Return to Yonville; Monsieur Homais's lumber-room; Justin's book; Charles becomes an orphan; Hippolyte brings the luggage; Leon's violets; A Power of Attorney; Emma's new gown.

ON reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was astonished not to see the diligence. Hivert had waited fifty-three minutes, and had at last gone on without her.

There was no really compelling reason why she should go home; but she had given her word she would be back that evening. Moreover, Charles would be expecting her, and she was already conscious, in her heart, of the sort of whipped-dog feeling which, in the eyes of many women, atones for the sin and washes away the stain of it.

She threw her things into her bag, paid her bill, hired a trap from the yard, and, telling the driver to drive like the wind, urging him on, continually pestering him to know what time it was, and how many miles they had come, she managed to catch up the 'Hirondelle' just as it was driving into Quincampoix.

She had hardly sunk into her corner, when she closed her eyes, and did not open them again till they were at the bottom of the hill. Some way off, she recognized Felicite, who was mounting guard outside the blacksmith's shop. Hivert pulled in to the side, and the cook, hoisting herself up on a level with the window, said, with an air of mystery,

'Madame, you must go at once to Monsieur Homais's. Something very urgent!'

The usual air of quiet hung over the village. At all the street corners there were little pink heaps that steamed in the air. This was preserving time, and every household in Yonville manufactured its jam supply on the same day. Outside the chemist's, however, a mound of unusual dimensions excited the public admiration, as it was meet it should, seeing that it exceeded the ordinary heaps as the product of a laboratory should exceed the product of a kitchen, as a department of the public service should surpass mere individual enterprise.

She went in. The big arm-chair was overturned, and even the 'Rouen Beacon' was lying on the floor, spread out between a couple of pestles. She pushed open the door of the passage and there, in the middle of the kitchen, among brown jars filled with stoned currants, powdered sugar, lump sugar, scales on the table, pans on the fire, she saw all the Homais family, great and small, with aprons up to their chins and forks in their hands. Justin was standing with diminished head, and the chemist was shouting at him.

'Who told you to go to the lumber-room for it?'

'What is it? What is the matter?' asked Emma.

'What is it?' said the druggist. 'We are making jam; it's on the fire, and it's just going to boil over because there is too much liquid, and I call out for another basin; and he, because he's a fool or because he's lazy, goes into my laboratory and takes the key of the lumber-room off the nail there!'

This was the name the apothecary gave to a little room at the top of the house, full of the utensils and goods appertaining to his calling. He often spent hours together there labelling things, transferring them from one jar to another, tying them up with fresh string; and he looked upon it, not as a mere store-room, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there afterwards proceeded all manner of pills, boluses, cough mixtures, lotions and potions, the work of his hands, which were destined to spread his renown through all the countryside. Nobody was allowed to enter there; and so profound was his respect for it, that he swept and dusted it himself. In fine, if the pharmacy, open to all comers, was the place where he displayed his proud eminence to the world, the lumber-room was the retreat in which, retiring within the sanctuary of his own egoism, Homais indulged himself in the unrestricted exercise of his predilections. This is how it was that Justin's heedless invasion of his sanctum struck him as a piece of monstrous irreverence. And, outvying the currants in rubicundity, he repeated,

'Yes, the lumber-room! The key of the place that contains the acids and the caustic alkalis! To go there for a spare pan! A pan with a lid to it; a pan which I may not want at all! Everything has its importance in the delicate operations of our art. But the devil take it! We must draw the line somewhere, and not employ, for domestic uses, things intended to be used in pharmacy! It's like carving a chicken with a scalpel; it's just as if a magistrate...'

'There, now, calm yourself!' Madame Homais kept saying, and Athalie, tugging at his coat, was crying 'Papa! papa!'

'No, no! Let me alone!' the apothecary raved on. 'Let me alone! Damn it! Just as well set up as a grocer right away! Get along, go on with you! Do what you like with the lot! Break! Smash! Let go the leeches! Burn the mallow pastes! Pickle your gherkins in my beakers! Slash up the bandages!'

'But,' began Emma, 'there was something you...'

'One moment!... Do you know the risks you run? Didn't you see anything in the corner, to the left, on the third shelf? Speak! Answer! Say 'something' coherent!'

