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

him off to the large Café de la Normandie, which he entered majestically, not raising his hat, thinking it very provincial to uncover in any public place.

Emma waited for Léon three quarters of an hour. At last she ran to his office; and, lost in all sorts of conjectures, accusing him of indifference, and reproaching herself for her weakness, she spent the afternoon, her face pressed against the windowpanes.

At two o’clock they were still at a table opposite each other. The large room was emptying; the stovepipe, in the shape of a palm-tree, spread its gilt leaves over the white ceiling, and near them, outside the window, in the bright sunshine, a little fountain gurgled in a white basin, where; in the midst of watercress and asparagus, three torpid lobsters stretched across to some quails that lay heaped up in a pile on their sides.

Homais was enjoying himself. Although he was even more intoxicated with the luxury than the rich fare, the Pommard wine all the same rather excited his faculties; and when the omelette au rhum18 appeared, he began propounding immoral theories about women. What seduced him above all else was chic. He admired an elegant toilette in a well-furnished apartment, and as to bodily qualities, he didn’t dislike a young girl.

Léon watched the clock in despair. The druggist went on drinking, eating, and talking.

“You must be very lonely,” he said suddenly, “here at Rouen. To be sure your ladylove doesn’t live far away.”

And the other blushed⁠—

“Come now, be frank. Can you deny that at Yonville⁠—”

The young man stammered something.

“At Madame Bovary’s, you’re not making love to⁠—”

“To whom?”

“The servant!”

He was not joking; but vanity getting the better of all prudence, Léon, in spite of himself protested. Besides, he only liked dark women.

“I approve of that,” said the chemist; “they have more passion.”

And whispering into his friend’s ear, he pointed out the symptoms by which one could find out if a woman had passion. He even launched into an ethnographic digression: the German was vapourish, the French woman licentious, the Italian passionate.

“And negresses?” asked the clerk.

“They are an artistic taste!” said Homais. “Waiter! two cups of coffee!”

“Are we going?” at last asked Léon impatiently.

“Ja!”

But before leaving he wanted to see the proprietor of the establishment and made him a few compliments. Then the young man, to be alone, alleged he had some business engagement.

“Ah! I will escort you,” said Homais.

And all the while he was walking through the streets with him he talked of his wife, his children; of their future, and of his business; told him in what a decayed condition it had formerly been, and to what a degree of perfection he had raised it.

Arrived in front of the Hôtel de Boulogne, Léon left him abruptly, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress in great excitement. At mention of the chemist she flew into a passion. He, however, piled up good reasons; it wasn’t his fault; didn’t she know Homais⁠—did she believe that he would prefer his company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and, sinking on his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous pose, full of concupiscence and supplication.

She was standing up, her large flashing eyes looked at him seriously, almost terribly. Then tears obscured them, her red eyelids were lowered, she gave him her hands, and Léon was pressing them to his lips when a servant appeared to tell the gentleman that he was wanted.

“You will come back?” she said.

“Yes.”

“But when?”

“Immediately.”

“It’s a trick,” said the chemist, when he saw Léon. “I wanted to interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you. Let’s go and have a glass of garus at Bridoux’s.”

Léon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the druggist joked him about quill-drivers and the law.

“Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil prevents you? Be a man! Let’s go to Bridoux’s. You’ll see his dog. It’s very interesting.”

And as the clerk still insisted⁠—

“I’ll go with you. I’ll read a paper while I wait for you, or turn over the leaves of a Code.”

Léon, bewildered by Emma’s anger, Monsieur Homais’ chatter, and, perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was undecided, and, as it were, fascinated by the chemist, who kept repeating⁠—

“Let’s go to Bridoux’s. It’s just by here, in the Rue Malpalu.”

Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through that indefinable feeling that drags us into the most distasteful acts, he allowed himself to be led off to Bridoux’s, whom they found in his small yard, superintending three workmen, who panted as they turned the large wheel of a machine for making seltzer-water. Homais gave them some good advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took some garus. Twenty times Léon tried to escape, but the other seized him by the arm saying⁠—

“Presently! I’m coming! We’ll go to the Fanal de Rouen to see the fellows there. I’ll introduce you to Thornassin.”

At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight to the hotel. Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, and cowardly.

Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had, no doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.

They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a waning passion striving to keep itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey. Then she confessed to herself