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

the rudder that trailed behind never ceased its gentle splash against the water.

Once the moon rose; they did not fail to make fine phrases, finding the orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even began to sing⁠—

“One night, do you remember, we were sailing,” etc.

Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves, and the winds carried off the trills that Léon heard pass like the flapping of wings about him.

She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of the shallop, through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in. Her black dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her seem more slender, taller. Her head was raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards heaven. At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then she reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight.

Léon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of scarlet silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last said⁠—

“Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other day. A lot of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne, cornets⁠—everything in style! There was one especially, a tall handsome man with small moustaches, who was that funny! And they all kept saying, ‘Now tell us something, Adolphe⁠—Dolpe,’ I think.”

She shivered.

“You are in pain?” asked Léon, coming closer to her.

“Oh, it’s nothing! No doubt, it is only the night air.”

“And who doesn’t want for women, either,” softly added the sailor, thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment.

Then, spitting on his hands, he took the oars again.

Yet they had to part. The adieux were sad. He was to send his letters to Mère Rollet, and she gave him such precise instructions about a double envelope that he admired greatly her amorous astuteness.

“So you can assure me it is all right?” she said with her last kiss.

“Yes, certainly.”

“But why,” he thought afterwards as he came back through the streets alone, “is she so very anxious to get this power of attorney?”

IV

Léon soon put on an air of superiority before his comrades, avoided their company, and completely neglected his work.

He waited for her letters; he reread them; he wrote to her. He called her to mind with all the strength of his desires and of his memories. Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to see her again grew, so that at last on Saturday morning he escaped from his office.

When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley below the church-spire with its tin flag swinging in the wind, he felt that delight mingled with triumphant vanity and egoistic tenderness that millionaires must experience when they come back to their native village.

He went rambling round her house. A light was burning in the kitchen. He watched for her shadow behind the curtains, but nothing appeared.

Mère Lefrançois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations. She thought he “had grown and was thinner,” while Artémise, on the contrary, thought him stouter and darker.

He dined in the little room as of yore, but alone, without the tax-gatherer; for Binet, tired of waiting for the Hirondelle, had definitely put forward his meal one hour, and now he dined punctually at five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old concern “was late.”

Léon, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the doctor’s door. Madame was in her room, and did not come down for a quarter of an hour. The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never stirred out that evening, nor all the next day.

He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind the garden in the lane; in the lane, as she had the other one! It was a stormy night, and they talked under an umbrella by lightning flashes.

Their separation was becoming intolerable. “I would rather die!” said Emma. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. “Adieu! adieu! When shall I see you again?”

They came back again to embrace once more, and it was then that she promised him to find soon, by no matter what means, a regular opportunity for seeing one another in freedom at least once a week. Emma never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides, she was full of hope. Some money was coming to her.

On the strength of it she bought a pair of yellow curtains with large stripes for her room, whose cheapness Monsieur Lheureux had commended; she dreamed of getting a carpet, and Lheureux, declaring that it wasn’t “drinking the sea,” politely undertook to supply her with one. She could no longer do without his services. Twenty times a day she sent for him, and he at once put by his business without a murmur. People could not understand either why Mère Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and even paid her private visits.

It was about this time, that is to say, the beginning of winter, that she seemed seized with great musical fervour.

One evening when Charles was listening to her, she began the same piece four times over, each time with much vexation, while he, not noticing any difference, cried⁠—

“Bravo! very good! You are wrong to stop. Go on!”

“Oh, no; it is execrable! My fingers are quite rusty.”

The next day he begged her to play him something again.

“Very well; to please you!”

And Charles confessed she had gone off a little. She played wrong notes and blundered; then, stopping short⁠—

“Ah! it is no use. I ought to take some lessons; but⁠—” She bit her lips and added, “Twenty francs a lesson, that’s too dear!”

“Yes, so it is⁠—rather,” said Charles, giggling stupidly. “But it seems to me that one might be able to do it for less; for there are artists of no reputation, and who are often better than the celebrities.”

“Find them!” said Emma.

The next day when he came home he looked at her shyly, and at last could no longer keep back the words.

“How obstinate you are sometimes! I went to Barfucheres today. Well,