Captain Binet goes duck-hunting; A large order for Monsieur Homais; Nights with Rodolphe; The pistols; A letter from les Bertaux; Lost illusions; Berthe.

LITTLE by little Rodolphe's apprehensions began to take hold of her. Her passion had intoxicated her at first, and she had no thoughts beyond it. But now, when love had become indispensable to her life, she was afraid of losing even a piece of it, or of having it interfered with in any way. When she was going back from his house she would cast anxious looks about her, looking hard at anybody she saw in the distance and glancing cautiously up at every window from which her goings and comings might be observed. She stopped and listened whenever she heard a step, or someone calling, or the sound of the plough at work; she would halt, paler and more tremulous than the poplar leaves that fluttered above her head.

One morning, as she was on her way back from one of these rendezvous, she thought she saw the muzzle of a sporting rifle apparently pointing straight at her. It was projecting obliquely from a little cask, half hidden amid the grass on the edge of a ditch. Emma, though nearly ready to drop with terror, kept straight on, when a man bobbed up from the cask, like a jack-in-the-box, and got out of it. He was wearing gaiters up to the knees and a cap rammed down over his eyes. His lips were trembling and his nose was red with the cold. It was Captain Binet, on the look-out for wild duck.

'Why didn't you shout when you were away over there? Whenever you see a rifle, you should always sing out.'

The tax-collector thus tried to dissemble the shock he had just had to his nerves. For an official notice had gone forth prohibiting wild-duck shooting except from a boat, and Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the law, was doing something he ought not to do. This was how it was that every minute he thought he heard the policeman coming. But this anxiety lent an added zest to his pleasure, and there, all alone in his cask, he kept patting himself on the back for being such a cunning dog and having such good luck.

When he saw it was Emma, he looked mightily relieved, and immediately opened the conversation.

'Nippy, isn't it?' he said.

Emma made no reply, and he went on,

'You're out early, aren't you?'

'Yes,' she stammered, 'I've just been over to the woman's where my little girl is out to nurse.'

'Oh, I see, I see! Well, as for me, I'm here as soon as it's light. But the weather's so thick that unless you've got your bird slap at the end of your gun you-'

'Good day, Monsieur Binet,' she broke in, turning on her heel.

'Your servant, Madame,' he answered, rather put out. And he retreated into his cask.

Emma regretted she had left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he'd go and imagine all sorts of unpleasant things. The story about the nurse was the worst lie she could have told, for everyone in Yonville knew that the little Bovary child had been back with her parents for more than a year. Besides, no one lived out that way; the path didn't lead anywhere but to la Huchette. Binet must have guessed where she was coming from, right enough. He would not keep it dark- he'd put it about, that was a certainty. All day long she sat cudgelling her brains, thinking out what lie she could possibly tell, with the figure of the egregious sportsman ever before her eyes.

After dinner, Charles, noticing that she seemed rather down, insisted on taking her over to the Homaises to liven her up a little. The very first person she clapped eyes on in the chemist's was Binet. There he was, planted alongside the counter, all lit up with red light from one of the big carboys.

'Half an ounce of vitriol, please,' he said.

'Justin!' shouted the apothecary, 'bring along the sulphuric acid, will you?'

'No, don't trouble to go up,' he said, turning to Emma, who was making for Madame Homais's room upstairs. 'She'll be down in a minute. Warm yourself at the stove till she comes. How d'ye do, doctor?' (the chemist was very fond of bringing in the word doctor as often as he could, as though some of the glory which he conceived to attach to the word were mysteriously reflected upon himself).... 'Now then, don't go and upset those mortars. Get the chairs out of the little room; you know perfectly well that the easy-chairs are not to be taken out of the drawing-room.'

And Homais was about to rush away from the counter to put his chair back in its place when Binet said he wanted half an ounce of sugar acid.

'Sugar acid?' said the chemist scornfully. 'What's that? I don't know it. Perhaps you mean oxalic acid.'

Binet explained that what he wanted was a corrosive to put in a metal polish he was making to get the rust off his shooting gear.

Emma trembled.

'You're right,' said the apothecary- 'rust is right! But, then, look how damp it's been.'

'All the same,' said Binet significantly, 'some people don't seem to mind it!'

She felt like choking.

'Oh, and then I want-'

('He'll be here all night!' she said to herself.)

'-half an ounce of resin and turps mixed, four ounces of beeswax and an ounce and a half of lamp-black. It's to clean the shiny leather parts of my tackle.'

The chemist was starting to cut the wax, when Madame Homais appeared, with Irma in her arms, Napoleon at her side and Athalie dragging along behind. She went and sat down on the velvet seat facing the window. The small boy clambered up on to a stool, while his elder sister prowled about with her eye on the jujube box near to 'little daddy'. 'Little daddy' was pouring stuff into funnels, putting corks into bottles, gumming on labels, wrapping up packets. Silence was observed in his vicinity, the only sounds being the occasional tinkle of the weights in the scales and some whispered words of advice given by the chemist to his apprentice.

'How's that young lady of yours?' asked Madame Homais all of a sudden.

'Silence!' exclaimed her husband, who was doing some figuring in a scribbling book.