'I d-d-don't know...' stammered the lad.

'Ah! You don't know, don't you? Well, then, I'll tell you! You saw a bottle- a blue-glass bottle, sealed with yellow wax- which contains a white powder, and on that bottle I myself have written the word 'Dangerous'. And do you know what's in it? Arsenic! And you go and touch that, and take a jar that's alongside it!'

'Alongside it!' cried Madame Homais, wringing her hands. 'Arsenic? Why, you might poison the lot of us!'

And with one accord the children began to yell as if they were already suffering agony in their intestines.

'Yes, or poison a patient,' went on the apothecary. 'Do you want to see me standing in the dock at the next assizes? Do you want to see me executed? Don't you know how careful I am in handling everything I touch, although I know the whole place like the inside of my pocket? I get the shudders sometimes, when I think of my responsibility; for the Government is down on us, and the absurd legislation to which we are subjected is a regular sword of Damocles above our heads.'

Emma had given up all idea of asking what it was he wanted with her, and the apothecary went on, nearly choking with rage,

'That's how you show your gratitude for all that has been done for you! That's what I get for being a father to you! Where would you be if it wasn't for me? What would you be doing? Who is it feeds you, educates you, clothes you, and gives you every opportunity of cutting a decent figure in society, one of these days? But if you want to make good, you've got to pull your weight in the boat and get a few blisters on your hands. 'Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis'.'

He quoted Latin in the extremity of his exasperation. He would have quoted Chinese or Greenlandese if he had been acquainted with those languages, for he was in one of those crises in which the soul is laid bare to its very depths, just as the ocean, when a storm is raging, not only strews the shore with jetsam, but churns up the sand from its lowest depths.

'I am beginning to be mighty sorry I ever undertook to have you. I should have done better to let you fester in the filth and squalor you were born in. You'll never be fit for anything but minding cattle. You've no gift for science; you hardly know how to gum on a label. And here you are in my house, living like a fighting-cock, on the fat of the land.'

'They told me to...' began Emma, turning to Madame Homais.

'Ah, 'mon Dieu!'' interrupted the good lady with a lugubrious air, 'I don't know how to tell you.... It's a dreadful business....'

She did not finish, for the apothecary was still thundering, 'Empty it out! Scour it! Take it back! Look alive!'

And shaking Justin by the collar of his blouse, he jerked a book out of his pocket.

The boy stooped down. Homais was before him and, snatching up the volume, he contemplated it with staring eyes and drooping jaw.

''Married... Love!'' he said, separating the two words with great distinctness. 'Ah, very good! Very nice! Very pretty! Illustrated, eh! Oh, look here, this is 'too' much of a good thing!'

Madame Homais came forward.

'No, no, don't touch it!'

The children wanted to see the pictures.

'Get out of the room!' he shouted, imperiously.

And they went.

He paced up and down, with big strides, holding the volume open between his fingers. His eyes were rolling, he couldn't breathe, his face looked puffy and apoplectic. At last he strode straight up to his pupil and, standing in front of him with folded arms, he said,

'So you've got beastly ways about you, have you, you little wretch! Be careful, you're on a slippery slope. It never occurred to you, I suppose, that this book, this filthy book, might fall into my children's hands, set their brains afire, that it might tarnish Athalie's purity and corrupt Napoleon. He's already a man in some ways. Are you sure they haven't read it? Can you guarantee me that?'

'But, Monsieur,' said Emma, 'there was something you had to say to me, wasn't there?'

'True, Madame.... Your father-in-law is dead!'

It was a fact that Monsieur Bovary, senior, had died the previous evening quite suddenly. He had had a stroke just after getting up from dinner. As Charles was extremely anxious that Emma should not be upset, he had asked Monsieur Homais to break this terrible piece of news to her.

He, Homais, had meditated his phrase, rounded it off, polished it, put music into it. It was a masterpiece of tact and allusive grace, of precision and delicacy. But his wrath had been too much for his rhetoric.

Emma, giving up all hope of learning any details, left the shop, for Monsieur Homais had launched out afresh on the tide of his vituperations. However, he grew calmer, and, at present, he was grumbling and growling in a paternal sort of way, fanning himself with his smoking-cap.

