Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (e book reader online .txt) 📕

ecstasy of heroism, that made her almost joyous, she ran down the hill, crossed the cow-plank, the foot-path, the alley, the market, and reached the chemist’s shop. She was about to enter, but at the sound of the bell someone might come, and slipping in by the gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she went as far as the door of the kitchen, where a candle stuck on the stove was burning. Justin in his shirt-sleeves was carrying out a dish.

“Ah! they are dining; I will wait.”

He returned; she tapped at the window. He went out.

“The key! the one for upstairs where he keeps the—”

“What?”

And he looked at her, astonished at the pallor of her face, that stood out white against the black background of the night. She seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful and majestic as a phantom. Without understanding what she wanted, he had the presentiment of something terrible.

But she went on quickly in a love voice; in a sweet, melting voice, “I want it; give it to me.”

As the partition wall was thin, they could hear the clatter of the forks on the plates in the dining-room.

She pretended that she wanted to kill the rats that kept her from sleeping.

“I must tell master.”

“No, stay!” Then with an indifferent air, “Oh, it’s not worth while; I’ll tell him presently. Come, light me upstairs.”

She entered the corridor into which the laboratory door opened. Against the wall was a key labelled Capharnaum.

“Justin!” called the druggist impatiently.

“Let us go up.”

And he followed her. The key turned in the lock, and she went straight to the third shelf, so well did her memory guide her, seized the blue jar, tore out the cork, plunged in her hand, and withdrawing it full of a white powder, she began eating it.

“Stop!” he cried, rushing at her.

“Hush! someone will come.”

He was in despair, was calling out.

“Say nothing, or all the blame will fall on your master.”

Then she went home, suddenly calmed, and with something of the serenity of one that had performed a duty.

When Charles, distracted by the news of the distraint, returned home, Emma had just gone out. He cried aloud, wept, fainted, but she did not return. Where could she be? He sent Felicite to Homais, to Monsieur Tuvache, to Lheureux, to the “Lion d’Or,” everywhere, and in the intervals of his agony he saw his reputation destroyed, their fortune lost, Berthe’s future ruined. By what?—Not a word! He waited till six in the evening. At last, unable to bear it any longer, and fancying she had gone to Rouen, he set out along the highroad, walked a mile, met no one, again waited, and returned home. She had come back.

“What was the matter? Why? Explain to me.”

She sat down at her writing-table and wrote a letter, which she sealed slowly, adding the date and the hour. Then she said in a solemn tone:

“You are to read it tomorrow; till then, I pray you, do not ask me a single question. No, not one!”

“But—”

“Oh, leave me!”

She lay down full length on her bed. A bitter taste that she felt in her mouth awakened her. She saw Charles, and again closed her eyes.

She was studying herself curiously, to see if she were not suffering. But no! nothing as yet. She heard the ticking of the clock, the crackling of the fire, and Charles breathing as he stood upright by her bed.

“Ahl it is but a little thing, death!” she thought. “I shall fall asleep and all will be over.”

She drank a mouthful of water and turned to the wall. The frightful taste of ink continued.

“I am thirsty; oh! so thirsty,” she sighed.

“What is it?” said Charles, who was handing her a glass.

“It is nothing! Open the window; I am choking.”

She was seized with a sickness so sudden that she had hardly time to draw out her handkerchief from under the pillow.

“Take it away,” she said quickly; “throw it away.”

He spoke to her; she did not answer. She lay motionless, afraid that the slightest movement might make her vomit. But she felt an icy cold creeping from her feet to her heart.

“Ah! it is beginning,” she murmured.

“What did you say?”

She turned her head from side to side with a gentle movement full of agony, while constantly opening her mouth as if something very heavy were weighing upon her tongue. At eight o’clock the vomiting began again.

Charles noticed that at the bottom of the basin there was a sort of white sediment sticking to the sides of the porcelain.

“This is extraordinary—very singular,” he repeated.

But she said in a firm voice, “No, you are mistaken.”

Then gently, and almost as caressing her, he passed his hand over her stomach. She uttered a sharp cry. He fell back terror-stricken.

Then she began to groan, faintly at first. Her shoulders were shaken by a strong shuddering, and she was growing paler than the sheets in which her clenched fingers buried themselves. Her unequal pulse was now almost imperceptible.

Drops of sweat oozed from her bluish face, that seemed as if rigid in the exhalations of a metallic vapour. Her teeth chattered, her dilated eyes looked vaguely about her, and to all questions she replied only with a shake of the head; she even smiled once or twice. Gradually, her moaning grew louder; a hollow shriek burst from her; she pretended she was better and that she would get up presently. But she was seized with convulsions and cried out—

“Ah! my God! It is horrible!”

He threw himself on his knees by her bed.

“Tell me! what have you eaten? Answer, for heaven’s sake!”

And he looked at her with a tenderness in his eyes such as she had never seen.

