Visit to the mill; Charles and Leon; The draper's treasures; A good housewife; Berthe comes home; The inaccessible beloved; Learning to hate.

IT was one snowy Sunday afternoon in February. The whole party- Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais and Monsieur Leon- had gone off to inspect a mill that was being put up in the valley about a mile and a half from Yonville. The apothecary had taken Napoleon and Athalie along with him to give them a little exercise, and Justin was there, too, carrying some umbrellas on his shoulder.

Never was there a less interesting object of interest. There was a large piece of waste ground, on which, lying scattered about among heaps of stones and gravel, were a few wheels belonging to the plant, already red with rust, and in the middle of it a long, quadrangular building pierced with a quantity of little windows. The building wasn't finished, and you could see the sky through the rafters of the roof. Hanging from the gable-end was a bouquet of corn and wheatears, with its tricolour streamers flapping in the wind.

Homais was holding forth. He was explaining to the company the future importance of these works, calculating the strength of the beams, the thickness of the walls, and expressing his profound regret that he had not got a yard-stick, such as Monsieur Binet possessed, for his own private use.

Emma, who had taken his arm, was leaning lightly against his shoulder and looking at the sun's disc diffusing its pale glare through the mist. Then she turned her head. Charles was there. His cap was rammed down over his eyes, and his two thick lips were trembling, which made his face look stupider than ever. The sight of his back even, his unemotional back, had something irritating about it, and all the dull mediocrity of the wearer seemed to be blazoned on that coat.

While she surveyed him, finding in her very irritation a kind of perverted sexual emotionalism, Leon advanced a step. The cold air had made him pale and seemed to have lent an added touch of languor to his features. Between his cravat and his neck the collar of his shirt was gaping a little, showing his skin; beneath a lock of hair the tip of his ear was visible, and his big blue eyes, raised upwards to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more beautiful than those mountain tarns in which the skies are mirrored.

'Ah, you little wretch!' shouted the chemist all at once, running to his son, who had jumped into a heap of lime so that he might make his boots white. Overwhelmed by this torrent of reproaches Napoleon set up a howl, while Justin wiped his shoes with a handful of straw. But a knife was the thing. Charles offered his.

'Ah!' she said to herself, 'he carries a knife in his pocket, like a yokel.'

The twilight began to fall, frosty and chill, and they made their way back to Yonville.

Madame Bovary did not go over to her neighbours' that evening, and when Charles had departed and she felt she was all alone, the comparison again came before her with all the clearness of a sensation just experienced and with that enlargement of perspective which memory gives to the things we have seen. As she lay in bed gazing at the fire that was blazing away cheerfully, she saw, once more, Leon standing there with one hand on his bending cane and with the other holding Athalie, who was calmly sucking a piece of ice. She thought him charming. She could not banish him from her thoughts. She remembered other attitudes of his on other days, things he had said, the sound of his voice, all about him. And she said over and over again, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss:

'Oh, charming! charming! Surely he is in love?' she asked herself. 'But with whom?... Why, with me!'

And then all the proofs came before her at once. Her heart gave a great leap. The firelight flickered joyously on the ceiling. She turned on her back and stretched out her arms.

Then began the eternal lament. 'Ah, if heaven had only willed it so! And why not? What is there to prevent it?'

It was midnight when Charles got back. She pretended she had just woke up, and, as he made a noise undressing, she complained of having a headache. Then she asked in an off-hand way what sort of an evening it had been.

'Monsieur Leon,' he said, 'went to bed early.'

She could not help smiling, and as she turned over to go to sleep, her heart was filled with a new enchantment.

