by Gustave Flaubert
(1821-1880)
Dedication | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
Chapter 1
The uncouth schoolboy; The Bovary household; A mother's ambitions; Studies with the cure; Training for medicine; Student life in Rouen; Failure and success; A Practice in Normandy; The bailiff's widow; The first Madame Bovary.
We were in the prep.-room when the Head came in, followed by a new boy in 'mufti' and a beadle carrying a big desk. The sleepers aroused themselves, and we all stood up, putting on a startled look, as if we had been buried in our work.
The Head motioned to us to sit down.
'Monsieur Roger,' said he in a quiet tone to the prep. master, 'I've brought you a new boy. He's going into the second. If his conduct and progress are satisfactory, he will be put up with the boys of his own age.'
The new boy had kept in the background, in the corner behind the door, almost out of sight. He was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was clipped straight across the forehead, like a village choir-boy's. He seemed a decent fellow enough, but horribly nervous. Although he was not broad across the shoulders, his green cloth jacket, with its black buttons, looked as if it pinched him under the arms. Protruding well beyond the cuffs, he displayed a pair of raw, bony wrists, obviously not unaccustomed to exposure. His legs, encased in blue stockings, issued from a pair of drab-coloured breeches, very tightly braced. He had on a pair of thick clumsy shoes, not particularly well cleaned and plentifully fortified with nails.
The master began to hear the boys their work. The newcomer listened with all his ears, drinking it in as attentively as if he had been in church, not daring to cross his legs or to lean his elbows on the desk, and when two o'clock came and the bell rang for dismissal, the master had to call him back to earth and tell him to line up with the rest of us.
It was our custom, when we came in to class, to throw our caps on the floor, in order to have our hands free. As soon as ever we got inside the door, we 'buzzed' them under the form, against the wall, so as to kick up plenty of dust. That was supposed to be 'the thing'. Whether he failed to notice this manoeuvre or whether he was too shy to join in it, it is impossible to say, but when prayers were over he was still nursing his cap. That cap belonged to the composite order of head-gear, and in it the heterogeneous characteristics of the busby, the Polish shapska, the bowler, the otterskin toque and the cotton nightcap were simultaneously represented. It was, in short, one of those pathetic objects whose mute unloveliness conveys the infinitely wistful expression we may sometimes note on the face of an idiot. Ovoid in form and stiffened with whalebone, it began with a sort of triple line of sausage-shaped rolls running all round its circumference; next, separated by a red band, came alternate patches of velvet and rabbit-skin; then a kind of bag or sack which culminated in a stiffened polygon elaborately embroidered, whence, at the end of a long, thin cord, hung a ball made out of gold wire, by way of a tassel. The cap was brand new, and the peak of it all shiny.
'Stand up,' said the master.
He stood up; and down went his cap. The whole class began to laugh.
He bent down to recover it. One of the boys next him jogged him with his elbow and knocked it down again. Again he stooped to pick it up.
'You may discard your helmet,' said the master, who had a pretty wit.
A shout of laughter from the rest of the class quite put the poor fellow out of countenance, and so flustered was he that he didn't know whether to keep it in his hand, put it on the floor or stick it on his head. He sat down, and deposited it on his knees.
'Stand up,' said the master again, 'and tell me your name.'
In mumbling tones the new boy stammered out something quite unintelligible.
'Again!'
Again came the inarticulate mumble, drowned by the shouts of the class.
'Louder!' rapped out the master sharply; 'speak up!'
Whereupon the boy, in desperation, opened his jaws as wide as they would go and, with the full force of his lungs, as though he were hailing somebody at a distance, fired off the word: 'Charbovari'.
In an instant the class was in an uproar. The din grew louder and louder, a ceaseless 'crescendo' crested with piercing yells- they shrieked, they howled, they stamped their feet, bellowing at the top of their voices: 'Charbovari! Charbovari!' Then, after a while, the storm began to subside. There would be sporadic outbreaks from time to time, smothered by a terrific effort, or perhaps a titter would fizz along a whole row, or a stifled explosion sputter out here and there, like a half-extinguished fuse.
However, beneath a hail of 'impots', order was gradually restored. The master- who had had it dictated, spelled out and read over to him- had at length succeeded in getting hold of the name of Charles Bovary, and forthwith he ordered the hapless wretch to go and sit on the dunce's stool, immediately below the seat of authority. He started to obey, stopped short and stood hesitating.
'What are you looking for?' said the master.
'My ca-' began the new boy timidly, casting an anxious glance around him.
