The Bovarys at the opera; Monsieur Lagardy; Charles wants to understand; The spilt barley-water; Re-enter Leon; 'Night brings counsel'.

THE crowd were drawn up along by the wall, ranged symmetrically between the balustrades. At the corners of all the streets round about, gigantic posters had been stuck up with 'Lucia di Lammermoor... Lagardy... Opera...' and so on, in big, flamboyant letters. It was a fine evening, and hot. The ladies' fringes all looked clammy with perspiration; all the handkerchiefs were out, mopping away at rubicund foreheads. Every now and then a warm breeze, blowing up from the river, would gently flap the borders of the canvas awnings that hung over the tavern doors. A little farther on, however, a current of icy air, that smelt of tallow, leather and oil, brought with it a refreshing coolness. It was a whiff from the Rue des Charrettes, a street of vast, dark warehouses where men were for ever trundling about great casks in a perpetual twilight.

Emma thought it would look well to go and take a turn down by the harbour before going in, and Bovary, who was running no risks, kept the tickets in his hand, in his trousers pocket, which he held tight against his stomach.

Her heart began to flutter as soon as she got into the vestibule. She couldn't resist smiling a little smile of vanity when she saw the crowd all herding into the passage on the right, while she went straight up the staircase to the grand seats. She was as pleased as any child at opening the big tapestry-covered doors with a little push of her finger. She eagerly sniffed in the dusty smell of the corridors, and, seated in her box, she bore herself as haughtily as any duchess.

The theatre was beginning to fill up. Opera-glasses were extracted from their cases, and the seat-holders, recognizing each other from afar, nodded and waved their greetings. They had come to seek relief from their commercial occupations, in a little enjoyment of the fine arts. But they could not dismiss 'business' from their minds, and cottons, raw spirits and indigoes were still the burden of their conversation. Then there were the faces of elderly gentlemen, placid and expressionless, looking like discs of oxidized silver. The young bloods were preening themselves in front of the stalls, showing off the pink or apple-green cravats that beautified the opening of their waistcoats. Madame Bovary looked down on them admiringly, as they stood leaning on their gold-knobbed canes, stretching the palms of their yellow kid gloves.

Meanwhile the orchestra candles were being lighted, the great lustre was lowered from the ceiling, shedding, with the glittering rays of its facets, a sudden air of gaiety upon the scene. The musicians filed in one after another, and then followed a prolonged medley of growling double-basses, squeaking violins, snorting cornets, wailing flutes and flageolets. And now came three taps on the stage, the drums began to roll, the brass instruments played a preluding chord or two and the curtains rose upon a rural scene.

It was a forest glade with a fountain to the left, shaded by an oak. A chorus of rustics and lords, with plaids hanging from their shoulders, were singing a hunting chorus; then a captain arrived on the scene, who evoked the spirit of evil, raising both arms to heaven; he was joined by another; they both departed and the huntsmen resumed their song.

Why, it was the romances she had read in her youth! It was Walter Scott back again! She seemed to catch, through the mist, the sound of the Scottish bagpipes skirling among the heather. And the memory of the book help ing her to understand the libretto, she followed each successive stage in the plot, while all the time a host of vague, indefinable thoughts came thronging in upon her, only to take flight at every 'crescendo' of the music.

She abandoned herself to the soothing influence of the melodies, and felt a thrill passing through the whole of her being, as though the bows of the violinists were being drawn across her very nerves. She had not eyes enough to drink in the costumes, the scenery, the characters, the painted trees that trembled when anyone walked by, the velvet caps, the cloaks, the swords and all those strange and wondrous things that shimmered in the waves of harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But now behold! a young woman advanced and threw a purse to a groom attired in green. She remained alone, and then was heard the music of flute, which sounded like a murmuring fountain or the gentle warbling of birds. Lucia began her cavatina in E major in great style; she sang her plaint of love; she cried aloud for wings. Emma too would have liked to flee from life, to be borne away in the ecstasy of love's embrace. Suddenly Edgar Lagardy appeared on the scene.

