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507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/27.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_27_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 27 | chapter 27 | null | {"name": "Chapter 27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter27", "summary": "Book Fourth Chapter 27: A Crisis Three weeks after Arthur's party, just before harvest, as the apples are falling in the orchards, the crisis that has been building erupts. Adam's hopes have been buoyed again, and he is working double, for the squire and Jonathan Burge. Hetty seems more serious and mature to Adam these days. She is still getting her sewing lessons, and on the night she is coming home through the wood, Adam is taking a short cut through there after having done repairs on the Chase Farm. He hears that Arthur is leaving in two days to join his regiment. Just as the sun is setting he sees two figures in the wood, and he freezes. They are kissing and saying goodbye. Gyp barks, and the figures break apart. One figure rushes out the gate to the fields, while the other comes towards Adam in the wood. It is Arthur, slightly drunk, swaggering and trying to bluff with Adam about the incident. He thinks Adam is the best person to have caught him and Hetty together, for he can be trusted not to tell anyone. He mentions casually that he just gave Hetty a kiss after walking with her, and he tries to pass by Adam, as if no harm had been done. It was just a bit of flirting, he says. Adam tells him to wait, and accuses him of being two-faced, for Hetty could have loved him if Arthur, whom he thought his friend, hadn't ruined it. Arthur is shocked that Adam loves Hetty, and begins to see the whole affair as much more serious than he imagined. Adam's blood is up, and he taunts Arthur until he fights. The two begin a furious fist fight until Adam knocks Arthur down, and he does not get up. Adam is terrified of his own strength, afraid that he has killed Arthur.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 27 After much buildup and suspense, the secret bursts out, and it is fatal for Arthur that it is Adam who sees him with Hetty, though at first he thinks Adam will understand and cover for him. This misunderstanding shows the difference between Adam and Arthur both in character and in class expectations. Arthur's class of gentlemen takes it as nothing unusual to have affairs with servant girls. If worst comes to worst with such a fling, a rich man can always pay his way out of the trouble, for he would never be expected by his peers to marry or be made uncomfortable by any complications. Arthur expects Adam to have such a cavalier attitude as well. He passes the incident off as not serious. His casual manner incenses Adam in two ways; first, because Hetty is the woman he loves; second, even if she weren't, Arthur puts a blot on Hetty's reputation and life, and that is not a mere trifle for the servant girl. Adam's working class on the whole expects courting to end in marriage, so if one does not have that intention, then one is acting dishonorably. Adam's illusions crash because he has believed in the superiority of rank and has believed in Arthur personally. Arthur's bubble is burst too: he is suddenly shocked by feeling the first hatred he has ever encountered in his life, and from one of the people whose opinion mattered to him. He realizes from the way Adam talks, however, that he believes it is a flirtation and nothing more. He sticks to this lie, then, as his only way out of the mess. Fiction in 1859 did not discuss explicit sexual encounters, but these hints by the characters and narrator are enough to confirm in a round-about way that Hetty and Arthur are definitely having a sexual affair, though Adam has bought Arthur's lie that it is only a flirtation. Even a servant found kissing a gentleman could be turned away from employment, and certainly would have a difficult time marrying, for the worst would be assumed. In a small town like Hayslope, one mistake like this can ruin a person's life. Adam knows Hetty will be destroyed if it is found out, but he himself is too good a man to think that the affair is that far along, that either Hetty or Arthur could have stooped so low. He is a bit naive about the weaknesses of others, and Arthur takes advantage of this. Adam's strength is also his weakness. He holds himself back by sheer will power in the beginning, knowing he is a strong man and that violence is wrong. It has been mentioned that he stopped fighting when he injured a man a few years ago, and he cautions himself not to do it now. If Arthur had humbled himself or spoken truthfully, there might have been some other way to work out their differences, but since Arthur takes a casual and cocky attitude, Adam's anger is thoroughly aroused at the \"scoundrel\" . When Arthur does not get up, Adam realizes his mistake. He solved nothing, and he might have killed a man. This chapter functions as the moment of the fall does in Paradise Lost. Before this scene, the idyllic world of the valley was established in the rising action. All the characters had hopes and plans for a bright future. After this climax, that innocent green world is shattered, and all the tragic consequences of the actions are played out. The lives of the main characters change forever. As Adam observed of his father's tragic end: \"There's no slipping up hill again, and no standing still when once you've begun to slip down\" . The reader expects to watch the tumbling down now."} |
IT was beyond the middle of August--nearly three weeks after the
birthday feast. The reaping of the wheat had begun in our north midland
county of Loamshire, but the harvest was likely still to be retarded
by the heavy rains, which were causing inundations and much damage
throughout the country. From this last trouble the Broxton and Hayslope
farmers, on their pleasant uplands and in their brook-watered
valleys, had not suffered, and as I cannot pretend that they were such
exceptional farmers as to love the general good better than their own,
you will infer that they were not in very low spirits about the rapid
rise in the price of bread, so long as there was hope of gathering in
their own corn undamaged; and occasional days of sunshine and drying
winds flattered this hope.
The eighteenth of August was one of these days when the sunshine looked
brighter in all eyes for the gloom that went before. Grand masses of
cloud were hurried across the blue, and the great round hills behind the
Chase seemed alive with their flying shadows; the sun was hidden for a
moment, and then shone out warm again like a recovered joy; the leaves,
still green, were tossed off the hedgerow trees by the wind; around the
farmhouses there was a sound of clapping doors; the apples fell in the
orchards; and the stray horses on the green sides of the lanes and on
the common had their manes blown about their faces. And yet the wind
seemed only part of the general gladness because the sun was shining. A
merry day for the children, who ran and shouted to see if they could
top the wind with their voices; and the grown-up people too were in
good spirits, inclined to believe in yet finer days, when the wind had
fallen. If only the corn were not ripe enough to be blown out of the
husk and scattered as untimely seed!
And yet a day on which a blighting sorrow may fall upon a man. For if it
be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment
of one individual lot must it not also be true that she seems unmindful
unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has not its births
of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new
sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There
are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that
Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of
our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such
children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of--to be
content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.
It was a busy day with Adam, who of late had done almost double work,
for he was continuing to act as foreman for Jonathan Burge, until some
satisfactory person could be found to supply his place, and Jonathan was
slow to find that person. But he had done the extra work cheerfully, for
his hopes were buoyant again about Hetty. Every time she had seen him
since the birthday, she had seemed to make an effort to behave all the
more kindly to him, that she might make him understand she had forgiven
his silence and coldness during the dance. He had never mentioned the
locket to her again; too happy that she smiled at him--still happier
because he observed in her a more subdued air, something that he
interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness and seriousness. "Ah!"
he thought, again and again, "she's only seventeen; she'll be thoughtful
enough after a while. And her aunt allays says how clever she is at the
work. She'll make a wife as Mother'll have no occasion to grumble at,
after all." To be sure, he had only seen her at home twice since the
birthday; for one Sunday, when he was intending to go from church to the
Hall Farm, Hetty had joined the party of upper servants from the Chase
and had gone home with them--almost as if she were inclined to encourage
Mr. Craig. "She's takin' too much likin' to them folks i' the house
keeper's room," Mrs. Poyser remarked. "For my part, I was never overfond
o' gentlefolks's servants--they're mostly like the fine ladies' fat
dogs, nayther good for barking nor butcher's meat, but on'y for show."
And another evening she was gone to Treddleston to buy some things;
though, to his great surprise, as he was returning home, he saw her at
a distance getting over a stile quite out of the Treddleston road. But,
when he hastened to her, she was very kind, and asked him to go in again
when he had taken her to the yard gate. She had gone a little farther
into the fields after coming from Treddleston because she didn't want to
go in, she said: it was so nice to be out of doors, and her aunt always
made such a fuss about it if she wanted to go out. "Oh, do come in with
me!" she said, as he was going to shake hands with her at the gate, and
he could not resist that. So he went in, and Mrs. Poyser was contented
with only a slight remark on Hetty's being later than was expected;
while Hetty, who had looked out of spirits when he met her, smiled and
talked and waited on them all with unusual promptitude.
That was the last time he had seen her; but he meant to make leisure for
going to the Farm to-morrow. To-day, he knew, was her day for going to
the Chase to sew with the lady's maid, so he would get as much work done
as possible this evening, that the next might be clear.
One piece of work that Adam was superintending was some slight repairs
at the Chase Farm, which had been hitherto occupied by Satchell, as
bailiff, but which it was now rumoured that the old squire was going to
let to a smart man in top-boots, who had been seen to ride over it
one day. Nothing but the desire to get a tenant could account for the
squire's undertaking repairs, though the Saturday-evening party at Mr.
Casson's agreed over their pipes that no man in his senses would take
the Chase Farm unless there was a bit more ploughland laid to it.
However that might be, the repairs were ordered to be executed with all
dispatch, and Adam, acting for Mr. Burge, was carrying out the order
with his usual energy. But to-day, having been occupied elsewhere,
he had not been able to arrive at the Chase Farm till late in the
afternoon, and he then discovered that some old roofing, which he had
calculated on preserving, had given way. There was clearly no good to
be done with this part of the building without pulling it all down, and
Adam immediately saw in his mind a plan for building it up again, so as
to make the most convenient of cow-sheds and calf-pens, with a hovel for
implements; and all without any great expense for materials. So, when
the workmen were gone, he sat down, took out his pocket-book, and
busied himself with sketching a plan, and making a specification of the
expenses that he might show it to Burge the next morning, and set him
on persuading the squire to consent. To "make a good job" of anything,
however small, was always a pleasure to Adam, and he sat on a block,
with his book resting on a planing-table, whistling low every now and
then and turning his head on one side with a just perceptible smile of
gratification--of pride, too, for if Adam loved a bit of good work, he
loved also to think, "I did it!" And I believe the only people who are
free from that weakness are those who have no work to call their own. It
was nearly seven before he had finished and put on his jacket again; and
on giving a last look round, he observed that Seth, who had been working
here to-day, had left his basket of tools behind him. "Why, th' lad's
forgot his tools," thought Adam, "and he's got to work up at the shop
to-morrow. There never was such a chap for wool-gathering; he'd leave
his head behind him, if it was loose. However, it's lucky I've seen 'em;
I'll carry 'em home."
The buildings of the Chase Farm lay at one extremity of the Chase,
at about ten minutes' walking distance from the Abbey. Adam had come
thither on his pony, intending to ride to the stables and put up his nag
on his way home. At the stables he encountered Mr. Craig, who had come
to look at the captain's new horse, on which he was to ride away the day
after to-morrow; and Mr. Craig detained him to tell how all the servants
were to collect at the gate of the courtyard to wish the young squire
luck as he rode out; so that by the time Adam had got into the Chase,
and was striding along with the basket of tools over his shoulder, the
sun was on the point of setting, and was sending level crimson rays
among the great trunks of the old oaks, and touching every bare patch of
ground with a transient glory that made it look like a jewel dropt upon
the grass. The wind had fallen now, and there was only enough breeze to
stir the delicate-stemmed leaves. Any one who had been sitting in the
house all day would have been glad to walk now; but Adam had been quite
enough in the open air to wish to shorten his way home, and he bethought
himself that he might do so by striking across the Chase and going
through the Grove, where he had never been for years. He hurried on
across the Chase, stalking along the narrow paths between the fern, with
Gyp at his heels, not lingering to watch the magnificent changes of the
light--hardly once thinking of it--yet feeling its presence in a certain
calm happy awe which mingled itself with his busy working-day thoughts.
How could he help feeling it? The very deer felt it, and were more
timid.
Presently Adam's thoughts recurred to what Mr. Craig had said about
Arthur Donnithorne, and pictured his going away, and the changes
that might take place before he came back; then they travelled back
affectionately over the old scenes of boyish companionship, and dwelt
on Arthur's good qualities, which Adam had a pride in, as we all have in
the virtues of the superior who honours us. A nature like Adam's, with
a great need of love and reverence in it, depends for so much of its
happiness on what it can believe and feel about others! And he had no
ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in
the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving
admiration among those who came within speech of him. These pleasant
thoughts about Arthur brought a milder expression than usual into his
keen rough face: perhaps they were the reason why, when he opened the
old green gate leading into the Grove, he paused to pat Gyp and say a
kind word to him.
After that pause, he strode on again along the broad winding path
through the Grove. What grand beeches! Adam delighted in a fine tree of
all things; as the fisherman's sight is keenest on the sea, so Adam's
perceptions were more at home with trees than with other objects. He
kept them in his memory, as a painter does, with all the flecks and
knots in their bark, all the curves and angles of their boughs, and had
often calculated the height and contents of a trunk to a nicety, as he
stood looking at it. No wonder that, not-withstanding his desire to get
on, he could not help pausing to look at a curious large beech which
he had seen standing before him at a turning in the road, and convince
himself that it was not two trees wedded together, but only one. For the
rest of his life he remembered that moment when he was calmly examining
the beech, as a man remembers his last glimpse of the home where his
youth was passed, before the road turned, and he saw it no more. The
beech stood at the last turning before the Grove ended in an archway of
boughs that let in the eastern light; and as Adam stepped away from the
tree to continue his walk, his eyes fell on two figures about twenty
yards before him.
He remained as motionless as a statue, and turned almost as pale. The
two figures were standing opposite to each other, with clasped hands
about to part; and while they were bending to kiss, Gyp, who had been
running among the brushwood, came out, caught sight of them, and gave
a sharp bark. They separated with a start--one hurried through the gate
out of the Grove, and the other, turning round, walked slowly, with
a sort of saunter, towards Adam who still stood transfixed and pale,
clutching tighter the stick with which he held the basket of tools over
his shoulder, and looking at the approaching figure with eyes in which
amazement was fast turning to fierceness.
Arthur Donnithorne looked flushed and excited; he had tried to make
unpleasant feelings more bearable by drinking a little more wine than
usual at dinner to-day, and was still enough under its flattering
influence to think more lightly of this unwished-for rencontre with Adam
than he would otherwise have done. After all, Adam was the best person
who could have happened to see him and Hetty together--he was a sensible
fellow, and would not babble about it to other people. Arthur felt
confident that he could laugh the thing off and explain it away. And so
he sauntered forward with elaborate carelessness--his flushed face, his
evening dress of fine cloth and fine linen, his hands half-thrust into
his waistcoat pockets, all shone upon by the strange evening light which
the light clouds had caught up even to the zenith, and were now shedding
down between the topmost branches above him.
Adam was still motionless, looking at him as he came up. He understood
it all now--the locket and everything else that had been doubtful to
him: a terrible scorching light showed him the hidden letters that
changed the meaning of the past. If he had moved a muscle, he must
inevitably have sprung upon Arthur like a tiger; and in the conflicting
emotions that filled those long moments, he had told himself that he
would not give loose to passion, he would only speak the right thing.
He stood as if petrified by an unseen force, but the force was his own
strong will.
"Well, Adam," said Arthur, "you've been looking at the fine old beeches,
eh? They're not to be come near by the hatchet, though; this is a sacred
grove. I overtook pretty little Hetty Sorrel as I was coming to my
den--the Hermitage, there. She ought not to come home this way so late.
So I took care of her to the gate, and asked for a kiss for my pains.
But I must get back now, for this road is confoundedly damp. Good-night,
Adam. I shall see you to-morrow--to say good-bye, you know."