An angry shout of 'Five hundred lines for the whole class,' checked, like the 'Quos ego', a fresh outburst. 'Stop your noise, then, will you?' continued the master indignantly, mopping his brow with a handkerchief which he had produced from the interior of his cap. 'And you, new boy there, just copy out twenty times the words 'ridiculus sum!''
'There,' he went on in a milder tone, 'you'll get your cap back all right; no one has stolen it.'
Calm reigned once more, and again the heads were bent over their books. For two hours the new boy maintained an exemplary attitude, despite that, every now and again, a paper pellet flicked from the point of a pen would flatten itself against his cheek. He just wiped the place with his hand, sitting stock-still, his eyes riveted to the ground.
At night, in the schoolroom, he took his cuff-protectors out of his desk, put his belongings in order, and ruled up his paper with meticulous exactitude. We watched him pursuing his conscientious task, looking up every word in the dictionary and taking tremendous pains. He doubtless owed it to this anxiety to get on that he was not put down into a lower class; for, although he knew his grammar fairly well, his composition was not exactly a model of elegance. It was the village 'cure' who had started him in Latin, his parents, to save expense, having put off sending him to school till the last possible moment.
His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartholome Bovary, ex-deputy-surgeon-major, who, somewhere about the year 1812, had been mixed up in some more or less shady conscription affair which had involved his resignation from the service, did, at this crisis in his fate, make such good use of his personal attractions as to net a dowry of sixty thousand francs, and with it a haberdasher's daughter, who had fallen in love with his manly bearing. A fine figure of a man, a braggart and a bully, with mustachios that made common cause with his side-whiskers, fingers laden with rings, and clothes you could see a mile off, he combined the dash of the military man with the insinuating aplomb of the commercial traveller. Once safely married, he lived for two or three years on his wife's money, feeding like a fighting-cock, lying in bed till noon, smoking great porcelain pipes, never coming home till the theatres closed, a great frequenter of cafes. His father-in-law died, leaving but little behind him, whereat he waxed indignant, started a cloth workers' business, dropped a good deal of money and finally retired into the country resolved to show them a thing or two in farming. But as he knew as much about agriculture as he did about textiles, rode his horses instead of working them, drank his cider instead of selling it, ate the fattest chicken in his yard and greased his shooting-boots with his own prime bacon-fat, it was soon borne in upon him that he might as well dismiss the idea of making a fortune. At this juncture he came across a place on the borders of Caux and Picardy, a sort of half-farm, half-villa, which was to be had for two hundred francs a year. He took it, and there, a disgruntled, disappointed man, cursing his luck, at daggers drawn with the world, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five, disgusted, as he said, with his fellow men and determined to live to himself.
Time was when his wife had doted on him. The slavishness of her adoration had but served to complete his estrangement from her. Once cheerful kind-hearted and wholly affectionate, she became, as she grew older (as wine left uncorked will turn into vinegar), morose, shrewish, and irritable. It had given her a lot of pain, though, for a time, she bore it uncomplainingly, when she saw him running after all the drabs of the village and coming home night after night, blear-eyed and smelling of drink. Finally her pride revolted. She ceased to upbraid, smothering her rage in a stoical silence which she maintained to the end of her days. She was always on her feet, always busy, hurrying off to see the lawyers or to interview the chairman of the bench, knew exactly when the bills fell due and got them renewed. Indoors she was for ever at work, ironing, sewing, washing, keeping an eye on the men, paying them their wages, while her lord and master, blissfully regardless of everything and perpetually plunged in a sort of ill-humoured torpor from which he only roused himself to give her the rough side of his tongue, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into the grate.
When she had a child, it must needs be put out to nurse, and when the time came for it to be restored to the parental roof, the brat was doted upon as if he had been a prince. His mother fed him on sweets; his father let him run about without shoes or stockings, saying, to show what a philosopher he was, that it would be a good thing to let him go naked, as the animals did their offspring. In contrast to the mother's ideas, he entertained certain manly notions regarding the upbringing of children. He believed in hardening them off, like the Spartans, so as to make them tough and wiry. He made his son undress in the cold, taught him to drink neat rum and to jeer at church processions. But the child, being a harmless little urchin, made no great progress in these truculent accomplishments. His mother always kept him tied up to her apron-strings; she cut out scraps for him, told him stories, and made up countless tales full of wistful gaiety and playful prattle. She sought solace for the loneliness of her life by lavishing on her child all her own shattered and forsaken ambitions. She dreamed of making a celebrity of him. She pictured him a tall, handsome, clever man, high up in the Civil Service or holding an important magisterial position. She taught him to read, and even made him sing- while she accompanied him on her own old, worn-out piano- one or two little drawing-room ballads. But this sort of thing Monsieur Bovary, who held culture in small esteem, pronounced so much waste of time. How were they ever going to afford to educate him for a Government job, buy him a practice or set him up in business? But there! a man could always make his way in the world, if he had cheek enough. Madame Bovary bit her lip, and the child was allowed to run wild about the village.