Next day, when it was getting dark, she received a visit from Monsieur Lheureux, the draper. A very clever man was Monsieur Lheureux. A Gascon born, he had turned himself into a Norman, and thus combined the southerner's gift of speech with the canniness of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face looked as if it had been stained with a weak solution of liquorice, and his white hair emphasized the keenness of his little dark eyes. Nobody knew what he had sprung from. A pedlar, some said; a banker at Routot, said others. Anyhow, this much was certain, he could work out sums in his head that would have made Binet himself sit up. He was deferential to the point of obsequiousness, and always held himself slightly inclined from the perpendicular, as one making a bow or gracefully extending an invitation.

He left his hat with its crepe band in the hall, and then deposited on the table a green cardboard box. He began by telling Madame, with numerous complimentary remarks, how deeply he regretted that he had hitherto failed to secure her patronage. A little shop such as his naturally offered few inducements to a 'lady of fashion'. He dwelt with emphasis on that phrase. Nevertheless, she had but to state her requirements, and he would undertake to supply whatever she needed, whether in haberdashery, underclothing, millinery or general drapery, for he went to town regularly four times a month, and was in touch with all the leading business houses. You could mention his name at the 'Trois Freres', the 'Barbe d'Or' or the 'Grand Sauvage', the gentlemen there all knew him like the insides of their pockets.

Today he had ventured to call on Madame, as he was passing, in order to show her some goods which a most unusual opportunity had enabled him to acquire. So saying he produced half a dozen embroidered collars from his box.

Madame Bovary looked at them.

'I am not in need of anything just now,' she said.

Thereupon Monsieur Lheureux delicately displayed three Algerian scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of raffia slippers and finally four coconut egg-cups with fretwork carving done by convicts. Then, leaning forward with both hands on the table, and craning out his neck, he watched Emma open-mouthed as she stood irresolute, surveying the varied assortment.

He had unfolded the scarves to their full extent, and as though to chase away a speck of dust, he flicked them from time to time with his finger-nail, whereon they rustled softly and their golden spangles sparkled like little stars in the twilight.

'How much are you asking for them?'

'A mere song,' he answered, 'a mere song. And there's no hurry. Whenever it suits you. There's nothing of the Jew about us.' She pondered a few moments and then again declined.

'Well, well,' said Monsieur Lheureux, without turning a hair, 'we'll do some business one of these days. I've always managed to hit it with the ladies, except the one I've got at home.'

Emma smiled.

'What I mean to say is,' he continued genially, after his little joke, 'I don't bother my head about the money. I would lend you a bit, if you wanted it any time.'

'Oh' he went on in a low, rapid voice, as he noticed her gesture of surprise, 'I shouldn't have far to go to find you some, you bet.'

And then he began asking about Old Man Tellier, the landlord of the Cafe Francais, whom Monsieur Bovary was attending.

'What is it he's got, the old fellow? He coughs enough to bring the house down, and I'm very much afraid he'll soon be needing a wooden suit more than a flannel waistcoat. He didn't half go the pace in his young days! Never know how to keep themselves in, people like that. He's drunk so much brandy he's all turned to stone. All the same, no one likes parting with an old acquaintance.'

And all the time he was buckling up his cardboard box he talked about the doctor's patients.

'It's the weather; must be,' said he, screwing up his face and looking at the window, 'that causes all this illness. I'm feeling a bit off colour myself. One of these days I'll have to come and see the doctor about a pain I keep getting in the back. Well, good evening, Madame Bovary. Always pleased to wait on you.' And he went out, closing the door quietly behind him.

Emma had her dinner brought up to her in her bedroom on a tray and ate it by the fireside. She took a long time over it. It seemed good to be alive.

'That was self-denying of me,' she said, thinking of the scarves.

She heard someone coming up the stairs. It was Leon. On the chest of drawers was a pile of dusters waiting to be hemmed. She rose and, picking up the top one, pretended to be very busy.

The conversation flagged. Madame Bovary frequently relapsed into silence, while Leon himself seemed ill at ease. He was seated on a low chair near the fire, and kept turning over the ivory needle-case in his fingers. She plied her needle, pressing down the hem of the cloth from time to time with her nail. She did not speak, and he too held his peace, just as entranced by her silence as he would have been by her words.