Arthur was too much preoccupied with the part he was playing himself to
be thoroughly aware of the expression in Adam's face. He did not look
directly at Adam, but glanced carelessly round at the trees and then
lifted up one foot to look at the sole of his boot. He cared to say no
more--he had thrown quite dust enough into honest Adam's eyes--and as he
spoke the last words, he walked on.
"Stop a bit, sir," said Adam, in a hard peremptory voice, without
turning round. "I've got a word to say to you."
Arthur paused in surprise. Susceptible persons are more affected by
a change of tone than by unexpected words, and Arthur had the
susceptibility of a nature at once affectionate and vain. He was still
more surprised when he saw that Adam had not moved, but stood with his
back to him, as if summoning him to return. What did he mean? He was
going to make a serious business of this affair. Arthur felt his temper
rising. A patronising disposition always has its meaner side, and in the
confusion of his irritation and alarm there entered the feeling that a
man to whom he had shown so much favour as to Adam was not in a position
to criticize his conduct. And yet he was dominated, as one who feels
himself in the wrong always is, by the man whose good opinion he cares
for. In spite of pride and temper, there was as much deprecation as
anger in his voice when he said, "What do you mean, Adam?"
"I mean, sir"--answered Adam, in the same harsh voice, still without
turning round--"I mean, sir, that you don't deceive me by your light
words. This is not the first time you've met Hetty Sorrel in this grove,
and this is not the first time you've kissed her."
Arthur felt a startled uncertainty how far Adam was speaking from
knowledge, and how far from mere inference. And this uncertainty,
which prevented him from contriving a prudent answer, heightened his
irritation. He said, in a high sharp tone, "Well, sir, what then?"
"Why, then, instead of acting like th' upright, honourable man we've
all believed you to be, you've been acting the part of a selfish
light-minded scoundrel. You know as well as I do what it's to lead to
when a gentleman like you kisses and makes love to a young woman like
Hetty, and gives her presents as she's frightened for other folks
to see. And I say it again, you're acting the part of a selfish
light-minded scoundrel though it cuts me to th' heart to say so, and I'd
rather ha' lost my right hand."
"Let me tell you, Adam," said Arthur, bridling his growing anger and
trying to recur to his careless tone, "you're not only devilishly
impertinent, but you're talking nonsense. Every pretty girl is not such
a fool as you, to suppose that when a gentleman admires her beauty and
pays her a little attention, he must mean something particular. Every
man likes to flirt with a pretty girl, and every pretty girl likes to be
flirted with. The wider the distance between them, the less harm there
is, for then she's not likely to deceive herself."
"I don't know what you mean by flirting," said Adam, "but if you mean
behaving to a woman as if you loved her, and yet not loving her all
the while, I say that's not th' action of an honest man, and what isn't
honest does come t' harm. I'm not a fool, and you're not a fool, and you
know better than what you're saying. You know it couldn't be made
public as you've behaved to Hetty as y' have done without her losing her
character and bringing shame and trouble on her and her relations. What
if you meant nothing by your kissing and your presents? Other folks
won't believe as you've meant nothing; and don't tell me about her not
deceiving herself. I tell you as you've filled her mind so with the
thought of you as it'll mayhap poison her life, and she'll never love
another man as 'ud make her a good husband."
Arthur had felt a sudden relief while Adam was speaking; he perceived
that Adam had no positive knowledge of the past, and that there was no
irrevocable damage done by this evening's unfortunate rencontre. Adam
could still be deceived. The candid Arthur had brought himself into a
position in which successful lying was his only hope. The hope allayed
his anger a little.
"Well, Adam," he said, in a tone of friendly concession, "you're perhaps
right. Perhaps I've gone a little too far in taking notice of the pretty
little thing and stealing a kiss now and then. You're such a grave,
steady fellow, you don't understand the temptation to such trifling.
I'm sure I wouldn't bring any trouble or annoyance on her and the good
Poysers on any account if I could help it. But I think you look a little
too seriously at it. You know I'm going away immediately, so I shan't
make any more mistakes of the kind. But let us say good-night"--Arthur
here turned round to walk on--"and talk no more about the matter. The
whole thing will soon be forgotten."
"No, by God!" Adam burst out with rage that could be controlled no
longer, throwing down the basket of tools and striding forward till he
was right in front of Arthur. All his jealousy and sense of personal
injury, which he had been hitherto trying to keep under, had leaped up
and mastered him. What man of us, in the first moments of a sharp
agony, could ever feel that the fellow-man who has been the medium of
inflicting it did not mean to hurt us? In our instinctive rebellion
against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak
our vengeance on. Adam at this moment could only feel that he had
been robbed of Hetty--robbed treacherously by the man in whom he had
trusted--and he stood close in front of Arthur, with fierce eyes glaring
at him, with pale lips and clenched hands, the hard tones in which he
had hitherto been constraining himself to express no more than a just
indignation giving way to a deep agitated voice that seemed to shake him
as he spoke.
"No, it'll not be soon forgot, as you've come in between her and me,
when she might ha' loved me--it'll not soon be forgot as you've robbed
me o' my happiness, while I thought you was my best friend, and a
noble-minded man, as I was proud to work for. And you've been kissing
her, and meaning nothing, have you? And I never kissed her i' my
life--but I'd ha' worked hard for years for the right to kiss her. And
you make light of it. You think little o' doing what may damage other
folks, so as you get your bit o' trifling, as means nothing. I throw
back your favours, for you're not the man I took you for. I'll never
count you my friend any more. I'd rather you'd act as my enemy, and
fight me where I stand--it's all th' amends you can make me."
Poor Adam, possessed by rage that could find no other vent, began to
throw off his coat and his cap, too blind with passion to notice the
change that had taken place in Arthur while he was speaking. Arthur's
lips were now as pale as Adam's; his heart was beating violently. The
discovery that Adam loved Hetty was a shock which made him for the
moment see himself in the light of Adam's indignation, and regard Adam's
suffering as not merely a consequence, but an element of his error.
The words of hatred and contempt--the first he had ever heard in his
life--seemed like scorching missiles that were making ineffaceable scars
on him. All screening self-excuse, which rarely falls quite away while
others respect us, forsook him for an instant, and he stood face to face
with the first great irrevocable evil he had ever committed. He was
only twenty-one, and three months ago--nay, much later--he had thought
proudly that no man should ever be able to reproach him justly. His
first impulse, if there had been time for it, would perhaps have been to
utter words of propitiation; but Adam had no sooner thrown off his
coat and cap than he became aware that Arthur was standing pale and
motionless, with his hands still thrust in his waistcoat pockets.
"What!" he said, "won't you fight me like a man? You know I won't strike
you while you stand so."
"Go away, Adam," said Arthur, "I don't want to fight you."
"No," said Adam, bitterly; "you don't want to fight me--you think I'm a
common man, as you can injure without answering for it."
"I never meant to injure you," said Arthur, with returning anger. "I
didn't know you loved her."
"But you've made her love you," said Adam. "You're a double-faced
man--I'll never believe a word you say again."
"Go away, I tell you," said Arthur, angrily, "or we shall both repent."
"No," said Adam, with a convulsed voice, "I swear I won't go away
without fighting you. Do you want provoking any more? I tell you you're
a coward and a scoundrel, and I despise you."
The colour had all rushed back to Arthur's face; in a moment his right
hand was clenched, and dealt a blow like lightning, which sent Adam
staggering backward. His blood was as thoroughly up as Adam's now, and
the two men, forgetting the emotions that had gone before, fought
with the instinctive fierceness of panthers in the deepening twilight
darkened by the trees. The delicate-handed gentleman was a match for the
workman in everything but strength, and Arthur's skill enabled him to
protract the struggle for some long moments. But between unarmed men the
battle is to the strong, where the strong is no blunderer, and Arthur
must sink under a well-planted blow of Adam's as a steel rod is broken
by an iron bar. The blow soon came, and Arthur fell, his head lying
concealed in a tuft of fern, so that Adam could only discern his darkly
clad body.
He stood still in the dim light waiting for Arthur to rise.
The blow had been given now, towards which he had been straining all the
force of nerve and muscle--and what was the good of it? What had he
done by fighting? Only satisfied his own passion, only wreaked his own
vengeance. He had not rescued Hetty, nor changed the past--there it was,
just as it had been, and he sickened at the vanity of his own rage.
But why did not Arthur rise? He was perfectly motionless, and the time
seemed long to Adam. Good God! had the blow been too much for him? Adam
shuddered at the thought of his own strength, as with the oncoming of
this dread he knelt down by Arthur's side and lifted his head from among
the fern. There was no sign of life: the eyes and teeth were set. The
horror that rushed over Adam completely mastered him, and forced upon
him its own belief. He could feel nothing but that death was in Arthur's
face, and that he was helpless before it. He made not a single movement,
but knelt like an image of despair gazing at an image of death.
| 6,450 | Chapter 27 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter27 | Book Fourth Chapter 27: A Crisis Three weeks after Arthur's party, just before harvest, as the apples are falling in the orchards, the crisis that has been building erupts. Adam's hopes have been buoyed again, and he is working double, for the squire and Jonathan Burge. Hetty seems more serious and mature to Adam these days. She is still getting her sewing lessons, and on the night she is coming home through the wood, Adam is taking a short cut through there after having done repairs on the Chase Farm. He hears that Arthur is leaving in two days to join his regiment. Just as the sun is setting he sees two figures in the wood, and he freezes. They are kissing and saying goodbye. Gyp barks, and the figures break apart. One figure rushes out the gate to the fields, while the other comes towards Adam in the wood. It is Arthur, slightly drunk, swaggering and trying to bluff with Adam about the incident. He thinks Adam is the best person to have caught him and Hetty together, for he can be trusted not to tell anyone. He mentions casually that he just gave Hetty a kiss after walking with her, and he tries to pass by Adam, as if no harm had been done. It was just a bit of flirting, he says. Adam tells him to wait, and accuses him of being two-faced, for Hetty could have loved him if Arthur, whom he thought his friend, hadn't ruined it. Arthur is shocked that Adam loves Hetty, and begins to see the whole affair as much more serious than he imagined. Adam's blood is up, and he taunts Arthur until he fights. The two begin a furious fist fight until Adam knocks Arthur down, and he does not get up. Adam is terrified of his own strength, afraid that he has killed Arthur. | Commentary on Chapter 27 After much buildup and suspense, the secret bursts out, and it is fatal for Arthur that it is Adam who sees him with Hetty, though at first he thinks Adam will understand and cover for him. This misunderstanding shows the difference between Adam and Arthur both in character and in class expectations. Arthur's class of gentlemen takes it as nothing unusual to have affairs with servant girls. If worst comes to worst with such a fling, a rich man can always pay his way out of the trouble, for he would never be expected by his peers to marry or be made uncomfortable by any complications. Arthur expects Adam to have such a cavalier attitude as well. He passes the incident off as not serious. His casual manner incenses Adam in two ways; first, because Hetty is the woman he loves; second, even if she weren't, Arthur puts a blot on Hetty's reputation and life, and that is not a mere trifle for the servant girl. Adam's working class on the whole expects courting to end in marriage, so if one does not have that intention, then one is acting dishonorably. Adam's illusions crash because he has believed in the superiority of rank and has believed in Arthur personally. Arthur's bubble is burst too: he is suddenly shocked by feeling the first hatred he has ever encountered in his life, and from one of the people whose opinion mattered to him. He realizes from the way Adam talks, however, that he believes it is a flirtation and nothing more. He sticks to this lie, then, as his only way out of the mess. Fiction in 1859 did not discuss explicit sexual encounters, but these hints by the characters and narrator are enough to confirm in a round-about way that Hetty and Arthur are definitely having a sexual affair, though Adam has bought Arthur's lie that it is only a flirtation. Even a servant found kissing a gentleman could be turned away from employment, and certainly would have a difficult time marrying, for the worst would be assumed. In a small town like Hayslope, one mistake like this can ruin a person's life. Adam knows Hetty will be destroyed if it is found out, but he himself is too good a man to think that the affair is that far along, that either Hetty or Arthur could have stooped so low. He is a bit naive about the weaknesses of others, and Arthur takes advantage of this. Adam's strength is also his weakness. He holds himself back by sheer will power in the beginning, knowing he is a strong man and that violence is wrong. It has been mentioned that he stopped fighting when he injured a man a few years ago, and he cautions himself not to do it now. If Arthur had humbled himself or spoken truthfully, there might have been some other way to work out their differences, but since Arthur takes a casual and cocky attitude, Adam's anger is thoroughly aroused at the "scoundrel" . When Arthur does not get up, Adam realizes his mistake. He solved nothing, and he might have killed a man. This chapter functions as the moment of the fall does in Paradise Lost. Before this scene, the idyllic world of the valley was established in the rising action. All the characters had hopes and plans for a bright future. After this climax, that innocent green world is shattered, and all the tragic consequences of the actions are played out. The lives of the main characters change forever. As Adam observed of his father's tragic end: "There's no slipping up hill again, and no standing still when once you've begun to slip down" . The reader expects to watch the tumbling down now. | 439 | 634 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/28.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_28_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 28 | chapter 28 | null | {"name": "Chapter 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter28", "summary": "A Dilemma Arthur regains consciousness and asks for water. Adam is sorry about the fight and tries to help Arthur get home, but he is weak, and asks for Adam's help in walking to the Hermitage, the house in the woods. Adam has never known that this place was furnished; Arthur has been using it for a personal retreat. He asks Adam to go to his servant Pym and get some brandy. While Adam is gone, Arthur removes a woman's handkerchief. Adam returns with the brandy. Arthur is too confused to say anything, but he wishes he could confess and make it all right with Adam. Adam apologizes for hurting him and being hasty. He knows Arthur was ignorant of his love for Hetty, and he says the only joy he can have now is to think the best of Arthur. Arthur tries to make some apology saying he was wrong, and he is going away so there will be no more mistake. Adam insists that Arthur write Hetty a letter admitting he was wrong and that it is over, so that Hetty will not be waiting for him and her life ruined with false hope. Arthur is irritated by Adam telling him what to do, but Adam insists, saying that he has to know where he stands with Hetty, and \"in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up\" . Arthur promises to write the letter, and Adam will pick it up and deliver it to Hetty.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 28 Adam takes action, as is his nature. He does not want the thing to drag on, and he still hopes Hetty could love him if she knows Arthur is not serious. He makes Arthur see that rank has no privilege here. They are two men courting the same woman, and if Arthur doesn't want her, he has to play fair, and give him and Hetty a chance. Adam may be rash, and he is not playing his hand with full knowledge, but he is thinking of Hetty's life as well as his own. He says he is the only one who can care for Hetty. He equates Hetty's honor with his own. This is assuming a lot on his part to take responsibility for her. Adam is rash to think that he can solve the situation, but his attempt is a natural one and more noble than Arthur's cowardice. Eliot does not say directly that it is too late for Adam and Hetty, but the handkerchief lying carelessly in the Hermitage is proof that it has been the trysting place, and that Arthur and Hetty have no doubt had many meetings there. The chance that Adam could step in at this point if Arthur simply writes a letter is again naive, but it is the only thing he can think of. Arthur's giving in to the request indicates that he is trying to get out of a tight spot, for if he had done nothing very wrong, he would probably refuse."} |
IT was only a few minutes measured by the clock--though Adam always
thought it had been a long while--before he perceived a gleam of
consciousness in Arthur's face and a slight shiver through his frame.