He went about with the farm labourers, scared the rooks by heaving clods at them, searched the hedges for blackberries, kept the turkeys in order with a switch, help ed in the hay-field, roamed about the woods, played hop-scotch in the church porch on rainy days, and on Saints' days coaxed the beadle into letting him ring the bells so that he might hang on bodily to the big rope and feel himself borne up with it as it rose aloft. And he grew up as sturdy as a young oak tree, developing big hands and ruddy cheeks.
When he reached the age of twelve his mother managed to arrange for him to begin his studies. The 'cure' was pressed into the service. But the lessons were so short and so disconnected that they could not be productive of much good. They were given at odd moments, in the sacristy, standing up, hugger-mugger, between a christening and a funeral, or the 'cure' would send for his pupil to come to him after the Angelus, whenever he was not obliged to go out. He would go up into the priest's room, and they would settle themselves down to work. The gnats and the moths would go flitting in and out of the candle flame. Perhaps it would be hot and the child would grow sleepy, and before long the old man, dropping off into a doze with his hands folded over his stomach, would be snoring steadily, with his mouth wide open. At other times, when his reverence, returning home after giving the sacraments to some sick parishioner, saw Charles helter-skeltering about the woods and fields, he would call him, lecture him for a quarter of an hour, and seize the opportunity of making him conjugate 'his verb' at the foot of a tree. Then, perhaps, it would begin to rain, or someone they knew would come along, and lessons would be over for that day. Howbeit, the 'cure' always had a good word for his pupil, and even went the length of saying that the 'young man' had a remarkable memory.
But things couldn't go on like that. Madame bestirred herself, and Monsieur was shamed, or more probably wearied, into capitulating. All the same they decided to wait another year, till the youngster had made his first communion.
After that, yet another six months went by; but the following year Charles was definitely entered at the College at Rouen, whither his father took him in person towards the end of October, about the time when Saint Romain's Fair was on.
It would be impossible for any of us to recall exactly what he was like in those days. He was of the 'middling' kind; he played during recreation, stuck at his homework, paid attention in class, slept soundly in the dormitory, and ate well in the refectory. He was under the tutelage of a wholesale ironmonger in the Rue de la Ganterie, who had him out once a month, of a Sunday, after he had shut up shop. He would send him down to the harbour to look at the shipping and get him back to the College again by seven, in good time for supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother in red ink, and stuck it down with three seals. Then he rubbed up his history notes, or read some 'Anacharsis', a volume of which was kicking about in the schoolroom. When we went out walking he used to talk to the servant, who, like him, came from the country.
By dint of diligent plodding, he always managed to keep about the middle of the class. Once, indeed, he scored a proxime accessit in Natural History. But when he had done his third year his people took him away from the College, so that he might devote himself to his medical studies, for they were convinced he could get his 'prelim.' without any special coaching.
His mother got him a room on the fourth floor of a house overlooking the Eau de Robec, the owner of which, a dyer by trade, she happened to know. She made arrangements for his board, got together some odds and ends of furniture, a table and a couple of chairs or so, sent him an old cherry-wood bedstead from home, and bought a little cast-iron stove and plenty of wood, to keep her poor boy warm. Then, when the week was up, she took her departure, having begged and prayed him over and over again to behave himself and go straight, now that she would no longer be there to look after him.
The Syllabus of Lectures which he read on the notice-board put his head in a whirl. There were lectures on Anatomy, lectures on Pathology, lectures on Physiology, lectures on Dispensing, on Chemistry, Botany, Clinics and Therapeutics, to say nothing of Hygiene and 'Materia Medica', names of whose etymology he was completely ignorant and which seemed to him like so many mysterious portals leading to sanctuaries peopled with august shadows.
He could make nothing of it. He listened as hard as he could, but he couldn't get hold of it at all. However, he persevered, had notebooks specially bound, attended every lecture, never missed a demonstration. He got through his little daily task like a mill horse that plods round and round in the same place with his eyes blindfolded, never knowing in the least what it is he is grinding at.