His complexion exhibited the magnificent pallor that lends the majesty of marble statuary to the ardent races of the South. His athletic figure was encased in a doublet of brown hue; a small, elaborately chased dagger hung at his left hip, and he gazed about him languorously, displaying his white teeth. The story went that a Polish princess, hearing him sing one night on the seashore at Biarritz, as he was at work caulking boats, fell desperately in love with him. She ruined herself on his account. Then he left her for other women. His artistic reputation was not the only thing that benefited by his fame as a gay Lothario. The cunning mummer always took care to slip into the advertisements some poetical reference to the fascination of his person and the sensitiveness of his soul. A fine voice, unbounded aplomb, temperament rather than brains, gusto rather than real ability as a singer, combined to bring this super-charlatan, who was a sort of mixture of toreador and hairdresser, into the limelight of popularity.

As soon as he appeared on the stage, the people went mad about him. He pressed Lucia to his bosom. He flung away from her and came back again; he seemed in despair. Now he would burst out in fury, now he would sing wooingly- tender, elegiac strains of infinite sweetness, and the notes took flight from his uncovered neck, laden with sobs and kisses. Emma leaned forward to see him the clearer, and clenched the velvet padding of her box. She filled her heart with these melodious lamentations that lingered long upon the air to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the shipwrecked heard amid the tumult of the tempest. She recognized the passion and the pain whereof she had all but died. The voice of the heroine seemed but the echo of her own heart, and the lovely illusion before her, part and parcel of her life. But no one on earth had ever loved 'her' with such a love as that. 'He' did not weep like Edgar, that final evening in the moonlight when they had parted, saying, 'Tomorrow; tomorrow!' The applause nearly brought the house down. The lovers spoke of the flowers on their grave, of vows, exile, fate, hope, and when they uttered their supreme farewell Emma gave a shriek that blended with the lingering vibrations of the final harmonies.

'But,' said Bovary, 'why is that lord there so unkind to her?'

'But he isn't,' she answered 'he's her lover.'

'And yet he swore just now he would be revenged on her family, while the other man, the one that came on a moment ago, said, "Lucia I love, and deem that she loves me". And then he went off with her father, arm in arm. That 'is' her father, isn't it- the ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?'

Emma tried to explain as best she could, and yet when the duet began, in which Gilbert lays bare to Ashton his nefarious machinations, Charles, as soon as he saw the false betrothal ring that was to lead Lucia astray, thought it was a love-token sent to her by Edgar. He confessed, however, that he couldn't make head or tail of the story because of the music, which interfered so much with the words.

'What does it matter?' said Emma. 'Be quiet!'

'Well, you see,' he answered, leaning over on her shoulder, 'I like to know the rights of things; you know I always do.'

'Oh, for goodness' sake be quiet!' she cried impatiently.

Lucia came forward, droopingly supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossom in her hair, and paler than the satin of her gown. Emma began dreaming of her marriage; and she saw herself back again amid the cornfields on the little footpath, when the company were making their way to the church. Why had she not struggled and resisted then, like Lucia? Instead of that, she had been merry and light-hearted, never realizing the precipice over which she was flinging herself. Ah! if only in the freshness of her beauty, before the soilure of marriage and the disillusions of adultery, she could have based her life on some great-hearted, steadfast man, then, virtue and affection, voluptuousness and duty, going hand in hand, she would never have fallen from a happiness so perfect. But such happiness as that was merely a piece of make-believe, invented to show the vanity of all desire. She knew well enough, now, how paltry were the passions of which art made so much. So, trying to divert her thoughts, Emma made up her mind to see nothing more in this presentment of grief and pain than a mere pictorial fantasy, well-suited to beguile the eye, and she was even indulging herself in a little disdainful smile when, at the far end of the stage, beneath the velvet hangings, appeared a man attired in a sable cloak.