The intense joy that flooded his soul brought back some of the old
affection with it.
"Do you feel any pain, sir?" he said, tenderly, loosening Arthur's
cravat.
Arthur turned his eyes on Adam with a vague stare which gave way to a
slightly startled motion as if from the shock of returning memory. But
he only shivered again and said nothing.
"Do you feel any hurt, sir?" Adam said again, with a trembling in his
voice.
Arthur put his hand up to his waistcoat buttons, and when Adam had
unbuttoned it, he took a longer breath. "Lay my head down," he said,
faintly, "and get me some water if you can."
Adam laid the head down gently on the fern again, and emptying the tools
out of the flag-basket, hurried through the trees to the edge of the
Grove bordering on the Chase, where a brook ran below the bank.
When he returned with his basket leaking, but still half-full, Arthur
looked at him with a more thoroughly reawakened consciousness.
"Can you drink a drop out o' your hand, sir?" said Adam, kneeling down
again to lift up Arthur's head.
"No," said Arthur, "dip my cravat in and souse it on my head."
The water seemed to do him some good, for he presently raised himself a
little higher, resting on Adam's arm.
"Do you feel any hurt inside sir?" Adam asked again
"No--no hurt," said Arthur, still faintly, "but rather done up."
After a while he said, "I suppose I fainted away when you knocked me
down."
"Yes, sir, thank God," said Adam. "I thought it was worse."
"What! You thought you'd done for me, eh? Come help me on my legs."
"I feel terribly shaky and dizzy," Arthur said, as he stood leaning
on Adam's arm; "that blow of yours must have come against me like a
battering-ram. I don't believe I can walk alone."
"Lean on me, sir; I'll get you along," said Adam. "Or, will you sit down
a bit longer, on my coat here, and I'll prop y' up. You'll perhaps be
better in a minute or two."
"No," said Arthur. "I'll go to the Hermitage--I think I've got some
brandy there. There's a short road to it a little farther on, near the
gate. If you'll just help me on."
They walked slowly, with frequent pauses, but without speaking again.
In both of them, the concentration in the present which had attended
the first moments of Arthur's revival had now given way to a vivid
recollection of the previous scene. It was nearly dark in the narrow
path among the trees, but within the circle of fir-trees round the
Hermitage there was room for the growing moonlight to enter in at the
windows. Their steps were noiseless on the thick carpet of fir-needles,
and the outward stillness seemed to heighten their inward consciousness,
as Arthur took the key out of his pocket and placed it in Adam's hand,
for him to open the door. Adam had not known before that Arthur had
furnished the old Hermitage and made it a retreat for himself, and it
was a surprise to him when he opened the door to see a snug room with
all the signs of frequent habitation.
Arthur loosed Adam's arm and threw himself on the ottoman. "You'll see
my hunting-bottle somewhere," he said. "A leather case with a bottle and
glass in."
Adam was not long in finding the case. "There's very little brandy in
it, sir," he said, turning it downwards over the glass, as he held it
before the window; "hardly this little glassful."
"Well, give me that," said Arthur, with the peevishness of physical
depression. When he had taken some sips, Adam said, "Hadn't I better
run to th' house, sir, and get some more brandy? I can be there and
back pretty soon. It'll be a stiff walk home for you, if you don't have
something to revive you."
"Yes--go. But don't say I'm ill. Ask for my man Pym, and tell him to get
it from Mills, and not to say I'm at the Hermitage. Get some water too."
Adam was relieved to have an active task--both of them were relieved to
be apart from each other for a short time. But Adam's swift pace could
not still the eager pain of thinking--of living again with concentrated
suffering through the last wretched hour, and looking out from it over
all the new sad future.
Arthur lay still for some minutes after Adam was gone, but presently
he rose feebly from the ottoman and peered about slowly in the broken
moonlight, seeking something. It was a short bit of wax candle that
stood amongst a confusion of writing and drawing materials. There was
more searching for the means of lighting the candle, and when that was
done, he went cautiously round the room, as if wishing to assure himself
of the presence or absence of something. At last he had found a slight
thing, which he put first in his pocket, and then, on a second thought,
took out again and thrust deep down into a waste-paper basket. It was a
woman's little, pink, silk neckerchief. He set the candle on the table,
and threw himself down on the ottoman again, exhausted with the effort.
When Adam came back with his supplies, his entrance awoke Arthur from a
doze.
"That's right," Arthur said; "I'm tremendously in want of some
brandy-vigour."
"I'm glad to see you've got a light, sir," said Adam. "I've been
thinking I'd better have asked for a lanthorn."
"No, no; the candle will last long enough--I shall soon be up to walking
home now."
"I can't go before I've seen you safe home, sir," said Adam,
hesitatingly.
"No: it will be better for you to stay--sit down."
Adam sat down, and they remained opposite to each other in uneasy
silence, while Arthur slowly drank brandy-and-water, with visibly
renovating effect. He began to lie in a more voluntary position, and
looked as if he were less overpowered by bodily sensations. Adam was
keenly alive to these indications, and as his anxiety about Arthur's
condition began to be allayed, he felt more of that impatience which
every one knows who has had his just indignation suspended by the
physical state of the culprit. Yet there was one thing on his mind to be
done before he could recur to remonstrance: it was to confess what had
been unjust in his own words. Perhaps he longed all the more to make
this confession, that his indignation might be free again; and as he saw
the signs of returning ease in Arthur, the words again and again came to
his lips and went back, checked by the thought that it would be better
to leave everything till to-morrow. As long as they were silent they did
not look at each other, and a foreboding came across Adam that if they
began to speak as though they remembered the past--if they looked at
each other with full recognition--they must take fire again. So they sat
in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the socket, the
silence all the while becoming more irksome to Adam. Arthur had just
poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm behind his
head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease, which was an
irresistible temptation to Adam to speak what was on his mind.
"You begin to feel more yourself again, sir," he said, as the candle
went out and they were half-hidden from each other in the faint
moonlight.
"Yes: I don't feel good for much--very lazy, and not inclined to move;
but I'll go home when I've taken this dose."
There was a slight pause before Adam said, "My temper got the better of
me, and I said things as wasn't true. I'd no right to speak as if you'd
known you was doing me an injury: you'd no grounds for knowing it; I've
always kept what I felt for her as secret as I could."
He paused again before he went on.
"And perhaps I judged you too harsh--I'm apt to be harsh--and you may
have acted out o' thoughtlessness more than I should ha' believed was
possible for a man with a heart and a conscience. We're not all put
together alike, and we may misjudge one another. God knows, it's all the
joy I could have now, to think the best of you."
Arthur wanted to go home without saying any more--he was too painfully
embarrassed in mind, as well as too weak in body, to wish for any
further explanation to-night. And yet it was a relief to him that Adam
reopened the subject in a way the least difficult for him to answer.
Arthur was in the wretched position of an open, generous man who has
committed an error which makes deception seem a necessity. The native
impulse to give truth in return for truth, to meet trust with frank
confession, must be suppressed, and duty was becoming a question of
tactics. His deed was reacting upon him--was already governing him
tyrannously and forcing him into a course that jarred with his habitual
feelings. The only aim that seemed admissible to him now was to deceive
Adam to the utmost: to make Adam think better of him than he deserved.
And when he heard the words of honest retractation--when he heard the
sad appeal with which Adam ended--he was obliged to rejoice in
the remains of ignorant confidence it implied. He did not answer
immediately, for he had to be judicious and not truthful.
"Say no more about our anger, Adam," he said, at last, very languidly,
for the labour of speech was unwelcome to him; "I forgive your momentary
injustice--it was quite natural, with the exaggerated notions you had in
your mind. We shall be none the worse friends in future, I hope, because
we've fought. You had the best of it, and that was as it should be, for
I believe I've been most in the wrong of the two. Come, let us shake
hands."
Arthur held out his hand, but Adam sat still.
"I don't like to say 'No' to that, sir," he said, "but I can't shake
hands till it's clear what we mean by't. I was wrong when I spoke as
if you'd done me an injury knowingly, but I wasn't wrong in what I said
before, about your behaviour t' Hetty, and I can't shake hands with you
as if I held you my friend the same as ever till you've cleared that up
better."
Arthur swallowed his pride and resentment as he drew back his hand.
He was silent for some moments, and then said, as indifferently as he
could, "I don't know what you mean by clearing up, Adam. I've told you
already that you think too seriously of a little flirtation. But if
you are right in supposing there is any danger in it--I'm going away on
Saturday, and there will be an end of it. As for the pain it has given
you, I'm heartily sorry for it. I can say no more."
Adam said nothing, but rose from his chair and stood with his face
towards one of the windows, as if looking at the blackness of the
moonlit fir-trees; but he was in reality conscious of nothing but the
conflict within him. It was of no use now--his resolution not to speak
till to-morrow. He must speak there and then. But it was several minutes
before he turned round and stepped nearer to Arthur, standing and
looking down on him as he lay.
"It'll be better for me to speak plain," he said, with evident effort,
"though it's hard work. You see, sir, this isn't a trifle to me,
whatever it may be to you. I'm none o' them men as can go making love
first to one woman and then t' another, and don't think it much odds
which of 'em I take. What I feel for Hetty's a different sort o' love,
such as I believe nobody can know much about but them as feel it and God
as has given it to 'em. She's more nor everything else to me, all but
my conscience and my good name. And if it's true what you've been saying
all along--and if it's only been trifling and flirting as you call it,
as 'll be put an end to by your going away--why, then, I'd wait, and
hope her heart 'ud turn to me after all. I'm loath to think you'd speak
false to me, and I'll believe your word, however things may look."
"You would be wronging Hetty more than me not to believe it," said
Arthur, almost violently, starting up from the ottoman and moving away.
But he threw himself into a chair again directly, saying, more feebly,
"You seem to forget that, in suspecting me, you are casting imputations
upon her."
"Nay, sir," Adam said, in a calmer voice, as if he were
half-relieved--for he was too straightforward to make a distinction
between a direct falsehood and an indirect one--"Nay, sir, things don't
lie level between Hetty and you. You're acting with your eyes open,
whatever you may do; but how do you know what's been in her mind? She's
all but a child--as any man with a conscience in him ought to feel bound
to take care on. And whatever you may think, I know you've disturbed
her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you, for there's a many
things clear to me now as I didn't understand before. But you seem to
make light o' what she may feel--you don't think o' that."
"Good God, Adam, let me alone!" Arthur burst out impetuously; "I feel it
enough without your worrying me."
He was aware of his indiscretion as soon as the words had escaped him.
"Well, then, if you feel it," Adam rejoined, eagerly; "if you feel as
you may ha' put false notions into her mind, and made her believe as
you loved her, when all the while you meant nothing, I've this demand
to make of you--I'm not speaking for myself, but for her. I ask you t'
undeceive her before you go away. Y'aren't going away for ever, and if
you leave her behind with a notion in her head o' your feeling about her
the same as she feels about you, she'll be hankering after you, and the
mischief may get worse. It may be a smart to her now, but it'll save her
pain i' th' end. I ask you to write a letter--you may trust to my seeing
as she gets it. Tell her the truth, and take blame to yourself for
behaving as you'd no right to do to a young woman as isn't your equal.
I speak plain, sir, but I can't speak any other way. There's nobody can
take care o' Hetty in this thing but me."
"I can do what I think needful in the matter," said Arthur, more and
more irritated by mingled distress and perplexity, "without giving
promises to you. I shall take what measures I think proper."
"No," said Adam, in an abrupt decided tone, "that won't do. I must know
what ground I'm treading on. I must be safe as you've put an end to what
ought never to ha' been begun. I don't forget what's owing to you as a
gentleman, but in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up."
There was no answer for some moments. Then Arthur said, "I'll see you
to-morrow. I can bear no more now; I'm ill." He rose as he spoke, and
reached his cap, as if intending to go.
"You won't see her again!" Adam exclaimed, with a flash of recurring
anger and suspicion, moving towards the door and placing his back
against it. "Either tell me she can never be my wife--tell me you've
been lying--or else promise me what I've said."
Adam, uttering this alternative, stood like a terrible fate before
Arthur, who had moved forward a step or two, and now stopped, faint,
shaken, sick in mind and body. It seemed long to both of them--that
inward struggle of Arthur's--before he said, feebly, "I promise; let me
go."
Adam moved away from the door and opened it, but when Arthur reached the
step, he stopped again and leaned against the door-post.
"You're not well enough to walk alone, sir," said Adam. "Take my arm
again."
Arthur made no answer, and presently walked on, Adam following. But,
after a few steps, he stood still again, and said, coldly, "I believe I
must trouble you. It's getting late now, and there may be an alarm set
up about me at home."
Adam gave his arm, and they walked on without uttering a word, till they
came where the basket and the tools lay.
"I must pick up the tools, sir," Adam said. "They're my brother's. I
doubt they'll be rusted. If you'll please to wait a minute."
Arthur stood still without speaking, and no other word passed between
them till they were at the side entrance, where he hoped to get in
without being seen by any one. He said then, "Thank you; I needn't
trouble you any further."
"What time will it be conven'ent for me to see you to-morrow, sir?" said
Adam.
"You may send me word that you're here at five o'clock," said Arthur;
"not before."