'Why didn't you bring her along?' she said, dropping her voice.

'Sh!' whispered Emma, pointing to the chemist.

But Binet was probably too busy adding up his bill to have heard anything. At last he departed, and Emma heaved a prodigious sigh of relief.

'Why, how hard you're breathing!' said Madame Homais.

'Yes, it 'is' a little bit warm, isn't it?'

Next day they discussed where they had better meet. Emma thought of bribing the maid, giving her a present to keep her mouth shut; but they came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to get hold of some house to which they could go in Yonville. Rodolphe said he would look out for one.

All through the winter, three or four times a week, when it was quite dark, he made his way into the garden. Emma had taken care to remove the key of the garden gate, and Charles concluded it was lost.

In order to tell her he was there Rodolphe would throw a handful of gravel against the shutters. Then she would jump up with a start. But sometimes she had to wait, because Charles had a mania for sitting up gossiping by the fire, and sometimes it seemed as if he would go on babbling for ever. She didn't know how to contain herself. If looks could have done it, she would have pitched him out of the window. After a time she began to undress, then she took up a book and began to read it with apparent calmness, as if she found it interesting. But Charles, who was now between the sheets, told her to come to bed.

'Come along, Emma,' he would say, 'it's really time you were in.'

'All right, I'm coming,' she would answer.

However, as the candlelight was in his eyes, he turned his face to the wall and dropped off to sleep. Then she slipped out, holding her breath, radiant, palpitating and all undressed.

Rodolphe used to wear a big cloak. He covered her up in it and, putting his arm round her waist, silently led her to the far end of the garden. It was in the arbour on the same rustic seat where Leon used to look at her so tenderly on those summer nights in days gone by. She thought very little about him now.

The stars were twinkling through the leafless branches of the jasmine. They could hear the murmur of the river behind them, and now and then the rustle of the dry reeds on the bank. Great shadowy masses bellied out here and there in the darkness, and sometimes, all quivering together, they rose up and bowed forward like huge black waves advancing to overwhelm them. The cold made them clasp each other the tighter; their sighs seemed more profound; their eyes, though they could scarcely discern them in the gloom, seemed bigger, and in the stillness that enfolded them a word, softly murmured, would fall upon their hearts like the note of a crystal bell and pass, trembling with infinite vibrations, into silence.

On wet nights they would go and take refuge in the surgery between the shed and the stable. She would light one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe made himself quite at home. The sight of the bookcase and the writing-desk- everything in the room, in fact- excited his merriment, and he couldn't restrain himself from indulging in all sorts of little jokes at Charles's expense that put Emma a little bit out of countenance. She would have liked him to be a little more serious, and a little more dramatic if occasion demanded, as he had been once when she thought she heard the sound of footsteps coming towards them along the path.

'There's someone coming!' said she.

He blew out the candle.

'Have you got your pistols on you?'

'What for?'

'Why- to defend yourself!' answered Emma.

'From your husband, do you mean? Good Lord!'

And Rodolphe made a gesture that signified 'I'd crush him like a fly!' She was greatly impressed at his cool courage, though it had a touch of coarseness, of indelicacy, about it that she did not like at all.

Rodolphe pondered a good deal over this business of the pistols. If she had meant it, it was, he thought, ridiculous, rather horrible indeed, for Charles was a decent fellow enough, and he personally had no reason to hate him, not being 'consumed with jealousy', as the phrase goes; and, on this point, Emma had sworn him a solemn oath which he didn't think in the best of taste either.

Besides, she was getting fearfully sentimental. There had had to be an exchange of miniatures, of locks of hair, and now the latest thing was that she wanted a ring- a proper wedding-ring- as a symbol of their everlasting union. She often talked to him about the bells of eventide, of the voices of nature; and sometimes she would tell him about her mother and ask him about his. Rodolphe's mother had been dead twenty years. Nevertheless, Emma consoled him for his loss with the sort of little baby talk you would use to a lost child, and sometimes, looking up at the moon, she would say, 'I am sure that when they both look down on us from above, they approve of our love.'

But, then, she was so pretty! None of the women he had ever possessed had had such an innocent bloom on them. A really sentimental love affair like this was something quite new for him. It put him on his mettle, took him out of the rut, and gave a fillip to his pride and his appetites. Emma's intense style, which his middle-class common sense rather pooh-poohed, struck him, in his heart of hearts, as being rather fine after all, because he himself was the object of it. Then, being certain of her love for him, he ceased to put himself about, and insensibly his manner underwent a change.

He never spoke to her now as he used to, saying little things so sweet and tender they made her cry. He never kissed her and hugged her in the old tempestuous fashion that sent her into the seventh heaven. No! that great love of theirs, in whose waves she was borne along, seemed as if it were growing shallower beneath her, like the waters of a river that was fated to be absorbed in its bed, and lo, she could see the mud! She tried not to believe it, became more demonstrative than ever, while Rodolphe troubled less and less to mask his indifference. She could not make up her mind whether she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she wanted to go on loving him more and more. Humiliation at the consciousness of her own weakness grew into a feeling of mortification which, however, was softened by their periodic caresses. It was not so much an affectionate attachment as a permanent infatuation. He had a sort of power over her. She was almost afraid of him.