'Poor boy!' she sighed to herself.

'What have I done to offend her?' he wondered.

At last, however, Leon remarked that he would have to go to Rouen one of these days, on business.

'Your music subscription has run out,' he added. 'Shall I renew it?'

'No,' she answered.

'Why not?'

'Because...'

And, pursing her lips, she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread. This needlework put Leon on edge. It seemed to be taking the skin off the tips of Emma's fingers. A little love-making phrase came to his lips, but he did not risk it.

'Are you giving it up, then?' he asked.

'What?' she asked quickly: 'music? Heavens, yes! Haven't I got the house to manage, my husband to look after and a hundred and one things to see to before thinking of things like music?'

She glanced at the clock. Charles was late. She pretended to be concerned about him. 'He's so kind!' she repeated two or three times.

The clerk liked Monsieur Bovary. But this display of affection rather piqued him. However, he went on sounding his praises, which, he said, were in everybody's mouth, particularly the chemist's.

'What a good fellow he is!' said Emma.

'Rather!' said the clerk.

And he began to talk about Madame Homais, whose 'slummucky' appearance usually furnished them with a subject for laughter.

'Well, what's it matter?' interrupted Emma. 'A woman who looks after her children properly never worries about dress.' After which she was silent again.

The same sort of thing went on for days. Her manner and conversation underwent a complete change. She took a visible interest in the house, started going to church again regularly and kept a tighter hand on her servant.

She took Berthe away from the wet-nurse. Felicite brought her down when anyone came to call, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show what a fine child she was. She declared she adored children. They were such a joy and comfort, and she went mad over them. And as she kissed and hugged the child she launched out into flights of poetry that would have reminded any but Yonville folk of Sachette in 'Notre-Dame'.

When Charles got home he would find his slippers warming by the fire. His waistcoats now were properly lined, the buttons were always on his shirts, and it was really rather a pleasant sight to see all the night-caps in the press arrayed in little separate piles. She never kicked now when he asked her to take a little turn in the garden. Whatever he proposed she agreed to, though she did not anticipate the wishes to which she so dutifully submitted. And when Leon saw him at the fireside after dinner, with his hands folded over his belly, his feet up on the fender, his cheeks flushed with the process of digestion, his eyes moist with satisfaction, the child crawling about on the carpet, and this elegant woman who would steal up and kiss him over the back of the chair, he would say to himself, 'What a fool I am to imagine I should ever get her to care for me!'

At such times she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible, that every hope, even the faintest, forsook him. And this renunciation gave her a strange status in his eyes. She became dissociated in his eyes from those fleshly attributes which he could not hope to enjoy, and, in his heart, he saw her rising ever higher and higher, freeing herself from earthly trammels, like a soul floating heavenwards in some glorious apotheosis.

It was one of those ethereal desires which do not interfere with our lives, which we cultivate because they are rare, and which if we lost them would give us more pain than the fulfilment of them would give us pleasure.

Emma lost flesh, grew pale and haggard. With her dark, plaited hair, her large eyes, her straight nose, her bird-like and ever-silent tread, she seemed like one passing through the world without so much as touching it, bearing on her brow the shadowy promise of some glorious and heavenly destiny. She was so sad and so calm, so gentle and, at the same time, so reserved, that you felt a sort of icy charm when you were with her, the kind of shiver that comes over you in a church from the perfume of flowers and the cold of the marble. The others too came under her spell.

'She's a woman of high endowments,' the chemist would remark. 'She could hold her own in a 'sous-prefecture'.'

The married women admired her for her good management, the patients for her pleasant manners, the poor for her charity.

But her bosom was a seething cauldron of desire and rage and hatred. That dress of hers, with its plain, straight pleats, concealed a heart that was being riven asunder, and those demure lips never confessed the agony of it. She was in love with Leon, and she loved to get away from people, to be all alone and to dwell upon his image. The sight of him in the flesh marred the delicious sweetness of these meditations. Emma's heart beat high when she heard him coming, and then, when he was there, the excitement subsided, leaving behind it a feeling of immense astonishment which finally fell away into sadness.