"Good-night, sir," said Adam. But he heard no reply; Arthur had turned
into the house.
| 4,436 | Chapter 28 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter28 | A Dilemma Arthur regains consciousness and asks for water. Adam is sorry about the fight and tries to help Arthur get home, but he is weak, and asks for Adam's help in walking to the Hermitage, the house in the woods. Adam has never known that this place was furnished; Arthur has been using it for a personal retreat. He asks Adam to go to his servant Pym and get some brandy. While Adam is gone, Arthur removes a woman's handkerchief. Adam returns with the brandy. Arthur is too confused to say anything, but he wishes he could confess and make it all right with Adam. Adam apologizes for hurting him and being hasty. He knows Arthur was ignorant of his love for Hetty, and he says the only joy he can have now is to think the best of Arthur. Arthur tries to make some apology saying he was wrong, and he is going away so there will be no more mistake. Adam insists that Arthur write Hetty a letter admitting he was wrong and that it is over, so that Hetty will not be waiting for him and her life ruined with false hope. Arthur is irritated by Adam telling him what to do, but Adam insists, saying that he has to know where he stands with Hetty, and "in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up" . Arthur promises to write the letter, and Adam will pick it up and deliver it to Hetty. | Commentary on Chapter 28 Adam takes action, as is his nature. He does not want the thing to drag on, and he still hopes Hetty could love him if she knows Arthur is not serious. He makes Arthur see that rank has no privilege here. They are two men courting the same woman, and if Arthur doesn't want her, he has to play fair, and give him and Hetty a chance. Adam may be rash, and he is not playing his hand with full knowledge, but he is thinking of Hetty's life as well as his own. He says he is the only one who can care for Hetty. He equates Hetty's honor with his own. This is assuming a lot on his part to take responsibility for her. Adam is rash to think that he can solve the situation, but his attempt is a natural one and more noble than Arthur's cowardice. Eliot does not say directly that it is too late for Adam and Hetty, but the handkerchief lying carelessly in the Hermitage is proof that it has been the trysting place, and that Arthur and Hetty have no doubt had many meetings there. The chance that Adam could step in at this point if Arthur simply writes a letter is again naive, but it is the only thing he can think of. Arthur's giving in to the request indicates that he is trying to get out of a tight spot, for if he had done nothing very wrong, he would probably refuse. | 337 | 255 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/29.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_29_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 29 | chapter 29 | null | {"name": "Chapter 29", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter29", "summary": "The Next Morning This chapter centers on the thoughts of Arthur on his last day before leaving. He gets up early and goes for a ride on his horse. He is upset about the loss of Adam's good opinion. He thinks that if he had done any other injury, he would have made it up to Adam with some gift, for he has a kind heart and likes to make people happy. His realization that he cannot make this up to Adam is the first understanding of \"the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing\" . He remembers that he did not tell Hetty on their last meeting that it was over between them. Adam had been right about Hetty's delusions, for she asked Arthur to take her with him and marry her. He had been too cowardly to tell her the truth. The narrator notes that Arthur has slowly changed over the last few months from a fresh and honest person to a deceiver. But because he needs his own self-respect, he cannot admit his wrong. He believes the letter is the only answer, for it will satisfy Adam and cure Hetty of her dreams. For one moment, Arthur thinks about the other terrible possible outcomes of his deeds, but he puts them out of his mind. He writes the letter and leaves it with his man Pym, saying he is too busy to see Adam. Adam takes the letter and thinks it better they don't see each other, for they are no longer friends.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 29 Eliot uses a favorite technique here of going deeply into a character's thoughts, and then commenting on them like a psychologist. She uses the mental processes of all the characters to show typical human maneuvers for both good and bad. In this way, she can contrast the selfish person with the unselfish person. In her philosophy, the unselfish person not only adds to the good of the world but is also the only successful person in the long run. Selfish people only get short-term gains. Both Arthur and Hetty are irresponsible and like to live in their illusions within the moment. A few weeks of passion will ruin their lives forever. For a brief moment Arthur worries that Hetty could harm herself, perhaps kill herself over the disappointment. Then another nameless fear surfaces, and the reader knows what is left unsaid--she could get pregnant. The other important thing Eliot reveals in her analysis is how a good person can go wrong. Arthur is a loving person by nature, but also weak and self-indulgent. By making wrong choices and then covering up and lying, Arthur is slowly making himself more coarse. Each time he lies, he makes excuses. The result is that he becomes dull and loses his discrimination. Like Hetty, he is unresponsive to the clues from outside because he is so self-involved in his own drama. One can see how he will eventually become hard, like his grandfather, the very fate he wanted to avoid."} |
ARTHUR did not pass a sleepless night; he slept long and well. For sleep
comes to the perplexed--if the perplexed are only weary enough. But at
seven he rang his bell and astonished Pym by declaring he was going to
get up, and must have breakfast brought to him at eight.
"And see that my mare is saddled at half-past eight, and tell my
grandfather when he's down that I'm better this morning and am gone for
a ride."
He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our
yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it
be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some
resistance to the past--sensations which assert themselves against
tyrannous memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages
of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting
seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on
country gentlemen than in late spring and summer. Arthur felt that he
should be more of a man on horseback. Even the presence of Pym, waiting
on him with the usual deference, was a reassurance to him after the
scenes of yesterday. For, with Arthur's sensitiveness to opinion,
the loss of Adam's respect was a shock to his self-contentment which
suffused his imagination with the sense that he had sunk in all eyes--as
a sudden shock of fear from some real peril makes a nervous woman afraid
even to step, because all her perceptions are suffused with a sense of
danger.
Arthur's, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as
easy to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his weaknesses
and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He didn't like to
witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the
giver of pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an
old gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse,
not reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but on learning that
sad fact, he took his favourite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife
out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same
Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits.
If there were any bitterness in his nature, it could only show itself
against the man who refused to be conciliated by him. And perhaps the
time was come for some of that bitterness to rise. At the first moment,
Arthur had felt pure distress and self-reproach at discovering that
Adam's happiness was involved in his relation to Hetty. If there had
been a possibility of making Adam tenfold amends--if deeds of gift, or
any other deeds, could have restored Adam's contentment and regard for
him as a benefactor, Arthur would not only have executed them without
hesitation, but would have felt bound all the more closely to Adam,
and would never have been weary of making retribution. But Adam could
receive no amends; his suffering could not be cancelled; his respect and
affection could not be recovered by any prompt deeds of atonement. He
stood like an immovable obstacle against which no pressure could
avail; an embodiment of what Arthur most shrank from believing in--the
irrevocableness of his own wrongdoing. The words of scorn, the refusal
to shake hands, the mastery asserted over him in their last conversation
in the Hermitage--above all, the sense of having been knocked down, to
which a man does not very well reconcile himself, even under the most
heroic circumstances--pressed on him with a galling pain which was
stronger than compunction. Arthur would so gladly have persuaded himself
that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him the contrary, he
could have persuaded himself so much better. Nemesis can seldom forge a
sword for herself out of our consciences--out of the suffering we feel
in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there
to make an effective weapon. Our moral sense learns the manners of good
society and smiles when others smile, but when some rude person gives
rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us. And
so it was with Arthur: Adam's judgment of him, Adam's grating words,
disturbed his self-soothing arguments.
Not that Arthur had been at ease before Adam's discovery. Struggles and
resolves had transformed themselves into compunction and anxiety. He was
distressed for Hetty's sake, and distressed for his own, that he
must leave her behind. He had always, both in making and breaking
resolutions, looked beyond his passion and seen that it must speedily
end in separation; but his nature was too ardent and tender for him not
to suffer at this parting; and on Hetty's account he was filled with
uneasiness. He had found out the dream in which she was living--that she
was to be a lady in silks and satins--and when he had first talked to
her about his going away, she had asked him tremblingly to let her go
with him and be married. It was his painful knowledge of this which had
given the most exasperating sting to Adam's reproaches. He had said no
word with the purpose of deceiving her--her vision was all spun by her
own childish fancy--but he was obliged to confess to himself that it was
spun half out of his own actions. And to increase the mischief, on this
last evening he had not dared to hint the truth to Hetty; he had been
obliged to soothe her with tender, hopeful words, lest he should throw
her into violent distress. He felt the situation acutely, felt the
sorrow of the dear thing in the present, and thought with a darker
anxiety of the tenacity which her feelings might have in the future.
That was the one sharp point which pressed against him; every other he
could evade by hopeful self-persuasion. The whole thing had been secret;
the Poysers had not the shadow of a suspicion. No one, except Adam, knew
anything of what had passed--no one else was likely to know; for Arthur
had impressed on Hetty that it would be fatal to betray, by word or
look, that there had been the least intimacy between them; and Adam, who
knew half their secret, would rather help them to keep it than betray
it. It was an unfortunate business altogether, but there was no use in
making it worse than it was by imaginary exaggerations and forebodings
of evil that might never come. The temporary sadness for Hetty was
the worst consequence; he resolutely turned away his eyes from any bad
consequence that was not demonstrably inevitable. But--but Hetty might
have had the trouble in some other way if not in this. And perhaps
hereafter he might be able to do a great deal for her and make up to her
for all the tears she would shed about him. She would owe the advantage
of his care for her in future years to the sorrow she had incurred now.
So good comes out of evil. Such is the beautiful arrangement of things!
Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur who, two
months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which
shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any
more positive offence as possible for it?--who thought that his own
self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion? The same,
I assure you, only under different conditions. Our deeds determine us,
as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or
will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which
constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think
ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in
our deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then
reconcile him to the change, for this reason--that the second wrong
presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The
action which before commission has been seen with that blended common
sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the
soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity,
through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to
be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a
_fait accompli_, and so does an individual character--until the placid
adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution.
No man can escape this vitiating effect of an offence against his own
sentiment of right, and the effect was the stronger in Arthur because of
that very need of self-respect which, while his conscience was still at
ease, was one of his best safeguards. Self-accusation was too painful to
him--he could not face it. He must persuade himself that he had not been
very much to blame; he began even to pity himself for the necessity he
was under of deceiving Adam--it was a course so opposed to the honesty
of his own nature. But then, it was the only right thing to do.
Well, whatever had been amiss in him, he was miserable enough in
consequence: miserable about Hetty; miserable about this letter that
he had promised to write, and that seemed at one moment to be a gross
barbarity, at another perhaps the greatest kindness he could do to her.
And across all this reflection would dart every now and then a sudden
impulse of passionate defiance towards all consequences. He would carry
Hetty away, and all other considerations might go to....
In this state of mind the four walls of his room made an intolerable
prison to him; they seemed to hem in and press down upon him all the
crowd of contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings, some of which
would fly away in the open air. He had only an hour or two to make up
his mind in, and he must get clear and calm. Once on Meg's back, in
the fresh air of that fine morning, he should be more master of the
situation.
The pretty creature arched her bay neck in the sunshine, and pawed the
gravel, and trembled with pleasure when her master stroked her nose, and
patted her, and talked to her even in a more caressing tone than usual.
He loved her the better because she knew nothing of his secrets. But
Meg was quite as well acquainted with her master's mental state as many
others of her sex with the mental condition of the nice young gentlemen
towards whom their hearts are in a state of fluttering expectation.
Arthur cantered for five miles beyond the Chase, till he was at the foot
of a hill where there were no hedges or trees to hem in the road. Then
he threw the bridle on Meg's neck and prepared to make up his mind.
Hetty knew that their meeting yesterday must be the last before Arthur
went away--there was no possibility of their contriving another without
exciting suspicion--and she was like a frightened child, unable to think
of anything, only able to cry at the mention of parting, and then put
her face up to have the tears kissed away. He could do nothing but
comfort her, and lull her into dreaming on. A letter would be a
dreadfully abrupt way of awakening her! Yet there was truth in what Adam
said--that it would save her from a lengthened delusion, which might be
worse than a sharp immediate pain. And it was the only way of satisfying
Adam, who must be satisfied, for more reasons than one. If he could have
seen her again! But that was impossible; there was such a thorny hedge
of hindrances between them, and an imprudence would be fatal. And yet,
if he COULD see her again, what good would it do? Only cause him to
suffer more from the sight of her distress and the remembrance of it.
Away from him she was surrounded by all the motives to self-control.
A sudden dread here fell like a shadow across his imagination--the dread
lest she should do something violent in her grief; and close upon that
dread came another, which deepened the shadow. But he shook them off
with the force of youth and hope. What was the ground for painting the
future in that dark way? It was just as likely to be the reverse. Arthur
told himself he did not deserve that things should turn out badly. He
had never meant beforehand to do anything his conscience disapproved;
he had been led on by circumstances. There was a sort of implicit
confidence in him that he was really such a good fellow at bottom,
Providence would not treat him harshly.
At all events, he couldn't help what would come now: all he could do
was to take what seemed the best course at the present moment. And he
persuaded himself that that course was to make the way open between
Adam and Hetty. Her heart might really turn to Adam, as he said, after a
while; and in that case there would have been no great harm done, since
it was still Adam's ardent wish to make her his wife. To be sure, Adam
was deceived--deceived in a way that Arthur would have resented as a
deep wrong if it had been practised on himself. That was a reflection
that marred the consoling prospect. Arthur's cheeks even burned in
mingled shame and irritation at the thought. But what could a man do in
such a dilemma? He was bound in honour to say no word that could injure
Hetty: his first duty was to guard her. He would never have told or
acted a lie on his own account. Good God! What a miserable fool he was
to have brought himself into such a dilemma; and yet, if ever a man had
excuses, he had. (Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses
but by actions!)
Well, the letter must be written; it was the only means that promised
a solution of the difficulty. The tears came into Arthur's eyes as he
thought of Hetty reading it; but it would be almost as hard for him
to write it; he was not doing anything easy to himself; and this
last thought helped him to arrive at a conclusion. He could never
deliberately have taken a step which inflicted pain on another and left
himself at ease. Even a movement of jealousy at the thought of giving up
Hetty to Adam went to convince him that he was making a sacrifice.
When once he had come to this conclusion, he turned Meg round and set
off home again in a canter. The letter should be written the first
thing, and the rest of the day would be filled up with other business:
he should have no time to look behind him. Happily, Irwine and Gawaine
were coming to dinner, and by twelve o'clock the next day he should
have left the Chase miles behind him. There was some security in this
constant occupation against an uncontrollable impulse seizing him to
rush to Hetty and thrust into her hand some mad proposition that would
undo everything. Faster and faster went the sensitive Meg, at every
slight sign from her rider, till the canter had passed into a swift
gallop.
"I thought they said th' young mester war took ill last night," said
sour old John, the groom, at dinner-time in the servants' hall. "He's
been ridin' fit to split the mare i' two this forenoon."
"That's happen one o' the symptims, John," said the facetious coachman.
"Then I wish he war let blood for 't, that's all," said John, grimly.
Adam had been early at the Chase to know how Arthur was, and had been
relieved from all anxiety about the effects of his blow by learning
that he was gone out for a ride. At five o'clock he was punctually there
again, and sent up word of his arrival. In a few minutes Pym came down
with a letter in his hand and gave it to Adam, saying that the captain
was too busy to see him, and had written everything he had to say.
The letter was directed to Adam, but he went out of doors again before
opening it. It contained a sealed enclosure directed to Hetty. On the
inside of the cover Adam read:
"In the enclosed letter I have written everything you wish. I leave it
to you to decide whether you will be doing best to deliver it to Hetty
or to return it to me. Ask yourself once more whether you are not taking
a measure which may pain her more than mere silence.
"There is no need for our seeing each other again now. We shall meet
with better feelings some months hence.
"A.D."
"Perhaps he's i' th' right on 't not to see me," thought Adam. "It's
no use meeting to say more hard words, and it's no use meeting to shake
hands and say we're friends again. We're not friends, an' it's better
not to pretend it. I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my
thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking
revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back
again, for that's not possible. He's not the same man to me, and I can't
feel the same towards him. God help me! I don't know whether I feel the
same towards anybody: I seem as if I'd been measuring my work from a
false line, and had got it all to measure over again."