'Not that I wholly disapprove of the work. The author was a medical man, and there are certain scientific sides to the matter that a man is none the worse for knowing; I would even go so far as to say that he ought to know them. But later on, later on. Wait at least till you are a man yourself, until your ideas are properly matured.'

When he heard Emma knock, Charles, who was expecting her, advanced to greet her with open arms and said, with tears in his voice,

'Ah! dear heart!'

He bent down to kiss her, but at the touch of his lips, the memory of her lover took hold of her, and she passed her hand over her face with a shudder. Nevertheless, she managed to say,

'Yes, I know.... I know....'

He showed her the letter in which his mother told him the news without any sort of sentimental hypocrisy. Her chief regret was that her husband had not received the consolations of religion. He had died at Doudeville, in the street, on the doorstep of a cafe, after an ex-officers' regimental dinner.

Emma handed him back the letter. At dinner, for the sake of appearances, she pretended to have no appetite, but as he pressed her, she forced herself to eat, while Charles sat facing her in a posture of motionless depression. Every now and then he would raise his head and look at her with an expression of abject distress. Once he sighed 'I wish I could have seen him again!' She made no answer. Then, realizing that some sort of observation was required of her, she said,

'What age was your father?'

'Fifty-eight.'

'Ah!'

And that was all.

A quarter of an hour afterwards he added,

'Poor mother!... What will become of her now?'

She made a gesture of ignorance.

Charles ascribed her taciturnity to grief, and constrained himself to silence for fear of adding to her sorrow. However, making a determined effort to throw off his own, he said,

'Did you have a good time yesterday?'

'Yes.'

When the table was cleared Bovary still sat on. So did Emma. And as she continued to look at him, the monotony of the sight gradually banished every sensation of pity from her heart. He seemed a weak, feeble thing, a poor specimen of a man in every way. How was she to get rid of him? The evening would be endless! Something stupefying, like the fumes of opium, seemed to be deadening her senses.

Out in the hall they heard the noise of someone stumping along on the floor. It was Hippolyte bringing in Madame's luggage. To put down his load he was obliged to describe a wide curve with his wooden leg.

'He doesn't think any more about it now,' she thought, as she looked at the poor devil, with his red hair dripping with sweat.

Bovary fished a florin out of his purse, and without appearing in the least conscious of the humiliation implied by the mere presence of the man, who was a sort of personified condemnation of his incurable ineptitude, he remarked on Leon's violets, which were on the chimney-piece.

'I say, that's a nice bunch of flowers you've got there!'

'Yes,' she answered carelessly, 'I bought them from a woman in the street.'

Charles took the violets and, feasting his eyes upon them- eyes all red with tears- he sniffed them delicately. She snatched them quickly away and went to put them in water.

Next day Madame Bovary, senior, arrived. She and her son did a great deal of weeping. Emma said she had a lot of things to order and went out.

The day after there was the mourning to be seen to. They took their work-boxes and went and settled themselves in the arbour by the water.

Charles thought of his father, and he was astonished at feeling so much affection for him. He never imagined he had any great love for him. Madame Bovary, senior, thought of her husband. It was all over now. And even the worst of those days which she could never now recall seemed enviable. Everything else was swallowed up in regret at breaking with such a long-lived habit; and from time to time, as she plied her needle, a big tear would trickle down her nose and hang suspended at the tip. Emma reflected that hardly forty-eight hours since, they were together, with the world shut out, drowned in the very ecstasy of love, not having eyes enough to gaze at each other withal. She tried to recapture the tiniest details of that vanished day of bliss. But the presence of her husband and her mother-in-law fidgeted her. She would have liked to hear and see nothing, so as not to lose a grain of that remembered delight which, do what she would, was being worn away by the attrition of external sensations.

She was unstitching the lining of a dress, and the pieces were lying scattered all around her. Madame Bovary, senior, plied her scissors without lifting her eyes from her work, and Charles, with his raffia slippers and his old brown overcoat, which he wore as a dressing-gown, was sitting with his hands in his pockets, silent like the others. Hard by, little Berthe, in her white pinafore, was scraping away with her spade at the gravel on the paths.

All at once they saw Monsieur Lheureux, the haberdasher, coming through the garden gate.