His broad-brimmed Spanish hat fell to the ground at a gesture that he made, and forthwith the instrumentalists and the singers began to strike up the sextet. Edgar, glowing with fury, dominated all the rest with his triumphant tenor. Ashton threatened him with death in lower tones; Lucia gave vent to piercing lamentations; Arthur stood apart modulating notes in the middle register; the squat figure of the minister rumbled like an organ, while the women, taking up his words, repeated them in chorus, with delicious effect. They had all come forward in a row to gesticulate; and wrath and vengeance, jealousy and terror, compassion and dismay were all being breathed forth simultaneously from their parted lips. The outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his lace collar worked up with little jerks as his bosom heaved; he went now to the right and now to the left with great strides, making the gilt spurs on his soft leather boots that widened out at the ankles clank upon the boards. 'Ah, he,' she thought, 'must have an inexhaustible fund of love, to pour such floods of it upon this throng of people here.' All her little depreciatory ideas vanished away before the onward sweep of his magnificent role, and, drawn to the man by virtue of the part he was enacting, she tried to picture to herself the sort of life he must lead- a life full of thrills, extraordinary, splendid and, withal, such a life as she herself might have led if the fates had willed it so. They would have known each other, they would have been lovers. At his side, through all the countries of Europe, she would have journeyed, faring from capital to capital, sharing his weariness and sharing his fame, gathering up the flowers flung at his feet, embroidering his costumes with her own hand; and then, night by night, within her box, behind the grille with its gilt trellis, she would have inhaled, with panting breast and parted lips, the outpourings of a soul who would have sung for her and her alone; and from the stage, even as he played his part, his eyes would have sought for hers. Oh! was she mad? He was looking at her. Yes, for sure! And she felt she must rush and cast herself into his arms to seek shelter in his strength, as though in the very incarnation of love, to tell him all that was in her heart, to cry, 'Take me, bear me away, let us begone! I am yours, yours with all my ardour, all my dreams!'

The curtain fell.

The air was heavy with a mixture of spent gas and people's breath; the breeze from the fans made the atmosphere stuffier than ever. Emma wanted to go out; the corridors were packed with people, and she sank back in her seat with palpitations that made her feel as if she were choking. Charles thought she was going to faint, and rushed off to the bar to get her a glass of barley water.

He had a fearful struggle to get back to his seat. People kept on jogging his elbow, just because he had a glass in his hand, and he upset three parts of it all over the shoulders of one of Rouen's fair ones, in short sleeves. When she felt the cold liquid running down her back she yelled like a peacock, as if she was being murdered. Her husband, a cotton spinner, gave 'the clumsy lout a bit of his mind'; and while the lady was swabbing away with her handkerchief at the stains on her beautiful cerise taffeta, he was grunting and growling something about 'making good the damage', 'cost of the thing', 'paying up', and so on. At last Charles got back to his wife.

'Good Lord!' he exclaimed, puffing and blowing, 'thought I was there for the night! The people! You never saw such a crowd! And who d'you think I ran into up there? Monsieur Leon!'

'Leon?'

'The man himself! He's coming round in a minute to pay his respects to you.'

And before these words were out of his mouth, the ex-clerk of Yonville came into the box.

He put out his hand with well-bred nonchalance, and Madame Bovary extended hers, mechanically, as though obeying some force of attraction independent of her will. She had not felt it since that evening in springtime when the rain was falling on the green leaves and they said good-bye standing beside the window. But remembering the exigencies of the situation, she shook off these brooding memories and quickly stammered forth a number of polite phrases.

'Oh, how do you do? Imagine it! You here?'

'Silence!' cried a voice in the pit, for the third act was starting.

'So you're at Rouen, then?'

'Yes.'

'How long have you been here?'

'Be quiet there! Get out! Get out!'

The people were all turning round and looking at them. They stopped talking. But from that moment onwards she listened no more; and the chorus of guests, the scene between Ashton and his serving-man, the great duet in B major, all seemed to her like something taking place far away, as though the instruments had grown less resonant and the actors more remote. She thought of those card parties at the chemist's, their walk to the nurse's house, the hours they spent reading in the arbour, the talks by the fireside, of all their sorry little love-affair which lasted so long and was so calm, so timid and so tender; and which had quite faded from her mind. What, then, was the reason of his coming back? What manner of web were the fates about to weave that they should bring him thus into her life again? He was sitting behind her, leaning back against the wall, and, from time to time, she was conscious of a little thrill as she felt the breath of his nostrils all warm amid her hair.