To save expense, his mother sent him every week, by the carrier, a piece of baked veal, off which he would make his lunch of a morning when he got back from the hospital. Then away he would rush to work, to the operating theatre or the infirmary, and then back home again through all the maze of streets. Of an evening, after a modest dinner with his landlord, he would go up to his room and set to work again in his damp clothes, which would steam on his body as he sat close up to the little glowing stove.
Of a fine summer evening, when the warm streets are deserted and the servant-girls play battledore and shuttlecock outside the houses, he would open his window and sit gazing out with his head on his hand. The river, which makes this part of Rouen look like a little workaday Venice, flowed on beneath him, yellow, violet or blue, between its bridges and its barriers. He would watch the workmen stooping down at the water's edge and letting the current flow over their arms. On poles on the warehouse roofs, skeins of cotton hung drying in the air. In front of him, beyond the housetops, was a great expanse of clear sky, with the red sun sinking slowly to its rest. How good it must be out yonder! How cool in the shadows of the beechwoods. And then he dilated his nostrils to breathe in the fragrant scents of the country which died away before they reached him.
He lost flesh, grew tall and lanky, and his face took on a sort of wistful look that made it almost interesting.
It was natural that from mere heedlessness he should sooner or later discard all the good resolutions he had taken upon himself. One day he missed going round the ward, the day after, his lecture, and, gradually acquiring a taste for doing nothing, he ended by not turning up at all.
He became a habitue of the cabaret, and a domino enthusiast. To go and shut himself up, night after night, in a dingy public room and rattle about little black-spotted bone cubes on a marble-topped table, seemed to him a precious symbol of freedom and raised him in his own esteem.
It was something like an initiation into the social world, a taste of forbidden fruit. And as he put his hand on the door-knob to go in, he experienced an almost voluptuous pleasure. And thus many things which had been repressed within him began to expand and blossom forth. He learnt by heart some popular songs, with which he would greet his boon companions, went mad over Beranger, acquired the secret of making punch, and at length became acquainted with the mysteries of Love.
As a result of these preparatory activities, he failed completely in his examination. His parents were expecting him home that same night to celebrate his success.
He set off on foot and halted at the entrance to the village, where he sent for his mother and made a clean breast of it. She made excuses for him; said it wasn't his fault, the examiners had treated him unfairly. She managed to put a little heart into him and said she would make matters all right at home. Not until five years later did Monsieur Bovary learn the truth. It was ancient history by that time, and he took it calmly. Besides he could not bring himself to believe that any child of his could be lacking in brains.
Charles got down to work again. This time he permitted himself no interruptions and, having ground up all his answers by heart, he got through- and pretty creditably. What a red-letter day for his mother! They gave a big dinner.
And now where was he to practise? At Tostes, because at Tostes there was only one doctor, and he a very old man. For a long time past Madame Bovary had been waiting for him to die, and now, before the old fellow had packed up his traps for the next world, Charles came and set up opposite, as his accredited successor.
But rearing her son, making a doctor of him and setting him up in practice at Tostes was not the whole of the business. He must have a wife. She found him one, the forty-five-year-old widow of a Dieppe bailiff, with an income of twelve hundred a year.
Though she was plain, as dry as a chip and as spotty as a fig-pudding, Madame Dubuc was decidedly not lacking in suitors. In order to gain her end, Madame Bovary was obliged to oust them all, and she displayed especial skill in checkmating the manoeuvres of a pork-butcher rival who was strongly backed by the clergy.
Charles looked on matrimony as a means of bettering his lot; he thought it would give him a free hand to do as he liked, and spend his money as he thought fit. He was wrong. His wife wore the breeches. She told him what to say, and what not to say, in company. She made him keep the Friday abstinence, wear the clothes she approved of, and worry the patients when they did not pay up. She opened his letters, watched his movements and, when he had any women patients in the surgery, she would listen, through the partition, to all that went on. Every morning she must have her cup of chocolate, and be waited on hand and foot. She was always complaining about her nerves, her chest and her spirits. The sound of footsteps made her feel ill. If they left her alone, the solitude was hateful; if they came back, it was doubtless to see the last of her. At night, when Charles came in, she drew her long bony arms from under the bedclothes, put them round his neck and, making him sit down on the edge of the bed, began to tell him all her troubles;- he was beginning to forget about her, he loved someone else. Yes, they had told her she was fated to be unhappy; and she ended by asking him for something to make her better, and for a little more love.