But the question about delivering the letter to Hetty soon absorbed
Adam's thoughts. Arthur had procured some relief to himself by throwing
the decision on Adam with a warning; and Adam, who was not given to
hesitation, hesitated here. He determined to feel his way--to ascertain
as well as he could what was Hetty's state of mind before he decided on
delivering the letter.
| 4,193 | Chapter 29 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter29 | The Next Morning This chapter centers on the thoughts of Arthur on his last day before leaving. He gets up early and goes for a ride on his horse. He is upset about the loss of Adam's good opinion. He thinks that if he had done any other injury, he would have made it up to Adam with some gift, for he has a kind heart and likes to make people happy. His realization that he cannot make this up to Adam is the first understanding of "the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing" . He remembers that he did not tell Hetty on their last meeting that it was over between them. Adam had been right about Hetty's delusions, for she asked Arthur to take her with him and marry her. He had been too cowardly to tell her the truth. The narrator notes that Arthur has slowly changed over the last few months from a fresh and honest person to a deceiver. But because he needs his own self-respect, he cannot admit his wrong. He believes the letter is the only answer, for it will satisfy Adam and cure Hetty of her dreams. For one moment, Arthur thinks about the other terrible possible outcomes of his deeds, but he puts them out of his mind. He writes the letter and leaves it with his man Pym, saying he is too busy to see Adam. Adam takes the letter and thinks it better they don't see each other, for they are no longer friends. | Commentary on Chapter 29 Eliot uses a favorite technique here of going deeply into a character's thoughts, and then commenting on them like a psychologist. She uses the mental processes of all the characters to show typical human maneuvers for both good and bad. In this way, she can contrast the selfish person with the unselfish person. In her philosophy, the unselfish person not only adds to the good of the world but is also the only successful person in the long run. Selfish people only get short-term gains. Both Arthur and Hetty are irresponsible and like to live in their illusions within the moment. A few weeks of passion will ruin their lives forever. For a brief moment Arthur worries that Hetty could harm herself, perhaps kill herself over the disappointment. Then another nameless fear surfaces, and the reader knows what is left unsaid--she could get pregnant. The other important thing Eliot reveals in her analysis is how a good person can go wrong. Arthur is a loving person by nature, but also weak and self-indulgent. By making wrong choices and then covering up and lying, Arthur is slowly making himself more coarse. Each time he lies, he makes excuses. The result is that he becomes dull and loses his discrimination. Like Hetty, he is unresponsive to the clues from outside because he is so self-involved in his own drama. One can see how he will eventually become hard, like his grandfather, the very fate he wanted to avoid. | 333 | 250 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/30.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_30_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 30 | chapter 30 | null | {"name": "Chapter 30", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter30", "summary": "The Delivery of the Letter Adam joins the Poysers on their walk home after church because he wants to talk to Hetty. She is afraid he means to tell on her, but Hetty is confident she can manipulate Adam to her own purposes. Hetty believes that Arthur will miss her and will come home at Christmas, as he said he might do. Adam is direct and says that he is trying to help Hetty because she does not know the ways of the world. Arthur does not love her and will not marry her. Hetty is shocked and does not believe Adam. She knows more than Adam does about how serious their relationship is. She realizes Adam does not know the worst. He keeps repeating that Arthur does not mean to marry her, and finally he produces the letter. He says that he will be like a brother to her in this crisis, and tries to get her to see how dangerous the situation is for her. Hetty believes the letter will be a love letter and puts it in her pocket. They spend the evening with her aunt and uncle and Adam is very kind, trying to cover for her and be entertaining, so her pale look will not be noticed. Adam's tenderness is aroused, and at home, he is kind to Seth, asking him about Dinah. Seth says there is no hope she will change her mind, but gives him a letter from Dinah to read that has consolation and wisdom in it for Adam's situation. Dinah speaks of sorrow being a part of love and that love bears it and does not throw it off. Adam thinks Dinah has the power to make everything seem right. He tells Seth a woman sometimes takes time to love by degrees, hoping this is true of Hetty.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 30 Hetty, like Arthur, has a smaller moral view than Adam does and she, like Arthur, thinks she can manage Adam. They both count on his love and loyalty, but they do not realize that Adam is a man of principle above all else. Because he believes Hetty innocent, he tries to put aside his own feeling of jealousy and thinks of her, trying to be like a brother to save her. He cannot hope for any return to his love until he can get her safely past this danger. He does not ask for any immediate thanks because he sees her simply as a person in trouble. As he says of Dinah, he hopes Hetty may yet learn to love a man who is good to her and sticks by her. The only person who can speak words of comfort to Adam at this time is Dinah, through the letter, for her perspective is large enough to comprehend what he is going through. Adam tells Arthur his love own for Hetty is different; for him she is not a plaything, and he cannot explain it, for the love was given to him by God . Divine love, Dinah explains in her letter, is able to take up sorrow and purify it through sympathy. True love does not consist in pleasure alone. Arthur and Hetty believe in their own desire being satisfied. Adam, like Dinah, experiences a love that reaches out to share sorrow and disappointment but stands firm. Adam knows, \"I'm not th'only man that's got to do without much happiness in' this life. There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart\" . He does not believe the universe exists for his personal pleasure. Dinah and Adam are purified and made humble by love, because they know love means sacrifice. Hetty and Arthur are egoists; their attraction can hardly be called love. Adam is angry at Arthur for spoiling Hetty's chances for true love in her life: \"I know you've disturbed her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you\" ."} |
THE next Sunday Adam joined the Poysers on their way out of church,
hoping for an invitation to go home with them. He had the letter in
his pocket, and was anxious to have an opportunity of talking to Hetty
alone. He could not see her face at church, for she had changed her
seat, and when he came up to her to shake hands, her manner was doubtful
and constrained. He expected this, for it was the first time she had
met him since she had been aware that he had seen her with Arthur in the
Grove.
"Come, you'll go on with us, Adam," Mr. Poyser said when they reached
the turning; and as soon as they were in the fields Adam ventured to
offer his arm to Hetty. The children soon gave them an opportunity of
lingering behind a little, and then Adam said:
"Will you contrive for me to walk out in the garden a bit with you this
evening, if it keeps fine, Hetty? I've something partic'lar to talk to
you about."
Hetty said, "Very well." She was really as anxious as Adam was that she
should have some private talk with him. She wondered what he thought of
her and Arthur. He must have seen them kissing, she knew, but she had
no conception of the scene that had taken place between Arthur and Adam.
Her first feeling had been that Adam would be very angry with her, and
perhaps would tell her aunt and uncle, but it never entered her mind
that he would dare to say anything to Captain Donnithorne. It was a
relief to her that he behaved so kindly to her to-day, and wanted to
speak to her alone, for she had trembled when she found he was going
home with them lest he should mean "to tell." But, now he wanted to talk
to her by herself, she should learn what he thought and what he meant to
do. She felt a certain confidence that she could persuade him not to
do anything she did not want him to do; she could perhaps even make him
believe that she didn't care for Arthur; and as long as Adam thought
there was any hope of her having him, he would do just what she liked,
she knew. Besides, she MUST go on seeming to encourage Adam, lest her
uncle and aunt should be angry and suspect her of having some secret
lover.
Hetty's little brain was busy with this combination as she hung on
Adam's arm and said "yes" or "no" to some slight observations of his
about the many hawthorn-berries there would be for the birds this
next winter, and the low-hanging clouds that would hardly hold up till
morning. And when they rejoined her aunt and uncle, she could pursue her
thoughts without interruption, for Mr. Poyser held that though a young
man might like to have the woman he was courting on his arm, he would
nevertheless be glad of a little reasonable talk about business the
while; and, for his own part, he was curious to hear the most recent
news about the Chase Farm. So, through the rest of the walk, he claimed
Adam's conversation for himself, and Hetty laid her small plots and
imagined her little scenes of cunning blandishment, as she walked along
by the hedgerows on honest Adam's arm, quite as well as if she had been
an elegantly clad coquette alone in her boudoir. For if a country beauty
in clumsy shoes be only shallow-hearted enough, it is astonishing how
closely her mental processes may resemble those of a lady in society
and crinoline, who applies her refined intellect to the problem of
committing indiscretions without compromising herself. Perhaps the
resemblance was not much the less because Hetty felt very unhappy all
the while. The parting with Arthur was a double pain to her--mingling
with the tumult of passion and vanity there was a dim undefined fear
that the future might shape itself in some way quite unlike her dream.
She clung to the comforting hopeful words Arthur had uttered in their
last meeting--"I shall come again at Christmas, and then we will see
what can be done." She clung to the belief that he was so fond of
her, he would never be happy without her; and she still hugged her
secret--that a great gentleman loved her--with gratified pride, as a
superiority over all the girls she knew. But the uncertainty of the
future, the possibilities to which she could give no shape, began to
press upon her like the invisible weight of air; she was alone on her
little island of dreams, and all around her was the dark unknown water
where Arthur was gone. She could gather no elation of spirits now by
looking forward, but only by looking backward to build confidence on
past words and caresses. But occasionally, since Thursday evening, her
dim anxieties had been almost lost behind the more definite fear that
Adam might betray what he knew to her uncle and aunt, and his sudden
proposition to talk with her alone had set her thoughts to work in a
new way. She was eager not to lose this evening's opportunity; and after
tea, when the boys were going into the garden and Totty begged to go
with them, Hetty said, with an alacrity that surprised Mrs. Poyser,
"I'll go with her, Aunt."
It did not seem at all surprising that Adam said he would go too,
and soon he and Hetty were left alone together on the walk by the
filbert-trees, while the boys were busy elsewhere gathering the large
unripe nuts to play at "cob-nut" with, and Totty was watching them with
a puppylike air of contemplation. It was but a short time--hardly two
months--since Adam had had his mind filled with delicious hopes as he
stood by Hetty's side in this garden. The remembrance of that scene had
often been with him since Thursday evening: the sunlight through
the apple-tree boughs, the red bunches, Hetty's sweet blush. It came
importunately now, on this sad evening, with the low-hanging clouds, but
he tried to suppress it, lest some emotion should impel him to say more
than was needful for Hetty's sake.
"After what I saw on Thursday night, Hetty," he began, "you won't think
me making too free in what I'm going to say. If you was being courted by
any man as 'ud make you his wife, and I'd known you was fond of him and
meant to have him, I should have no right to speak a word to you about
it; but when I see you're being made love to by a gentleman as can never
marry you, and doesna think o' marrying you, I feel bound t' interfere
for you. I can't speak about it to them as are i' the place o' your
parents, for that might bring worse trouble than's needful."
Adam's words relieved one of Hetty's fears, but they also carried a
meaning which sickened her with a strengthened foreboding. She was pale
and trembling, and yet she would have angrily contradicted Adam, if she
had dared to betray her feelings. But she was silent.
"You're so young, you know, Hetty," he went on, almost tenderly, "and y'
haven't seen much o' what goes on in the world. It's right for me to
do what I can to save you from getting into trouble for want o' your
knowing where you're being led to. If anybody besides me knew what I
know about your meeting a gentleman and having fine presents from him,
they'd speak light on you, and you'd lose your character. And besides
that, you'll have to suffer in your feelings, wi' giving your love to
a man as can never marry you, so as he might take care of you all your
life."
Adam paused and looked at Hetty, who was plucking the leaves from the
filbert-trees and tearing them up in her hand. Her little plans and
preconcerted speeches had all forsaken her, like an ill-learnt lesson,
under the terrible agitation produced by Adam's words. There was a cruel
force in their calm certainty which threatened to grapple and crush her
flimsy hopes and fancies. She wanted to resist them--she wanted to throw
them off with angry contradiction--but the determination to conceal what
she felt still governed her. It was nothing more than a blind prompting
now, for she was unable to calculate the effect of her words.
"You've no right to say as I love him," she said, faintly, but
impetuously, plucking another rough leaf and tearing it up. She was very
beautiful in her paleness and agitation, with her dark childish eyes
dilated and her breath shorter than usual. Adam's heart yearned over her
as he looked at her. Ah, if he could but comfort her, and soothe her,
and save her from this pain; if he had but some sort of strength that
would enable him to rescue her poor troubled mind, as he would have
rescued her body in the face of all danger!
"I doubt it must be so, Hetty," he said, tenderly; "for I canna believe
you'd let any man kiss you by yourselves, and give you a gold box with
his hair, and go a-walking i' the Grove to meet him, if you didna love
him. I'm not blaming you, for I know it 'ud begin by little and little,
till at last you'd not be able to throw it off. It's him I blame for
stealing your love i' that way, when he knew he could never make you
the right amends. He's been trifling with you, and making a plaything of
you, and caring nothing about you as a man ought to care."
"Yes, he does care for me; I know better nor you," Hetty burst out.
Everything was forgotten but the pain and anger she felt at Adam's
words.
"Nay, Hetty," said Adam, "if he'd cared for you rightly, he'd never
ha' behaved so. He told me himself he meant nothing by his kissing and
presents, and he wanted to make me believe as you thought light of 'em
too. But I know better nor that. I can't help thinking as you've been
trusting to his loving you well enough to marry you, for all he's a
gentleman. And that's why I must speak to you about it, Hetty, for
fear you should be deceiving yourself. It's never entered his head the
thought o' marrying you."
"How do you know? How durst you say so?" said Hetty, pausing in her walk
and trembling. The terrible decision of Adam's tone shook her with fear.
She had no presence of mind left for the reflection that Arthur would
have his reasons for not telling the truth to Adam. Her words and look
were enough to determine Adam: he must give her the letter.
"Perhaps you can't believe me, Hetty, because you think too well of
him--because you think he loves you better than he does. But I've got
a letter i' my pocket, as he wrote himself for me to give you. I've not
read the letter, but he says he's told you the truth in it. But before
I give you the letter, consider, Hetty, and don't let it take too much
hold on you. It wouldna ha' been good for you if he'd wanted to do such
a mad thing as marry you: it 'ud ha' led to no happiness i' th' end."
Hetty said nothing; she felt a revival of hope at the mention of a
letter which Adam had not read. There would be something quite different
in it from what he thought.
Adam took out the letter, but he held it in his hand still, while he
said, in a tone of tender entreaty, "Don't you bear me ill will, Hetty,
because I'm the means o' bringing you this pain. God knows I'd ha' borne
a good deal worse for the sake o' sparing it you. And think--there's
nobody but me knows about this, and I'll take care of you as if I was
your brother. You're the same as ever to me, for I don't believe you've
done any wrong knowingly."
Hetty had laid her hand on the letter, but Adam did not loose it till
he had done speaking. She took no notice of what he said--she had not
listened; but when he loosed the letter, she put it into her pocket,
without opening it, and then began to walk more quickly, as if she
wanted to go in.
"You're in the right not to read it just yet," said Adam. "Read it when
you're by yourself. But stay out a little bit longer, and let us call
the children: you look so white and ill, your aunt may take notice of
it."
Hetty heard the warning. It recalled to her the necessity of rallying
her native powers of concealment, which had half given way under the
shock of Adam's words. And she had the letter in her pocket: she was
sure there was comfort in that letter in spite of Adam. She ran to find
Totty, and soon reappeared with recovered colour, leading Totty, who was
making a sour face because she had been obliged to throw away an unripe
apple that she had set her small teeth in.
"Hegh, Totty," said Adam, "come and ride on my shoulder--ever so
high--you'll touch the tops o' the trees."
What little child ever refused to be comforted by that glorious sense of
being seized strongly and swung upward? I don't believe Ganymede cried
when the eagle carried him away, and perhaps deposited him on Jove's
shoulder at the end. Totty smiled down complacently from her secure
height, and pleasant was the sight to the mother's eyes, as she stood at
the house door and saw Adam coming with his small burden.
"Bless your sweet face, my pet," she said, the mother's strong love
filling her keen eyes with mildness, as Totty leaned forward and put
out her arms. She had no eyes for Hetty at that moment, and only said,
without looking at her, "You go and draw some ale, Hetty; the gells are
both at the cheese."
After the ale had been drawn and her uncle's pipe lighted, there was
Totty to be taken to bed, and brought down again in her night-gown
because she would cry instead of going to sleep. Then there was supper
to be got ready, and Hetty must be continually in the way to give help.
