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

“Read!” she said, holding out a paper to him. “Oh, no!”

And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin, where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray.

The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness; then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end.

Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle. She breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases, and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the tumult of her heart.

She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward, hurriedly saying⁠—

“Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? Madame would like to see the curiosities of the church?”

“Oh, no!” cried the clerk.

“Why not?” said she. For she clung with her expiring virtue to the Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs⁠—anything.

Then, in order to proceed “by rule,” the beadle conducted them right to the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with his cane a large circle of block-stones without inscription or carving⁠—

“This,” he said majestically, “is the circumference of the beautiful bell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds. There was not its equal in all Europe. The workman who cast it died of the joy⁠—”

“Let us go on,” said Léon.

The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to the chapel of the Virgin, he stretched forth his arm with an all-embracing gesture of demonstration, and, prouder than a country squire showing you his espaliers, went on⁠—

“This simple stone covers Pierre de Brézé, lord of Varenne and of Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who died at the battle of Montlhery on the 16th of July, 1465.”

Léon bit his lips, fuming.

“And on the right, this gentleman all encased in iron, on the prancing horse, is his grandson, Louis de Brézé, lord of Breval and of Montchauvet, Count de Maulevrier, Baron de Mauny, chamberlain to the king, Knight of the Order, and also governor of Normandy; died on the 23rd of July, 1531⁠—a Sunday, as the inscription specifies; and below, this figure, about to descend into the tomb, portrays the same person. It is not possible, is it, to see a more perfect representation of annihilation?”

Madame Bovary put up her eyeglasses. Léon, motionless, looked at her, no longer even attempting to speak a single word, to make a gesture, so discouraged was he at this twofold obstinacy of gossip and indifference.

The everlasting guide went on⁠—

“Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de Poitiers, Countess de Brézé, Duchess de Valentinois, born in 1499, died in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is the Holy Virgin. Now turn to this side; here are the tombs of the Ambroise. They were both cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister under Louis XII. He did a great deal for the cathedral. In his will he left thirty thousand gold crowns for the poor.”

And without stopping, still talking, he pushed them into a chapel full of balustrades, some put away, and disclosed a kind of block that certainly might once have been an ill-made statue.

“Truly,” he said with a groan, “it adorned the tomb of Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, sir, who reduced it to this condition. They had buried it for spite in the earth, under the episcopal seat of Monsignor. See! this is the door by which Monsignor passes to his house. Let us pass on quickly to see the gargoyle windows.”

But Léon hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized Emma’s arm. The beadle stood dumbfounded, not able to understand this untimely munificence when there were still so many things for the stranger to see. So calling him back, he cried⁠—

“Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!”

“No, thank you!” said Léon.

“You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it⁠—”

Léon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier.

“But where are we going?” she said.

Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Bovary was already dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Léon turned back.

“Sir!”

“What is it?”

And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works “which treated of the cathedral.”

“Idiot!” growled Léon, rushing out of the church.

A lad was playing about the close.

“Go and get me a cab!”

The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.

“Ah! Léon! Really⁠—I don’t know⁠—if I ought,” she whispered. Then with a more serious air, “Do you know, it is very improper⁠—”

“How so?” replied the clerk. “It is done at Paris.”

And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her.

Still the cab did not come. Léon was afraid she might go back into the church. At last the cab appeared.

“At all events, go out by the north porch,” cried the beadle, who was left alone on the threshold, “so as to see the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-Flames.”

“Where to, sir?” asked the coachman.

“Where you like,” said