

　　When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heartwithout getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understandingwhat she did not experience as of believing anything that did notpresent itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herselfwithout difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing veryexorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her atcertain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and,like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner.

　　A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs,had given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her outwalking, for she went out sometimes in order to be alone for amoment, and not to see before her eyes the eternal garden and thedusty road. She went as far as the beeches of Banneville, nearthe deserted pavilion which forms an angle of the wall on theside of the country. Amidst the vegetation of the ditch there arelong reeds with leaves that cut you.

　　She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changedsince last she had been there. She found again in the same placesthe foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing roundthe big stones, and the patches of lichen along the threewindows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away ontheir rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, wanderedat random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in thefields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing theshrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield.

　　Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on thegrass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emmarepeated to herself, "Good heavens! Why did I marry?"

　　She asked herself if by some other chance combination it wouldhave not been possible to meet another man; and she tried toimagine what would have been these unrealised events, thisdifferent life, this unknown husband. All, surely, could not belike this one. He might have been handsome, witty, distinguished,attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the conventhad married. What were they doing now? In town, with the noise ofthe streets, the buzz of the theatres and the lights of theballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands, thesenses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whosedormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider,was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

　　She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform toreceive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In herwhite frock and open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, andwhen she went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her tocongratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages; farewellswere called to her through their windows; the music master withhis violin case bowed in passing by. How far all of this! How faraway! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and smoothedthe long delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have notroubles."

　　Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, whoyawned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoketo her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.

　　Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the searolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country,which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes,close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swiftrustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up adeep murmur. Emma drew her shawl round her shoulders and rose.

　　In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the shortmoss that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting;the sky showed red between the branches, and the trunks of thetrees, uniform, and planted in a straight line, seemed a browncolonnade standing out against a background of gold. A fear tookhold of her; she called Djali, and hurriedly returned to Tostesby the high road, threw herself into an armchair, and for therest of the evening did not speak.

　　But towards the end of September something extraordinary fellupon her life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers toVaubyessard.

　　Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious tore-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidatureto the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter hedistributed a great deal of wood, and in the Conseil Generalalways enthusiastically demanded new roads for hisarrondissement. During the dog-days he had suffered from anabscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by giving atimely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostesto pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seensome superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherrytrees did not thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary forsome slips; made it his business to thank his personally; sawEmma; thought she had a pretty figure, and that she did not bowlike a peasant; so that he did not think he was going beyond thebounds of condescension, nor, on the other hand, making amistake, in inviting the young couple.

　　On Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seatedin their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunkstrapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron.Besides these Charles held a bandbox between his knees.

　　They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park werebeing lit to show the way for the carriages.