Adam stayed till he knew Mrs. Poyser expected him to go, engaging her
and her husband in talk as constantly as he could, for the sake of
leaving Hetty more at ease. He lingered, because he wanted to see her
safely through that evening, and he was delighted to find how much
self-command she showed. He knew she had not had time to read the
letter, but he did not know she was buoyed up by a secret hope that the
letter would contradict everything he had said. It was hard work for him
to leave her--hard to think that he should not know for days how she was
bearing her trouble. But he must go at last, and all he could do was
to press her hand gently as he said "Good-bye," and hope she would take
that as a sign that if his love could ever be a refuge for her, it was
there the same as ever. How busy his thoughts were, as he walked home,
in devising pitying excuses for her folly, in referring all her weakness
to the sweet lovingness of her nature, in blaming Arthur, with less and
less inclination to admit that his conduct might be extenuated too! His
exasperation at Hetty's suffering--and also at the sense that she was
possibly thrust for ever out of his own reach--deafened him to any
plea for the miscalled friend who had wrought this misery. Adam was a
clear-sighted, fair-minded man--a fine fellow, indeed, morally as well
as physically. But if Aristides the Just was ever in love and jealous,
he was at that moment not perfectly magnanimous. And I cannot pretend
that Adam, in these painful days, felt nothing but righteous indignation
and loving pity. He was bitterly jealous, and in proportion as his love
made him indulgent in his judgment of Hetty, the bitterness found a vent
in his feeling towards Arthur.
"Her head was allays likely to be turned," he thought, "when a
gentleman, with his fine manners, and fine clothes, and his white hands,
and that way o' talking gentlefolks have, came about her, making up to
her in a bold way, as a man couldn't do that was only her equal; and
it's much if she'll ever like a common man now." He could not help
drawing his own hands out of his pocket and looking at them--at the hard
palms and the broken finger-nails. "I'm a roughish fellow, altogether; I
don't know, now I come to think on't, what there is much for a woman to
like about me; and yet I might ha' got another wife easy enough, if
I hadn't set my heart on her. But it's little matter what other women
think about me, if she can't love me. She might ha' loved me, perhaps,
as likely as any other man--there's nobody hereabouts as I'm afraid of,
if he hadn't come between us; but now I shall belike be hateful to her
because I'm so different to him. And yet there's no telling--she may
turn round the other way, when she finds he's made light of her all the
while. She may come to feel the vally of a man as 'ud be thankful to be
bound to her all his life. But I must put up with it whichever way it
is--I've only to be thankful it's been no worse. I am not th' only man
that's got to do without much happiness i' this life. There's many a
good bit o' work done with a bad heart. It's God's will, and that's
enough for us: we shouldn't know better how things ought to be than He
does, I reckon, if we was to spend our lives i' puzzling. But it 'ud ha'
gone near to spoil my work for me, if I'd seen her brought to sorrow and
shame, and through the man as I've always been proud to think on. Since
I've been spared that, I've no right to grumble. When a man's got his
limbs whole, he can bear a smart cut or two."
As Adam was getting over a stile at this point in his reflections, he
perceived a man walking along the field before him. He knew it was Seth,
returning from an evening preaching, and made haste to overtake him.
"I thought thee'dst be at home before me," he said, as Seth turned round
to wait for him, "for I'm later than usual to-night."
"Well, I'm later too, for I got into talk, after meeting, with John
Barnes, who has lately professed himself in a state of perfection,
and I'd a question to ask him about his experience. It's one o' them
subjects that lead you further than y' expect--they don't lie along the
straight road."
They walked along together in silence two or three minutes. Adam was not
inclined to enter into the subtleties of religious experience, but he
was inclined to interchange a word or two of brotherly affection and
confidence with Seth. That was a rare impulse in him, much as the
brothers loved each other. They hardly ever spoke of personal matters,
or uttered more than an allusion to their family troubles. Adam was
by nature reserved in all matters of feeling, and Seth felt a certain
timidity towards his more practical brother.
"Seth, lad," Adam said, putting his arm on his brother's shoulder, "hast
heard anything from Dinah Morris since she went away?"
"Yes," said Seth. "She told me I might write her word after a while, how
we went on, and how mother bore up under her trouble. So I wrote to her
a fortnight ago, and told her about thee having a new employment, and
how Mother was more contented; and last Wednesday, when I called at the
post at Treddles'on, I found a letter from her. I think thee'dst perhaps
like to read it, but I didna say anything about it because thee'st
seemed so full of other things. It's quite easy t' read--she writes
wonderful for a woman."
Seth had drawn the letter from his pocket and held it out to Adam, who
said, as he took it, "Aye, lad, I've got a tough load to carry just
now--thee mustna take it ill if I'm a bit silenter and crustier nor
usual. Trouble doesna make me care the less for thee. I know we shall
stick together to the last."
"I take nought ill o' thee, Adam. I know well enough what it means if
thee't a bit short wi' me now and then."
"There's Mother opening the door to look out for us," said Adam, as they
mounted the slope. "She's been sitting i' the dark as usual. Well, Gyp,
well, art glad to see me?"
Lisbeth went in again quickly and lighted a candle, for she had heard
the welcome rustling of footsteps on the grass, before Gyp's joyful
bark.
"Eh, my lads! Th' hours war ne'er so long sin' I war born as they'n been
this blessed Sunday night. What can ye both ha' been doin' till this
time?"
"Thee shouldstna sit i' the dark, Mother," said Adam; "that makes the
time seem longer."
"Eh, what am I to do wi' burnin' candle of a Sunday, when there's on'y
me an' it's sin to do a bit o' knittin'? The daylight's long enough
for me to stare i' the booke as I canna read. It 'ud be a fine way o'
shortenin' the time, to make it waste the good candle. But which on
you's for ha'in' supper? Ye mun ayther be clemmed or full, I should
think, seein' what time o' night it is."
"I'm hungry, Mother," said Seth, seating himself at the little table,
which had been spread ever since it was light.
"I've had my supper," said Adam. "Here, Gyp," he added, taking some cold
potato from the table and rubbing the rough grey head that looked up
towards him.
"Thee needstna be gi'in' th' dog," said Lisbeth; "I'n fed him well
a'ready. I'm not like to forget him, I reckon, when he's all o' thee I
can get sight on."
"Come, then, Gyp," said Adam, "we'll go to bed. Good-night, Mother; I'm
very tired."
"What ails him, dost know?" Lisbeth said to Seth, when Adam was gone
upstairs. "He's like as if he was struck for death this day or two--he's
so cast down. I found him i' the shop this forenoon, arter thee wast
gone, a-sittin' an' doin' nothin'--not so much as a booke afore him."
"He's a deal o' work upon him just now, Mother," said Seth, "and I think
he's a bit troubled in his mind. Don't you take notice of it, because it
hurts him when you do. Be as kind to him as you can, Mother, and don't
say anything to vex him."
"Eh, what dost talk o' my vexin' him? An' what am I like to be but kind?
I'll ma' him a kettle-cake for breakfast i' the mornin'."
Adam, meanwhile, was reading Dinah's letter by the light of his dip
candle.
DEAR BROTHER SETH--Your letter lay three days beyond my knowing of it
at the post, for I had not money enough by me to pay the carriage, this
being a time of great need and sickness here, with the rains that have
fallen, as if the windows of heaven were opened again; and to lay
by money, from day to day, in such a time, when there are so many in
present need of all things, would be a want of trust like the laying
up of the manna. I speak of this, because I would not have you think me
slow to answer, or that I had small joy in your rejoicing at the worldly
good that has befallen your brother Adam. The honour and love you bear
him is nothing but meet, for God has given him great gifts, and he uses
them as the patriarch Joseph did, who, when he was exalted to a place of
power and trust, yet yearned with tenderness towards his parent and his
younger brother.
"My heart is knit to your aged mother since it was granted me to be near
her in the day of trouble. Speak to her of me, and tell her I often bear
her in my thoughts at evening time, when I am sitting in the dim light
as I did with her, and we held one another's hands, and I spoke the
words of comfort that were given to me. Ah, that is a blessed time,
isn't it, Seth, when the outward light is fading, and the body is a
little wearied with its work and its labour. Then the inward light
shines the brighter, and we have a deeper sense of resting on the Divine
strength. I sit on my chair in the dark room and close my eyes, and it
is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for evermore. For
then, the very hardship, and the sorrow, and the blindness, and the sin
I have beheld and been ready to weep over--yea, all the anguish of the
children of men, which sometimes wraps me round like sudden darkness--I
can bear with a willing pain, as if I was sharing the Redeemer's cross.
For I feel it, I feel it--infinite love is suffering too--yea, in the
fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a
blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth. Surely it is not true
blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the
world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it
off. It is not the spirit only that tells me this--I see it in the whole
work and word of the Gospel. Is there not pleading in heaven? Is not the
Man of Sorrows there in that crucified body wherewith he ascended? And
is He not one with the Infinite Love itself--as our love is one with our
sorrow?
"These thoughts have been much borne in on me of late, and I have seen
with new clearness the meaning of those words, 'If any man love me, let
him take up my cross.' I have heard this enlarged on as if it meant the
troubles and persecutions we bring on ourselves by confessing Jesus. But
surely that is a narrow thought. The true cross of the Redeemer was the
sin and sorrow of this world--that was what lay heavy on his heart--and
that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we must drink
of with him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love which is one
with his sorrow.
"In my outward lot, which you ask about, I have all things and abound. I
have had constant work in the mill, though some of the other hands have
been turned off for a time, and my body is greatly strengthened, so that
I feel little weariness after long walking and speaking. What you say
about staying in your own country with your mother and brother shows me
that you have a true guidance; your lot is appointed there by a clear
showing, and to seek a greater blessing elsewhere would be like laying a
false offering on the altar and expecting the fire from heaven to kindle
it. My work and my joy are here among the hills, and I sometimes think
I cling too much to my life among the people here, and should be
rebellious if I was called away.
"I was thankful for your tidings about the dear friends at the Hall
Farm, for though I sent them a letter, by my aunt's desire, after I came
back from my sojourn among them, I have had no word from them. My
aunt has not the pen of a ready writer, and the work of the house is
sufficient for the day, for she is weak in body. My heart cleaves to her
and her children as the nearest of all to me in the flesh--yea, and to
all in that house. I am carried away to them continually in my sleep,
and often in the midst of work, and even of speech, the thought of them
is borne in on me as if they were in need and trouble, which yet is dark
to me. There may be some leading here; but I wait to be taught. You say
they are all well.
"We shall see each other again in the body, I trust, though, it may be,
not for a long while; for the brethren and sisters at Leeds are desirous
to have me for a short space among them, when I have a door opened me
again to leave Snowfield.
"Farewell, dear brother--and yet not farewell. For those children of
God whom it has been granted to see each other face to face, and to
hold communion together, and to feel the same spirit working in both can
never more be sundered though the hills may lie between. For their souls
are enlarged for evermore by that union, and they bear one another about
in their thoughts continually as it were a new strength.--Your faithful
Sister and fellow-worker in Christ,
"DINAH MORRIS."
"I have not skill to write the words so small as you do and my pen moves
slow. And so I am straitened, and say but little of what is in my mind.
Greet your mother for me with a kiss. She asked me to kiss her twice
when we parted."
Adam had refolded the letter, and was sitting meditatively with his head
resting on his arm at the head of the bed, when Seth came upstairs.
"Hast read the letter?" said Seth.
"Yes," said Adam. "I don't know what I should ha' thought of her and her
letter if I'd never seen her: I daresay I should ha' thought a preaching
woman hateful. But she's one as makes everything seem right she says
and does, and I seemed to see her and hear her speaking when I read the
letter. It's wonderful how I remember her looks and her voice. She'd
make thee rare and happy, Seth; she's just the woman for thee."
"It's no use thinking o' that," said Seth, despondingly. "She spoke so
firm, and she's not the woman to say one thing and mean another."
"Nay, but her feelings may grow different. A woman may get to love by
degrees--the best fire dosna flare up the soonest. I'd have thee go and
see her by and by: I'd make it convenient for thee to be away three
or four days, and it 'ud be no walk for thee--only between twenty and
thirty mile."
"I should like to see her again, whether or no, if she wouldna be
displeased with me for going," said Seth.
"She'll be none displeased," said Adam emphatically, getting up and
throwing off his coat. "It might be a great happiness to us all if she'd
have thee, for mother took to her so wonderful and seemed so contented
to be with her."
"Aye," said Seth, rather timidly, "and Dinah's fond o' Hetty too; she
thinks a deal about her."
Adam made no reply to that, and no other word but "good-night" passed
between them.
| 7,704 | Chapter 30 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter30 | The Delivery of the Letter Adam joins the Poysers on their walk home after church because he wants to talk to Hetty. She is afraid he means to tell on her, but Hetty is confident she can manipulate Adam to her own purposes. Hetty believes that Arthur will miss her and will come home at Christmas, as he said he might do. Adam is direct and says that he is trying to help Hetty because she does not know the ways of the world. Arthur does not love her and will not marry her. Hetty is shocked and does not believe Adam. She knows more than Adam does about how serious their relationship is. She realizes Adam does not know the worst. He keeps repeating that Arthur does not mean to marry her, and finally he produces the letter. He says that he will be like a brother to her in this crisis, and tries to get her to see how dangerous the situation is for her. Hetty believes the letter will be a love letter and puts it in her pocket. They spend the evening with her aunt and uncle and Adam is very kind, trying to cover for her and be entertaining, so her pale look will not be noticed. Adam's tenderness is aroused, and at home, he is kind to Seth, asking him about Dinah. Seth says there is no hope she will change her mind, but gives him a letter from Dinah to read that has consolation and wisdom in it for Adam's situation. Dinah speaks of sorrow being a part of love and that love bears it and does not throw it off. Adam thinks Dinah has the power to make everything seem right. He tells Seth a woman sometimes takes time to love by degrees, hoping this is true of Hetty. | Commentary on Chapter 30 Hetty, like Arthur, has a smaller moral view than Adam does and she, like Arthur, thinks she can manage Adam. They both count on his love and loyalty, but they do not realize that Adam is a man of principle above all else. Because he believes Hetty innocent, he tries to put aside his own feeling of jealousy and thinks of her, trying to be like a brother to save her. He cannot hope for any return to his love until he can get her safely past this danger. He does not ask for any immediate thanks because he sees her simply as a person in trouble. As he says of Dinah, he hopes Hetty may yet learn to love a man who is good to her and sticks by her. The only person who can speak words of comfort to Adam at this time is Dinah, through the letter, for her perspective is large enough to comprehend what he is going through. Adam tells Arthur his love own for Hetty is different; for him she is not a plaything, and he cannot explain it, for the love was given to him by God . Divine love, Dinah explains in her letter, is able to take up sorrow and purify it through sympathy. True love does not consist in pleasure alone. Arthur and Hetty believe in their own desire being satisfied. Adam, like Dinah, experiences a love that reaches out to share sorrow and disappointment but stands firm. Adam knows, "I'm not th'only man that's got to do without much happiness in' this life. There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart" . He does not believe the universe exists for his personal pleasure. Dinah and Adam are purified and made humble by love, because they know love means sacrifice. Hetty and Arthur are egoists; their attraction can hardly be called love. Adam is angry at Arthur for spoiling Hetty's chances for true love in her life: "I know you've disturbed her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you" . | 382 | 351 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/31.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_31_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 31 | chapter 31 | null | {"name": "Chapter 31", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter31", "summary": "In Hetty's Bed-Chamber Hetty waits until bedtime to read Arthur's letter. He says that it is hard on him, but he must say goodbye to her. They cannot be married because they live in different worlds, so they must part for good. If however, any trouble comes, he will do everything to help her. She can write to the address he encloses. Hetty is taken by surprise, and is devastated. She cries herself to sleep, and the next day she only thinks how she can get away from Hall Farm. She asks her uncle if she can go for a lady's maid. He says no; he wants to see her well married. Mrs. Poyser thinks the idea of being a lady's maid came from learning lace-mending and decides to put a stop to it. Hetty begins to think about marrying Adam as an alternative plan; what difference doe it make as long as she can get away?", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 31 Hetty's bubble is burst, and she begins to hate Arthur for it. She wants change if she cannot have what she wants. Hetty is not able to evaluate what Arthur has said in the letter about class differences, nor does she wonder if he loves her or worry that she will miss him. She had imagined a different life, and now it is taken away. She doesn't seem to care who she marries as long as she can have what she wants. She decides Adam will do as well as any. The narrator and the reader are the only ones who know at this point how \"trivial\" Hetty's soul is . She is clever enough to hide herself from her family and from Adam, who believes her to be as good as she looks. Arthur's letter, however, contains some foreshadowing. He alludes to the fact of future trouble and says that he will help her, if it should come. He gives her an address. This is, at least, responsible on Arthur's part. His letter sounds affectionate and caring, even if he is backing out of the relationship at a late point, and only because he was forced into it. He does seem to care what happens to Hetty, though not enough, and always belatedly. He does not have the foresight of Adam or Mr. Irwine, though he is far from cruel. Eliot's point with Arthur seems to be to illustrate how anyone can commit evil, even if basically good. Readers generally identify with good characters. Eliot can make readers uncomfortable by having to identify with the ordinary characters who slip because they are lazy. Who has not looked for an easy way out, or merely got by because everyone else did? She calls her characters and readers to account, for the laws of cause and effect do not excuse anyone."} |
IT was no longer light enough to go to bed without a candle, even in
Mrs. Poyser's early household, and Hetty carried one with her as she
went up at last to her bedroom soon after Adam was gone, and bolted the
door behind her.
