Gustave Flaubert - Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary, Salammbô & Sentimental Education (3 Books in One Edition)

Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation. “I should like to speak to you,” he had whispered in the clerk’s ear, who went upstairs in front of him.

“Can he suspect anything?” Leon asked himself. His heart beat, and he racked his brain with surmises.

At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotypes. It was a sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention — his portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to know “how much it would be.” The inquiries would not put Monsieur Leon out, since he went to town almost every week.

Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some “young man’s affair” at the bottom of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Leon was after no love-making. He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of food he left on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector. Binet answered roughly that he “wasn’t paid by the police.”

All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Leon often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms. Complained vaguely of life.

“It’s because you don’t take enough recreation,” said the collector.

“What recreation?”

“If I were you I’d have a lathe.”

“But I don’t know how to turn,” answered the clerk.

“Ah! that’s true,” said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction.

Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him.

This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. As he was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? What prevented him? And he began making home-preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand. He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an artist’s life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death’s head on the guitar above them.

The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed more reasonable. Even his employer advised him to go to some other chambers where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a middle course, then, Leon looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately. She consented.

He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes, valises, parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville; and when Leon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three arm-chairs restuffed, bought a stock of neckties, in a word, had made more preparations than for a voyage around the world, he put it off from week to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation.

When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Homais wept, Justin sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend’s overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary, who was taking Leon to Rouen in his carriage.

The latter had just time to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary.

When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he was so out of breath. As he came in, Madame Bovary arose hurriedly.

“It is I again!” said Leon.

“I was sure of it!”

She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot.

“The doctor is not here?” he went on.

“He is out.” She repeated, “He is out.”

Then there was silence. They looked at one another and their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two throbbing breasts.

“I should like to kiss Berthe,” said Leon.

Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite.

He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. But she returned, and the servant brought Berthe, who was swinging a windmill roof downwards at the end of a string. Leon kissed her several times on the neck.

“Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!” And he gave her back to her mother.

“Take her away,” she said.

They remained alone — Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face pressed against a window-pane; Leon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly against his thigh.

“It is going to rain,” said Emma.

“I have a cloak,” he answered.

“Ah!”

She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward.

The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the eyebrows, without one’s being able to guess what Emma was seeing on the horizon or what she was thinking within herself.

“Well, good-bye,” he sighed.

She raised her head with a quick movement.

“Yes, good-bye — go!”

They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.

“In the English fashion, then,” she said, giving her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh.

Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared.

When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Leon set off running.

From afar he saw his employer’s gig in the road, and by it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were talking. They were waiting for him.

“Embrace me,” said the druggist with tears in his eyes. “Here is your coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after yourself.”

“Come, Leon, jump in,” said the notary.

Homais bend over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs uttered these three sad words —

“A pleasant journey!”

“Good-night,” said Monsieur Guillaumin. “Give him his head.” They set out, and Homais went back.