Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert trans Lydia Davis

Author:Gustave Flaubert trans Lydia Davis [Davis, Gustave Flaubert trans Lydia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141966854
Publisher: Penguin Adult
Published: 2009-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

[12]

Their love had been reawakened. Often, Emma would even write to him suddenly in the middle of the day; then, through the windowpane, she would signal to Justin, who, quickly untying his apron, would fly off to La Huchette. Rodolphe would come; what she wanted to tell him was that she was bored, that her husband was hateful and her life hideous!

“How can I do anything about it?” he exclaimed one day, impatient.

“Oh! If you wanted to! …”

She was sitting on the ground, between his knees, her hair loosened, her gaze absent.

“Well, what?” said Rodolphe.

She sighed.

“We could go live somewhere else … somewhere …”

“You’re really mad!” he said, laughing. “Did you really say that?”

She returned to the idea; he seemed not to understand, and changed the direction of the conversation.

What he did not understand was all this disturbance over such a simple thing as love. She had a motive, a reason, a sort of auxiliary force strengthening her passion for him.

This affection, indeed, grew each day with her aversion for her husband. The more fully she gave herself to the one, the more she despised the other; Charles had never appeared to her so unpleasant, with such square fingers, such clumsy wit, such common manners, as when they happened to be together after her meetings with Rodolphe. Then, even as she played at being the wife and virtuous woman, she would become inflamed at the thought of that head with its black hair turning in a curl over the suntanned forehead, of that body at once so robust and so elegant, of that man so experienced in his judgment, so passionate in his desire! It was for him that she would file her nails with the care of an engraver, and that there was never enough cold cream on her skin, nor patchouli on her handkerchiefs. She would load herself with bracelets, rings, necklaces. When he was coming, she would fill her two large blue glass vases with roses, and arrange her room and herself like a courtesan waiting for a prince. The maid had to launder her linens constantly; and so all day long, Félicité would not move from the kitchen, where young Justin, who often kept her company, would watch her as she worked.

His elbow on the long board where she was ironing, he would stare avidly at all these women’s things spread out around him: the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawstring pantalets, vast at the hips and narrowing lower down.

“What’s this for?” the boy would ask, running his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes.

“Have you never seen a thing?” Félicité would answer, laughing; “as if your own mistress, Madame Homais, don’t wear just the same sort.”

“Well, yes! Madame Homais!”

And he would add in a meditative tone:

“Is she a lady like Madame?”

But Félicité would lose patience when he hovered around her like this. She was six years older, and Théodore, Monsieur Guillaumin’s servant, was beginning to court her.

“Leave me in peace!” she would say, moving her jar of starch.

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