Little did Leon know that, when he came away from her, at his wits' end to know what to do, she got up in order to gaze after him in the street. She worried about what he was doing, she tried to get a glimpse of his face, she invented a most elaborate story so as to find a pretext for going up to see his bedroom. She thought the chemist's wife a very lucky woman for being able to sleep under the same roof with him, and her thoughts were for ever settling on that particular house, like the 'Lion d'Or' pigeons that came to wet their pink toes and white wings in the gutters there. But the more Emma realized her love, the more she thrust it from her, so that it should not be seen, so that it should fade away. She would have liked Leon to have an idea of it, and she thought of a variety of things, of catastrophic events that might bring this about. What kept her back was doubtless indolence or fear, and, to some extent, a sense of modesty. Next she imagined she had overdone her coolness, that the psychological moment had gone by, and that the whole thing was over. Then the pride, the joy of saying, 'I am a virtuous woman,' of looking at herself in the glass in an attitude of resignation, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she supposed she was making.

So, then, the desires of the flesh, the longing for wealth and the melancholy dreams of passion, were all mingled in one agony of unrest, and instead of directing her thoughts away from these things, she clung to them more and more, fomenting her grief and always seeking occasion to excite it. She would rap out angrily if there was anything amiss with the food, or if someone went out of the room and didn't shut the door properly. She thought bitterly of the fine velvet she had not got, of the happiness that was not hers, of her lofty ideas, of her exiguous home.

What made it all the harder to bear was that Charles did not seem to have a notion of what she was going through. His taking it for granted that he was making her quite happy seemed to her like a fatuous insult, and his certitude on the point nothing more nor less than a piece of ingratitude. Who was she saving and scraping for, she wanted to know? Wasn't he the greatest stumbling-block, the cause of every ill and, as it were, the galling buckle of that manifold bond that hemmed her in on every side?

Therefore she unloaded upon him all the complex hatred that arose from her various troubles and tribulations, and every effort she made to diminish it, served only to give it greater force, for this unavailing effort was added to other causes of despair and only increased the completeness of the estrangement. Her very submissiveness fired her with thoughts of rebellion. Her humdrum life at home awoke in her all manner of luxurious dreams, and displays of conjugal affection prompted her to adulterous desires. She would have liked Charles to beat her so that she might have a just reason for hating him and seeking vengeance. She was amazed at the hideous ideas that came into her mind; and, through it all, she had to go on smiling, to listen to herself saying she was happy, pretending to be happy and letting others think so.

However, there were times when this hypocrisy made her sick. Sometimes she felt as if she must run away with Leon, no matter whither, but far away, and there begin life over again; but forthwith a kind of yawning chasm would open within her, filled with foreboding shadows.

'Besides, he does not love me any more,' thought she. 'What will become of me? What help is there, what consolation, what relief?' And there she sat, broken, panting, motionless, sobbing under her breath, her face all bathed in tears.

'Why not say something to the doctor about it?' said the servant when she came in and found her like that.

'It's only nerves,' answered Emma. 'Don't say anything about it to him. You would only upset him.'

'Ah, yes,' Felicite went on, 'you're just like old Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet. I used to know her at Dieppe before I came to you. She was that sad, she was, that when you saw her standing in the door of her house, she somehow looked like a funeral pall hung up at the threshold. She'd got a sort of fog that settled in her head, so the folks said, and the doctors couldn't do nothing with her, nor the 'cure' neither. When she got it bad, she went out all by herself along by the side of the sea, and often enough the coastguard officer, going his rounds, would come across her lying flat on the pebbles crying her eyes out. Then she got married, and after that it all went off, so they say.'

'But in my case,' said Emma, 'it didn't come on till I was married.'

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