Nevertheless, to all outward appearances, things were going on more smoothly than ever, Rodolphe having succeeded in running the affair according to his own ideas; and after six months, when the spring came round, they were for all the world like a couple of married folk quietly nourishing the domestic flame.

It was just about this time that Farmer Rouault was in the habit of sending along his goose to commemorate the setting of his broken leg. The present was always accompanied by a letter. Emma cut the string that tied it to the hamper and read as follows:

'MY DEAR CHILDREN,

'I hope this will find you in good health and that this one will be as good as the others, for it seems to me to have a bit more on it, to be a bit more meaty as you might say. Next time, for a change, I'll send you a cock bird, unless you'd rather keep to these, and send me back the hamper, please, and the two other ones. I have had a bit of bad luck with my cartshed- the wind took the roof of it off one night when it was blowing hard and carried it up among the trees, and the harvest hasn't been what you might call first rate. And when I shall ever get away to see you I 'don't' know. It's been such a job leaving the house since I've been alone, my poor Emma.'

Here there was some space between the lines, as if the worthy man had laid aside his pen in order to dream a little.

'As for me, I'm all right except for a cold I picked up at Yvetot Fair the other day, where I'd gone off to engage a shepherd, as I had given ours the sack, him being that finicking about his victuals. What a dance them rogues do lead us! And he wasn't no better than he ought to be in other ways.

'I ran across a pedlar who'd been travelling about down your way this winter. He'd been to Bovary to have a tooth out, and he said he was always hard at work. I don't wonder, and he showed me his tooth. We had a cup of coffee together. I asked him if he'd seen you. He said no, but he had seen two animals in the stable, so I suppose trade's good. And a good job too, my dears, and God send you every happiness.

'It do seem hard that I haven't got to know my little grandchild Berthe Bovary yet. I've planted a plum-tree out in the garden under your bedroom window, and I won't have anybody meddle with it except, later on, to make some jam. I shall keep it in a cupboard for her against her first visit.

'Good-bye, my dear children. Fondest love to you, my girl, and to you, my son-in-law, and a kiss on both cheeks for the little one.

'I am, with many compliments,

'Your loving Father,

THEODORE ROUAULT.'

She lingered a few minutes, holding the rough piece of paper between her fingers. The spelling mistakes ran like a warp through the whole production, and Emma followed the thoughts that struggled through somehow, like the cackling of a hen half-hidden in a thorn hedge. The ink had been dried with cinders, for a sprinkling of grey dust slipped from the letter on to her dress, and it seemed to her as though she could almost see her father bending forward over the hearth to pick up the tongs. What a long time since she had been there, with him seated on the settle in the fire-place, when she would light the end of a stick in the game of the sea-rushes that flared and crackled up the chimney! She thought of those summer evenings all flooded with sunshine. The colts used to whinny when you went near them, and gallop- heavens, how they galloped! There was a beehive underneath her window, and sometimes the bees, wheeling round about in the light, would bump against her window-panes like bouncing golden balls. How happy it all seemed in those days! What freedom, what hopefulness, what a wealth of illusions! There were none left now. One after another, in the successive stages of her soul's adventure- girlhood, marriage, love- she had parted with them all, shedding them along the path of life like a traveller who leaves behind him some portion of his belongings at every wayside inn.

But who or what was making her unhappy? What was the extraordinary catastrophe that had overwhelmed her? And she lifted her head and looked about her as though she were trying to discover what it was that was making her suffer so.

A ray of April sunlight was playing softly on the china along the dresser; the fire was burning cheerfully; she could feel the yielding softness of the carpet beneath her slippers; the sky was bright, the air was warm and she could hear her little one laughing for joy. There she was rolling about on the lawn among the grass that was being cut for hay. She was lying flat on her stomach on the top of a haycock, her nurse holding on to her frock. Lestiboudois was raking close by, and every time he came near her she leant over, beating the air with both arms.

'Oh, bring her to me!' said her mother, rushing forward and gathering her to her bosom. 'How I love you, Mummy's poor little pet, how I love you!'

Then, noticing that her ears were not quite clean, she rang in a great hurry for some warm water and gave her a good wash, put her on clean underclothes, changed her shoes and stockings, and asked all sorts of things about her health, as if she had just come back from a journey. Finally, still smothering her with kisses and crying a little, she handed her back to the maid, who couldn't account at all for this sudden outburst of affection.

Rodolphe, that night, found her much graver than usual.

'She'll get over it,' he thought to himself. 'It's just one of her little ways.'

And three times in succession he failed to keep the tryst. When, finally, he did come, her manner was cold, almost off-hand.

'Ah, it won't pay you to try that on, my beauty!'

And he pretended not to notice her doleful plight or the handkerchief she kept producing.

It was then that Emma repented. She asked herself how it was she detested Charles and whether she would not have been far better off if she had been able to love him. But he did not give her any great opening for these revulsions of sentiment, and she was at a great loss to know how to give effect to the laudable promptings by which she was animated, when the apothecary furnished her with a most timely occasion.

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