'Are you enjoying this much?' he said, leaning over her so close that the point of his moustache touched her cheek.

'Oh, I don't know- not too much,' she answered carelessly.

Thereupon he suggested that they should go out and have some ices somewhere.

'Oh, no! Stay on a bit. Don't let's go yet,' said Bovary. 'Her hair's down. Looks as if we were in for something tragic.'

But the mad scene didn't interest Emma at all, and the acting of the 'prima donna' struck her as being overdone.

'She shouts too much,' she said, turning round to Charles, who was eagerly drinking it in.

'Yes... perhaps... a little,' he answered, torn between the real pleasure it was giving him and the respect he entertained for his wife's opinion.

'The heat's something awful,' said Leon, heaving a sigh.

'You're right; it's unbearable.'

'Are you feeling it too much?' asked Bovary.

'Yes, I'm suffocating; let's go.'

Monsieur Leon delicately placed her long shawl over her shoulders, and they all three of them went and sat down on the quay, in the open air, outside a cafe.

They began by talking about her illness, Emma interrupting Charles every now and then, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Leon. And then Monsieur Leon told them how he had come to Rouen to put in two years in an office there, in order to get used to the sort of work, which was very different in Normandy from the kind of thing you got in Paris. Then he inquired about Berthe, and the Homais family, and Madame Lefrancois; and as they had nothing much more to say to each other with the husband there, the conversation soon came to a full stop.

People coming away from the theatre passed along in front of them on the pavement, some humming, some braying out 'O bel ange, ma Lucie!' with the full force of their lungs. Whereupon Leon, to impress them with his culture, began to talk music. He had seen Tamburini, Rubini, Persiani, Grisi; and, compared with them, Lagardy, for all his dramatic outbursts, was nothing at all.

'All the same,' interrupted Charles, who kept sipping at his 'sorbet au rhum', 'some people will have it that in the last act he's absolutely perfect. I'm sorry we left before it was over; it was beginning to get hold of me.'

'Oh, well,' said Leon, 'he'll be giving another performance soon.'

But Charles replied that they were off home in the morning. 'That is, unless you'd care to stop on by yourself,' he added, turning to his wife.

Changing his tactics in view of this unlooked-for encouragement to his hopes, Leon said it was a fact, Lagardy in the last act was absolutely magnificent. It was something superb, sublime.

Thereupon Charles said she 'must' stay on.

'You can come back Sunday. Come, make up your mind. It's silly of you not to stay, if you feel it's doing you the slightest bit of good.'

Meanwhile the tables round about them were being cleared. A waiter came and planted himself a little distance away. Charles took the hint, and pulled out his purse. The clerk caught him by the arm, insisted on paying and even left a couple of silver coins, for a tip, which he clinked on the marble-topped table.

'Look here!' said Bovary, 'I really don't like your spending all this money.'

Leon received this remark with an air of lofty cordiality. 'All right, then,' he said; 'that's fixed. Tomorrow evening at six.'

Charles again protested that he couldn't possibly stop away any longer, but that there was no earthly reason why Emma...

'Well, you see,' she stammered, with a curious smile, 'I don't quite know whether...'

'Oh, well, think it over; we shall see. Let's go in and sleep on it.'

'Now you're back in our neighbourhood again, you'll come and have a bit of dinner with us, I hope, sometimes.'

The clerk said he most certainly would, especially as he would have to be going to Yonville for the firm. They said good-night by the Passage Saint Herbland, just as the Cathedral clock was striking half-past eleven.

Related Articles

• 15 - Madame Bovary - Chapter 15 - Gustave Flaubert (1797-1835)
• 22 - Madame Bovary - Chapter 22 - Gustave Flaubert (1797-1835)
• 7 - Madame Bovary - Chapter 7 - Gustave Flaubert (1797-1835)
• 30 - Madame Bovary - Chapter 30 - Gustave Flaubert (1797-1835)
• 21 - Madame Bovary - Chapter 21 - Gustave Flaubert (1797-1835)