Now she would read her letter. It must--it must have comfort in it. How
was Adam to know the truth? It was always likely he should say what he
did say.
She set down the candle and took out the letter. It had a faint scent of
roses, which made her feel as if Arthur were close to her. She put it to
her lips, and a rush of remembered sensations for a moment or two swept
away all fear. But her heart began to flutter strangely, and her hands
to tremble as she broke the seal. She read slowly; it was not easy for
her to read a gentleman's handwriting, though Arthur had taken pains to
write plainly.
"DEAREST HETTY--I have spoken truly when I have said that I loved you,
and I shall never forget our love. I shall be your true friend as long
as life lasts, and I hope to prove this to you in many ways. If I say
anything to pain you in this letter, do not believe it is for want of
love and tenderness towards you, for there is nothing I would not do
for you, if I knew it to be really for your happiness. I cannot bear to
think of my little Hetty shedding tears when I am not there to kiss them
away; and if I followed only my own inclinations, I should be with her
at this moment instead of writing. It is very hard for me to part from
her--harder still for me to write words which may seem unkind, though
they spring from the truest kindness.
"Dear, dear Hetty, sweet as our love has been to me, sweet as it would
be to me for you to love me always, I feel that it would have been
better for us both if we had never had that happiness, and that it is
my duty to ask you to love me and care for me as little as you can. The
fault has all been mine, for though I have been unable to resist the
longing to be near you, I have felt all the while that your affection
for me might cause you grief. I ought to have resisted my feelings. I
should have done so, if I had been a better fellow than I am; but now,
since the past cannot be altered, I am bound to save you from any evil
that I have power to prevent. And I feel it would be a great evil for
you if your affections continued so fixed on me that you could think of
no other man who might be able to make you happier by his love than I
ever can, and if you continued to look towards something in the future
which cannot possibly happen. For, dear Hetty, if I were to do what you
one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you yourself
would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know
you can never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station; and
if I were to marry you now, I should only be adding to any wrong I have
done, besides offending against my duty in the other relations of life.
You know nothing, dear Hetty, of the world in which I must always live,
and you would soon begin to dislike me, because there would be so little
in which we should be alike.
"And since I cannot marry you, we must part--we must try not to feel
like lovers any more. I am miserable while I say this, but nothing else
can be. Be angry with me, my sweet one, I deserve it; but do not believe
that I shall not always care for you--always be grateful to you--always
remember my Hetty; and if any trouble should come that we do not now
foresee, trust in me to do everything that lies in my power.
"I have told you where you are to direct a letter to, if you want to
write, but I put it down below lest you should have forgotten. Do not
write unless there is something I can really do for you; for, dear
Hetty, we must try to think of each other as little as we can. Forgive
me, and try to forget everything about me, except that I shall be, as
long as I live, your affectionate friend,
"ARTHUR DONNITHORNE."
Slowly Hetty had read this letter; and when she looked up from it there
was the reflection of a blanched face in the old dim glass--a white
marble face with rounded childish forms, but with something sadder than
a child's pain in it. Hetty did not see the face--she saw nothing--she
only felt that she was cold and sick and trembling. The letter shook and
rustled in her hand. She laid it down. It was a horrible sensation--this
cold and trembling. It swept away the very ideas that produced it, and
Hetty got up to reach a warm cloak from her clothes-press, wrapped it
round her, and sat as if she were thinking of nothing but getting warm.
Presently she took up the letter with a firmer hand, and began to read
it through again. The tears came this time--great rushing tears that
blinded her and blotched the paper. She felt nothing but that Arthur was
cruel--cruel to write so, cruel not to marry her. Reasons why he could
not marry her had no existence for her mind; how could she believe in
any misery that could come to her from the fulfilment of all she had
been longing for and dreaming of? She had not the ideas that could make
up the notion of that misery.
As she threw down the letter again, she caught sight of her face in the
glass; it was reddened now, and wet with tears; it was almost like a
companion that she might complain to--that would pity her. She leaned
forward on her elbows, and looked into those dark overflooding eyes and
at the quivering mouth, and saw how the tears came thicker and thicker,
and how the mouth became convulsed with sobs.
The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on
her new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an
overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and
suspended her anger. She sat sobbing till the candle went out, and then,
wearied, aching, stupefied with crying, threw herself on the bed without
undressing and went to sleep.
There was a feeble dawn in the room when Hetty awoke, a little after
four o'clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke upon
her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the dim
light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to conceal her
misery as well as to bear it, in this dreary daylight that was coming.
She could lie no longer. She got up and went towards the table: there
lay the letter. She opened her treasure-drawer: there lay the ear-rings
and the locket--the signs of all her short happiness--the signs of
the lifelong dreariness that was to follow it. Looking at the little
trinkets which she had once eyed and fingered so fondly as the earnest
of her future paradise of finery, she lived back in the moments when
they had been given to her with such tender caresses, such strangely
pretty words, such glowing looks, which filled her with a bewildering
delicious surprise--they were so much sweeter than she had thought
anything could be. And the Arthur who had spoken to her and looked at
her in this way, who was present with her now--whose arm she felt round
her, his cheek against hers, his very breath upon her--was the cruel,
cruel Arthur who had written that letter, that letter which she snatched
and crushed and then opened again, that she might read it once more. The
half-benumbed mental condition which was the effect of the last night's
violent crying made it necessary to her to look again and see if her
wretched thoughts were actually true--if the letter was really so cruel.
She had to hold it close to the window, else she could not have read it
by the faint light. Yes! It was worse--it was more cruel. She crushed
it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that letter--hated him
for the very reason that she hung upon him with all her love--all the
girlish passion and vanity that made up her love.
She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night,
and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the
first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present.
Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she
would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her.
For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first
moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is
to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered
hope. As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she had worn all
the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair, she had a
sickening sense that her life would go on in this way. She should always
be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the old tasks of
work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to church, and to
Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no happy thought
with her. For her short poisonous delights had spoiled for ever all the
little joys that had once made the sweetness of her life--the new frock
ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr. Britton's at Broxton wake,
the beaux that she would say "No" to for a long while, and the prospect
of the wedding that was to come at last when she would have a silk gown
and a great many clothes all at once. These things were all flat and
dreary to her now; everything would be a weariness, and she would carry
about for ever a hopeless thirst and longing.
She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against the
dark old clothes-press. Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung down
in delicate rings--and they were just as beautiful as they were that
night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber
glowing with vanity and hope. She was not thinking of her neck and arms
now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her. Her eyes wandered sadly
over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards the
growing dawn. Did a remembrance of Dinah come across her mind? Of her
foreboding words, which had made her angry? Of Dinah's affectionate
entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble? No, the impression
had been too slight to recur. Any affection or comfort Dinah could
have given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as
everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking
she could never stay here and go on with the old life--she could better
bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round.
She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the
old faces again. But Hetty's was not a nature to face difficulties--to
dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown
condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature--not a passionate
one--and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged
to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her
thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she soon
fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life: she
would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady's maid. Miss Lydia's maid
would help her to get a situation, if she knew Hetty had her uncle's
leave.
When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to
wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave
as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Hetty's blooming
health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to
leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual
in her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap,
an indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young
roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and
eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her. But when she took up
the crushed letter and put it in her drawer, that she might lock it out
of sight, hard smarting tears, having no relief in them as the great
drops had that fell last night, forced their way into her eyes. She
wiped them away quickly: she must not cry in the day-time. Nobody should
find out how miserable she was, nobody should know she was disappointed
about anything; and the thought that the eyes of her aunt and uncle
would be upon her gave her the self-command which often accompanies a
great dread. For Hetty looked out from her secret misery towards the
possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the sick and
weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would think her
conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That was poor little Hetty's
conscience.
So she locked up her drawer and went away to her early work.
In the evening, when Mr. Poyser was smoking his pipe, and his
good-nature was therefore at its superlative moment, Hetty seized the
opportunity of her aunt's absence to say, "Uncle, I wish you'd let me go
for a lady's maid."
Mr. Poyser took the pipe from his mouth and looked at Hetty in mild
surprise for some moments. She was sewing, and went on with her work
industriously.
"Why, what's put that into your head, my wench?" he said at last, after
he had given one conservative puff.
"I should like it--I should like it better than farm-work."
"Nay, nay; you fancy so because you donna know it, my wench. It wouldn't
be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i' life. I'd like you
to stay wi' us till you've got a good husband: you're my own niece, and
I wouldn't have you go to service, though it was a gentleman's house, as
long as I've got a home for you."
Mr. Poyser paused, and puffed away at his pipe.
"I like the needlework," said Hetty, "and I should get good wages."
"Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi' you?" said Mr. Poyser, not noticing
Hetty's further argument. "You mustna mind that, my wench--she does it
for your good. She wishes you well; an' there isn't many aunts as are no
kin to you 'ud ha' done by you as she has."
"No, it isn't my aunt," said Hetty, "but I should like the work better."
"It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit--an' I gev my
consent to that fast enough, sin' Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach you.
For if anything was t' happen, it's well to know how to turn your hand
to different sorts o' things. But I niver meant you to go to service, my
wench; my family's ate their own bread and cheese as fur back as anybody
knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your grand-child to take
wage?"
"Na-a-y," said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to make
it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked down
on the floor. "But the wench takes arter her mother. I'd hard work t'
hould HER in, an' she married i' spite o' me--a feller wi' on'y two head
o' stock when there should ha' been ten on's farm--she might well die o'
th' inflammation afore she war thirty."
It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son's question
had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long unextinguished
resentment, which had always made the grandfather more indifferent to
Hetty than to his son's children. Her mother's fortune had been spent by
that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel's blood in her veins.
"Poor thing, poor thing!" said Martin the younger, who was sorry to have
provoked this retrospective harshness. "She'd but bad luck. But Hetty's
got as good a chance o' getting a solid, sober husband as any gell i'
this country."
After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe
and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign
of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Hetty,
in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the denial,
half out of the day's repressed sadness.
"Hegh, hegh!" said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, "don't
let's have any crying. Crying's for them as ha' got no home, not for
them as want to get rid o' one. What dost think?" he continued to his
wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce
rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the
twittering of a crab's antennae.
"Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much
older, wi' that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o' nights. What's
the matter now, Hetty? What are you crying at?"
"Why, she's been wanting to go for a lady's maid," said Mr. Poyser. "I
tell her we can do better for her nor that."
"I thought she'd got some maggot in her head, she's gone about wi' her
mouth buttoned up so all day. It's all wi' going so among them servants
at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it 'ud be a
finer life than being wi' them as are akin to her and ha' brought her up
sin' she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there's nothing belongs to
being a lady's maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I'll
be bound. It's what rag she can get to stick on her as she's thinking on
from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn't like to be
the mawkin i' the field, for then she'd be made o' rags inside and out.
I'll never gi' my consent to her going for a lady's maid, while she's
got good friends to take care on her till she's married to somebody
better nor one o' them valets, as is neither a common man nor a
gentleman, an' must live on the fat o' the land, an's like enough to
stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife to work for
him."
"Aye, aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we must have a better husband for her nor
that, and there's better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and
get to bed. I'll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady's maid.
Let's hear no more on't."
When Hetty was gone upstairs he said, "I canna make it out as she should
want to go away, for I thought she'd got a mind t' Adam Bede. She's
looked like it o' late."
"Eh, there's no knowing what she's got a liking to, for things take
no more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell,
Molly--as is aggravatin' enough, for the matter o' that--but I believe
she'd care more about leaving us and the children, for all she's been
here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Hetty would. But she's got this
notion o' being a lady's maid wi' going among them servants--we might
ha' known what it 'ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine work.
But I'll put a stop to it pretty quick."
"Thee'dst be sorry to part wi' her, if it wasn't for her good," said Mr.
Poyser. "She's useful to thee i' the work."
"Sorry? Yes, I'm fonder on her nor she deserves--a little hard-hearted
hussy, wanting to leave us i' that way. I can't ha' had her about me
these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything
wi'out caring about her. An' here I'm having linen spun, an' thinking
all the while it'll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she's
married, an' she'll live i' the parish wi' us, and never go out of
our sights--like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no
better nor a cherry wi' a hard stone inside it."
"Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle," said Mr. Poyser,
soothingly. "She's fond on us, I'll be bound; but she's young, an' gets
things in her head as she can't rightly give account on. Them young
fillies 'ull run away often wi'-ou knowing why."
Her uncle's answers, however, had had another effect on Hetty besides
that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom
he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid
husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her
marrying Adam presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where no
strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of
right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet
endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague
clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor
Hetty's vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic
calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut
out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready
for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men
and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery.
Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did, so that
it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still
want to marry her, and any further thought about Adam's happiness in the
matter had never yet visited her.
"Strange!" perhaps you will say, "this rush of impulse to-wards a course
that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind,
and in only the second night of her sadness!"
Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, struggling
amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are
the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy
sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight,
moored in the quiet bay!
"Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings."
