Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert [book club recommendations txt] 📗

“Certainly,” continued Homais, “there is bad literature as there is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times that imprisoned Galileo.”

“I know very well,” objected the curé, “that there are good works, good authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes united in a bewitching apartment, decorated rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in the long-run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally,” he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice while he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, “if the Church has condemned the theatre, she must be right; we must submit to her decrees.”

“Why,” asked the druggist, “should she excommunicate actors? For formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called Mysteries, which often offended against the laws of decency.”

The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the chemist went on⁠—

“It’s like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know, more than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!”

And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien⁠—

“Ah! you’ll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie⁠—”

“But it is the Protestants, and not we,” cried the other impatiently, “who recommend the Bible.”

“No matter,” said Homais. “I am surprised that in our days, in this century of enlightenment, anyone should still persist in proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it not, doctor?”

“No doubt,” replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any ideas.

The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot a Parthian arrow.

“I’ve known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers kicking about.”

“Come, come!” said the curé.

“Ah! I’ve known some!” And separating the words of his sentence, Homais repeated, “I⁠—have⁠—known⁠—some!”

“Well, they were wrong,” said Bournisien, resigned to anything.

“By Jove! they go in for more than that,” exclaimed the druggist.

“Sir!” replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that the druggist was intimidated by them.

“I only mean to say,” he replied in less brutal a tone, “that toleration is the surest way to draw people to religion.”

“That is true! that is true!” agreed the good fellow, sitting down again on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments.

Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor⁠—

“That’s what I call a cockfight. I beat him, did you see, in a way!⁠—Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were only for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If anyone could take my place, I would accompany you myself. Be quick about it. Lagardy is only going to give one performance; he’s engaged to go to England at a high salary. From what I hear, he’s a regular dog; he’s rolling in money; he’s taking three mistresses and a cook along with him. All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that suits the imagination to some extent. But they die at the hospital, because they haven’t the sense when young to lay by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till tomorrow.”

The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary’s head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, Charles did not give in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. He saw nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large, and the falling in of Lheureux’s bills was still so far off that there was no need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight o’clock they set out in the Hirondelle.

The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go.

“Well, a pleasant journey!” he said to them; “happy mortals that you are!”

Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with four flounces⁠—

“You are as lovely as a Venus. You’ll cut a figure at Rouen.”

The diligence stopped at the Croix-Rouge in the Place Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers⁠—a good old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in Sunday-clothes, has a café on the street, and towards the countryside a kitchen-garden. Charles at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery, the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them; was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.

Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor was much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to swallow a plate of soup, they