He had heard of the sad event, and had come to offer his services. Emma replied that she believed that they would be able to dispense with them. But the merchant would not be beaten.

'A thousand pardons!' he said. 'But might I have a word in private?' adding, in a low voice, 'it's about that matter, er... you know!'

Charles blushed to the roots of his hair as he answered,

'Ah, yes... quite so! Darling... do you think...?' he stammered, turning to his wife in his perturbation.

She seemed to understand, for she got up.

'It's nothing!' said Charles to his mother. 'Merely some little household matter.'

He was particularly anxious to avoid telling her about the bill of sale, being terrified at what she would say.

As soon as they were alone Monsieur Lheureux began in pretty plain terms to congratulate Emma on the money they were coming into. He then went on to talk about ordinary things, such as the fruit-trees, the harvest, his own health, which was never anything but middling. The fact was he worked like an army of niggers, and even then, no matter what people said to the contrary, he didn't make enough to keep himself in bread and butter.

Emma let him ramble on. She had been so hideously bored these last two days.

'So now you're quite yourself again,' he continued. 'My word, I've seen your poor husband in a nice state of mind about you! He's a downright good 'un, he is; although we've had some little misunderstandings.'

She asked what they were, for Charles had never told her of the dispute about the accounts.

'But you know!' said Lheureux. 'Those things you wanted so specially- the travelling trunks.'

He had pulled his hat down over his eyes, and with his hands clasped behind his back he stood there, smiling and whistling softly, staring her full in the face in an insufferable manner. Did he suspect anything? She stood lost in all kinds of terrifying conjectures. At last he continued.

'However, we patched it up, and I was coming to make proposals for a further arrangement.' That was a renewal of the bill signed by Bovary. 'Monsieur wouldn't have his hands tied; it wouldn't do for him to worry himself too much, especially now that he had so many bothers in front of him. And wouldn't it be better,' he went on, 'to shift the whole thing on to someone else's shoulders- yours, for example? A Power of Attorney- the thing would be quite simple. Then you and I could settle all these little things between us.'

She didn't understand. She said nothing.

Then, touching on his shop, he said there were some things there Madame couldn't possibly do without. He would send her across a dozen yards of black barege for a dress.

'The one you have on is good enough for the house; but you want another for visiting. I saw that at a glance, when I came in. Oh, I have got an eye like a hawk, I have!'

He did not send the stuff; he brought it. Then he came back for the measurements. He came on other pretexts as well, doing his utmost to oblige, to be of use, to ingratiate himself, and never failing to let fall a hint or two about the Power of Attorney. He never mentioned the bill; and she never let it enter her head. Charles certainly did say something about it when she was beginning to get better, but she had so many things to worry her at the time that she thought no more about it. Moreover, she purposely avoided opening up any sort of discussion. This rather surprised Madame Bovary, who ascribed her altered attitude to the religious notions she had acquired during her illness.

But no sooner had she taken her departure than Emma began to exhibit a practical aptitude for business that made Bovary rub his eyes in amazement. Things would have to be gone into. The mortgages should be verified in order to find out exactly how matters stood. She used a number of technical terms, spoke imposingly about order, the future, foresight, and never missed a chance of exaggerating the intricacies of the probate, till at last she put before him one day a form for a general Power of Attorney, empowering the grantee 'to carry on and administer his affairs, effect loans, sign and endorse all bills and make all payments,' etc., etc. She had profited well by Lheureux's lessons.

Charles- good, simple man- asked her where the form came from.

'From Monsieur Guillaumin.'

Then, with the greatest assurance in the world, she added,

'But I wouldn't trust him farther than I could see him. These notaries are usually such a lot of sharks. Perhaps we ought to consult... Let me see... no, there's no one!'

'What about Leon?' said Charles, thinking hard.

But it was difficult to explain matters by letter. She offered to go over to Rouen and put it before him. He wouldn't hear of troubling her. She insisted. It was a duel of kindness. Finally, putting on a little mock rebellious air, she cried,

'Now, not another word, please! I am 'going!''

'How kind you are!' said he, kissing her on the forehead.

The very next morning she was off to Rouen in the 'Hirondelle', to consult Monsieur Leon. She stopped three days.

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