“Well, there—there!” she said in a faint voice. He flew to the writing-table, tore open the seal, and read aloud: “Accuse no one.” He stopped, passed his hands across his eyes, and read it over again.

“What! help—help!”

He could only keep repeating the word: “Poisoned! poisoned!” Felicite ran to Homais, who proclaimed it in the market-place; Madame Lefrancois heard it at the “Lion d’Or”; some got up to go and tell their neighbours, and all night the village was on the alert.

Distraught, faltering, reeling, Charles wandered about the room. He knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist had never believed that there could be so terrible a sight.

He went home to write to Monsieur Canivet and to Doctor Lariviere. He lost his head, and made more than fifteen rough copies. Hippolyte went to Neufchatel, and Justin so spurred Bovary’s horse that he left it foundered and three parts dead by the hill at Bois-Guillaume.

Charles tried to look up his medical dictionary, but could not read it; the lines were dancing.

“Be calm,” said the druggist; “we have only to administer a powerful antidote. What is the poison?”

Charles showed him the letter. It was arsenic.

“Very well,” said Homais, “we must make an analysis.”

For he knew that in cases of poisoning an analysis must be made; and the other, who did not understand, answered—

“Oh, do anything! save her!”

Then going back to her, he sank upon the carpet, and lay there with his head leaning against the edge of her bed, sobbing.

“Don’t cry,” she said to him. “Soon I shall not trouble you any more.”

“Why was it? Who drove you to it?”

She replied. “It had to be, my dear!”

“Weren’t you happy? Is it my fault? I did all I could!”

“Yes, that is true—you are good—you.”

And she passed her hand slowly over his hair. The sweetness of this sensation deepened his sadness; he felt his whole being dissolving in despair at the thought that he must lose her, just when she was confessing more love for him than ever. And he could think of nothing; he did not know, he did not dare; the urgent need for some immediate resolution gave the finishing stroke to the turmoil of his mind.

So she had done, she thought, with all the treachery; and meanness, and numberless desires that had tortured her. She hated no one now; a twilight dimness was settling upon her thoughts, and, of all earthly noises, Emma heard none but the intermittent lamentations of this poor heart, sweet and indistinct like the echo of a symphony dying away.

“Bring me the child,” she said, raising herself on her elbow.

“You are not worse, are you?” asked Charles.

“No, no!”

The child, serious, and still half-asleep, was carried in on the servant’s arm in her long white nightgown, from which her bare feet peeped out. She looked wonderingly at the disordered room, and half-closed her eyes, dazzled by the candles burning on the table. They reminded her, no doubt, of the morning of New Year’s day and MidLent, when thus awakened early by candle-light she came to her mother’s bed to fetch her presents, for she began saying—

“But where is it, mamma?” And as everybody was silent, “But I can’t see my little stocking.”

Felicite held her over the bed while she still kept looking towards the mantelpiece.

“Has nurse taken it?” she asked.

And at this name, that carried her back to the memory of her adulteries and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned away her head, as at the loathing of another bitterer poison that rose to her mouth. But Berthe remained perched on the bed.

“Oh, how big your eyes are, mamma! How pale you are! how hot you are!”

Her mother looked at her. “I am frightened!” cried the child, recoiling.

Emma took her hand to kiss it; the child struggled.

“That will do. Take her away,” cried Charles, who was sobbing in the alcove.

Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed less agitated; and at every insignificant word, at every respiration a little more easy, he regained hope. At last, when Canivet came in, he threw himself into his arms.

“Ah! it is you. Thanks! You are good! But she is better. See! look at her.”

His colleague was by no means of this opinion, and, as he said of himself, “never beating about the bush,” he prescribed, an emetic in order to empty the stomach completely.

She soon began vomiting blood. Her lips became drawn. Her limbs were convulsed, her whole body covered with brown spots, and her pulse slipped beneath the fingers like a stretched thread, like a harp-string nearly breaking.

After this she began to scream horribly. She cursed the poison, railed at it, and implored it to be quick, and thrust away with her stiffened arms everything that Charles, in more agony than herself, tried to make her drink. He stood up, his handkerchief to his lips, with a rattling sound in his throat, weeping, and choked by sobs that shook his whole body. Felicite was running hither and thither in the room. Homais, motionless, uttered great sighs; and Monsieur Canivet, always retaining his self-command, nevertheless began to feel uneasy.

“The devil! yet she has been purged, and from the moment that the cause ceases—”

“The effect must cease,” said Homais, “that is evident.”

“Oh, save her!” cried Bovary.

And, without listening to the chemist, who was still venturing the hypothesis, “It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm,” Canivet was about to administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of a whip; all the windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three horses abreast, up to their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round the corner of the market. It was Doctor Lariviere.

The apparition of a god would not have caused more commotion. Bovary raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Homais pulled off his skullcap long