But that will not save the vessel--the pretty thing that might have been
a lasting joy.
| 5,623 | Chapter 31 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter31 | In Hetty's Bed-Chamber Hetty waits until bedtime to read Arthur's letter. He says that it is hard on him, but he must say goodbye to her. They cannot be married because they live in different worlds, so they must part for good. If however, any trouble comes, he will do everything to help her. She can write to the address he encloses. Hetty is taken by surprise, and is devastated. She cries herself to sleep, and the next day she only thinks how she can get away from Hall Farm. She asks her uncle if she can go for a lady's maid. He says no; he wants to see her well married. Mrs. Poyser thinks the idea of being a lady's maid came from learning lace-mending and decides to put a stop to it. Hetty begins to think about marrying Adam as an alternative plan; what difference doe it make as long as she can get away? | Commentary on Chapter 31 Hetty's bubble is burst, and she begins to hate Arthur for it. She wants change if she cannot have what she wants. Hetty is not able to evaluate what Arthur has said in the letter about class differences, nor does she wonder if he loves her or worry that she will miss him. She had imagined a different life, and now it is taken away. She doesn't seem to care who she marries as long as she can have what she wants. She decides Adam will do as well as any. The narrator and the reader are the only ones who know at this point how "trivial" Hetty's soul is . She is clever enough to hide herself from her family and from Adam, who believes her to be as good as she looks. Arthur's letter, however, contains some foreshadowing. He alludes to the fact of future trouble and says that he will help her, if it should come. He gives her an address. This is, at least, responsible on Arthur's part. His letter sounds affectionate and caring, even if he is backing out of the relationship at a late point, and only because he was forced into it. He does seem to care what happens to Hetty, though not enough, and always belatedly. He does not have the foresight of Adam or Mr. Irwine, though he is far from cruel. Eliot's point with Arthur seems to be to illustrate how anyone can commit evil, even if basically good. Readers generally identify with good characters. Eliot can make readers uncomfortable by having to identify with the ordinary characters who slip because they are lazy. Who has not looked for an easy way out, or merely got by because everyone else did? She calls her characters and readers to account, for the laws of cause and effect do not excuse anyone. | 225 | 314 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/32.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_32_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 32 | chapter 32 | null | {"name": "Chapter 32", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter32", "summary": "Mrs. Poyser 'Has Her Say Out' The next day Squire Donnithorne visits the Poysers to make a deal with them. He has a possible tenant for the Chase Farm but the man wants more plough land. If the Poysers would give up some plough land, they could have more dairy land and then Mrs. Poyser could make more money with her dairy. The Poysers see through this plan to cheat them of their land. Next, the squire threatens them that if they want their lease renewed, they should comply with his wishes. This is too much for Mrs. Poyser who tells off the squire on behalf of all the tenants for his cheap and miserly ways, for not keeping up the property, and for taking all the profits for himself. He rides off, and Mr. Poyser, though pleased at his wife's action, is worried that they will be evicted.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 32 This is a comic scene where Mrs. Poyser's wit is on display. She mentions that it is worth any price to have had her say, for \"There's no pleasure in living if you're to be corked up for iver\" . When the squire threatens to evict them, she answers that it won't be so easy to find another tenant to take their place because \"a maggot must be born in the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon\" . The Poysers worry that they will be evicted on Michaelmas, twelvemonth. This means they have a year from Michael's Mass on Sept. 29, the date when farming contracts were made. Mrs. Poyser says ironically that there is no telling what could have happened by then. This is another bit of foreshadowing."} |
THE next Saturday evening there was much excited discussion at the
Donnithorne Arms concerning an incident which had occurred that very
day--no less than a second appearance of the smart man in top-boots said
by some to be a mere farmer in treaty for the Chase Farm, by others to
be the future steward, but by Mr. Casson himself, the personal witness
to the stranger's visit, pronounced contemptuously to be nothing better
than a bailiff, such as Satchell had been before him. No one had thought
of denying Mr. Casson's testimony to the fact that he had seen
the stranger; nevertheless, he proffered various corroborating
circumstances.
"I see him myself," he said; "I see him coming along by the Crab-tree
Meadow on a bald-faced hoss. I'd just been t' hev a pint--it was
half after ten i' the fore-noon, when I hev my pint as reg'lar as the
clock--and I says to Knowles, as druv up with his waggon, 'You'll get
a bit o' barley to-day, Knowles,' I says, 'if you look about you'; and
then I went round by the rick-yard, and towart the Treddles'on road, and
just as I come up by the big ash-tree, I see the man i' top-boots coming
along on a bald-faced hoss--I wish I may never stir if I didn't. And I
stood still till he come up, and I says, 'Good morning, sir,' I says,
for I wanted to hear the turn of his tongue, as I might know whether he
was a this-country man; so I says, 'Good morning, sir: it 'll 'old hup
for the barley this morning, I think. There'll be a bit got hin, if
we've good luck.' And he says, 'Eh, ye may be raight, there's noo
tallin',' he says, and I knowed by that"--here Mr. Casson gave a
wink--"as he didn't come from a hundred mile off. I daresay he'd think
me a hodd talker, as you Loamshire folks allays does hany one as talks
the right language."
"The right language!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously. "You're about
as near the right language as a pig's squeaking is like a tune played on
a key-bugle."
"Well, I don't know," answered Mr. Casson, with an angry smile. "I
should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by, is likely to
know what's the right language pretty nigh as well as a schoolmaster."
"Aye, aye, man," said Bartle, with a tone of sarcastic consolation,
"you talk the right language for you. When Mike Holdsworth's goat says
ba-a-a, it's all right--it 'ud be unnatural for it to make any other
noise."
The rest of the party being Loamshire men, Mr. Casson had the laugh
strongly against him, and wisely fell back on the previous question,
which, far from being exhausted in a single evening, was renewed in
the churchyard, before service, the next day, with the fresh interest
conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it; and
that fresh hearer was Martin Poyser, who, as his wife said, "never
went boozin' with that set at Casson's, a-sittin' soakin' in drink, and
looking as wise as a lot o' cod-fish wi' red faces."
It was probably owing to the conversation she had had with her husband
on their way from church concerning this problematic stranger that
Mrs. Poyser's thoughts immediately reverted to him when, a day or two
afterwards, as she was standing at the house-door with her knitting,
in that eager leisure which came to her when the afternoon cleaning was
done, she saw the old squire enter the yard on his black pony,
followed by John the groom. She always cited it afterwards as a case of
prevision, which really had something more in it than her own remarkable
penetration, that the moment she set eyes on the squire she said to
herself, "I shouldna wonder if he's come about that man as is a-going to
take the Chase Farm, wanting Poyser to do something for him without pay.
But Poyser's a fool if he does."
Something unwonted must clearly be in the wind, for the old squire's
visits to his tenantry were rare; and though Mrs. Poyser had during the
last twelvemonth recited many imaginary speeches, meaning even more than
met the ear, which she was quite determined to make to him the next time
he appeared within the gates of the Hall Farm, the speeches had always
remained imaginary.
"Good-day, Mrs. Poyser," said the old squire, peering at her with his
short-sighted eyes--a mode of looking at her which, as Mrs. Poyser
observed, "allays aggravated me: it was as if you was a insect, and he
was going to dab his finger-nail on you."
However, she said, "Your servant, sir," and curtsied with an air of
perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman
to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism,
without severe provocation.
"Is your husband at home, Mrs. Poyser?"
"Yes, sir; he's only i' the rick-yard. I'll send for him in a minute, if
you'll please to get down and step in."
"Thank you; I will do so. I want to consult him about a little matter;
but you are quite as much concerned in it, if not more. I must have your
opinion too."
"Hetty, run and tell your uncle to come in," said Mrs. Poyser, as they
entered the house, and the old gentleman bowed low in answer to Hetty's
curtsy; while Totty, conscious of a pinafore stained with gooseberry
jam, stood hiding her face against the clock and peeping round
furtively.
"What a fine old kitchen this is!" said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round
admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled,
polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. "And you keep it
so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Poyser. I like these premises, do you know,
beyond any on the estate."
"Well, sir, since you're fond of 'em, I should be glad if you'd let a
bit o' repairs be done to 'em, for the boarding's i' that state as we're
like to be eaten up wi' rats and mice; and the cellar, you may stan' up
to your knees i' water in't, if you like to go down; but perhaps you'd
rather believe my words. Won't you please to sit down, sir?"
"Not yet; I must see your dairy. I have not seen it for years, and I
hear on all hands about your fine cheese and butter," said the squire,
looking politely unconscious that there could be any question on which
he and Mrs. Poyser might happen to disagree. "I think I see the door
open, there. You must not be surprised if I cast a covetous eye on your
cream and butter. I don't expect that Mrs. Satchell's cream and butter
will bear comparison with yours."
"I can't say, sir, I'm sure. It's seldom I see other folks's butter,
though there's some on it as one's no need to see--the smell's enough."
"Ah, now this I like," said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round at the damp
temple of cleanliness, but keeping near the door. "I'm sure I should
like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this
dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfortunately, my
slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp: I'll sit down
in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of
business, I see, as usual. I've been looking at your wife's beautiful
dairy--the best manager in the parish, is she not?"
Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirt-sleeves and open waistcoat, with a
face a shade redder than usual, from the exertion of "pitching." As
he stood, red, rotund, and radiant, before the small, wiry, cool old
gentleman, he looked like a prize apple by the side of a withered crab.
"Will you please to take this chair, sir?" he said, lifting his father's
arm-chair forward a little: "you'll find it easy."
"No, thank you, I never sit in easy-chairs," said the old gentleman,
seating himself on a small chair near the door. "Do you know, Mrs.
Poyser--sit down, pray, both of you--I've been far from contented, for
some time, with Mrs. Satchell's dairy management. I think she has not a
good method, as you have."
"Indeed, sir, I can't speak to that," said Mrs. Poyser in a hard voice,
rolling and unrolling her knitting and looking icily out of the window,
as she continued to stand opposite the squire. Poyser might sit down if
he liked, she thought; she wasn't going to sit down, as if she'd give in
to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt the
reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair.
"And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up, I am intending to let the
Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I'm tired of having a farm on my
own hands--nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A
satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Poyser,
and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in
consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage."
"Oh," said Mr. Poyser, with a good-natured blankness of imagination as
to the nature of the arrangement.
"If I'm called upon to speak, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, after glancing at
her husband with pity at his softness, "you know better than me; but I
don't see what the Chase Farm is t' us--we've cumber enough wi' our own
farm. Not but what I'm glad to hear o' anybody respectable coming into
the parish; there's some as ha' been brought in as hasn't been looked on
i' that character."
"You're likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbour, I assure
you--such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little
plan I'm going to mention, especially as I hope you will find it as much
to your own advantage as his."
"Indeed, sir, if it's anything t' our advantage, it'll be the first
offer o' the sort I've heared on. It's them as take advantage that get
advantage i' this world, I think. Folks have to wait long enough afore
it's brought to 'em."
"The fact is, Poyser," said the squire, ignoring Mrs. Poyser's theory of
worldly prosperity, "there is too much dairy land, and too little plough
land, on the Chase Farm to suit Thurle's purpose--indeed, he will only
take the farm on condition of some change in it: his wife, it appears,
is not a clever dairy-woman, like yours. Now, the plan I'm thinking of
is to effect a little exchange. If you were to have the Hollow Pastures,
you might increase your dairy, which must be so profitable under your
wife's management; and I should request you, Mrs. Poyser, to supply my
house with milk, cream, and butter at the market prices. On the other
hand, Poyser, you might let Thurle have the Lower and Upper Ridges,
which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good riddance for you.
There is much less risk in dairy land than corn land."
Mr. Poyser was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head
on one side, and his mouth screwed up--apparently absorbed in making the
tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accuracy the
ribs of a ship. He was much too acute a man not to see through the whole
business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife's view of the
subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers. Unless it was on a
point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a quarrel,
any day; and, after all, it mattered more to his wife than to him. So,
after a few moments' silence, he looked up at her and said mildly, "What
dost say?"
Mrs. Poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity
during his silence, but now she turned away her head with a toss, looked
icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her knitting
together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her clasped hands.
"Say? Why, I say you may do as you like about giving up any o' your
corn-land afore your lease is up, which it won't be for a year come next
Michaelmas, but I'll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands,
either for love or money; and there's nayther love nor money here, as I
can see, on'y other folks's love o' theirselves, and the money as is to
go into other folks's pockets. I know there's them as is born t' own
the land, and them as is born to sweat on't"--here Mrs. Poyser paused
to gasp a little--"and I know it's christened folks's duty to submit to
their betters as fur as flesh and blood 'ull bear it; but I'll not make
a martyr o' myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret
myself as if I was a churn wi' butter a-coming in't, for no landlord in
England, not if he was King George himself."
"No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not," said the squire, still
confident in his own powers of persuasion, "you must not overwork
yourself; but don't you think your work will rather be lessened than
increased in this way? There is so much milk required at the Abbey
that you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from
the addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most
profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?"
"Aye, that's true," said Mr. Poyser, unable to repress an opinion on a
question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case
a purely abstract question.
"I daresay," said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way
towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair--"I daresay
it's true for men as sit i' th' chimney-corner and make believe as
everything's cut wi' ins an' outs to fit int' everything else. If you
could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting
dinner. How do I know whether the milk 'ull be wanted constant? What's
to make me sure as the house won't be put o' board wage afore we're
many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o' nights wi' twenty
gallons o' milk on my mind--and Dingall 'ull take no more butter, let
alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs till we're obliged to beg the
butcher on our knees to buy 'em, and lose half of 'em wi' the measles.
And there's the fetching and carrying, as 'ud be welly half a day's work
for a man an' hoss--that's to be took out o' the profits, I reckon? But
there's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away
the water."
"That difficulty--about the fetching and carrying--you will not have,
Mrs. Poyser," said the squire, who thought that this entrance into
particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs.
Poyser's part. "Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony."
"Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I've never been used t' having
gentlefolks's servants coming about my back places, a-making love to
both the gells at once and keeping 'em with their hands on their hips
listening to all manner o' gossip when they should be down on their
knees a-scouring. If we're to go to ruin, it shanna be wi' having our
back kitchen turned into a public."
"Well, Poyser," said the squire, shifting his tactics and looking as if
he thought Mrs. Poyser had suddenly withdrawn from the proceedings and
left the room, "you can turn the Hollows into feeding-land. I can easily
make another arrangement about supplying my house. And I shall not
forget your readiness to accommodate your landlord as well as a
neighbour. I know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three
years, when the present one expires; otherwise, I daresay Thurle, who
is a man of some capital, would be glad to take both the farms, as they
could be worked so well together. But I don't want to part with an old
tenant like you."
To be thrust out of the discussion in this way would have been enough to
complete Mrs. Poyser's exasperation, even without the final threat.
Her husband, really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old
place where he had been bred and born--for he believed the old squire
had small spite enough for anything--was beginning a mild remonstrance
explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and
sell more stock, with, "Well, sir, I think as it's rether hard..." when
Mrs. Poyser burst in with the desperate determination to have her say
out this once, though it were to rain notices to quit and the only
shelter were the work-house.
"Then, sir, if I may speak--as, for all I'm a woman, and there's folks
as thinks a woman's fool enough to stan' by an' look on while the men
sign her soul away, I've a right to speak, for I make one quarter o' the
rent, and save another quarter--I say, if Mr. Thurle's so ready to take
farms under you, it's a pity but what he should take this, and see if
he likes to live in a house wi' all the plagues o' Egypt in't--wi'
the cellar full o' water, and frogs and toads hoppin' up the steps by
dozens--and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every bit
o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we lie i' bed till we expect
'em to eat us up alive--as it's a mercy they hanna eat the children long
ago. I should like to see if there's another tenant besides Poyser as
'ud put up wi' never having a bit o' repairs done till a place tumbles
down--and not then, on'y wi' begging and praying and having to pay
half--and being strung up wi' the rent as it's much if he gets enough
out o' the land to pay, for all he's put his own money into the ground
beforehand. See if you'll get a stranger to lead such a life here as
that: a maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon.
You may run away from my words, sir," continued Mrs. Poyser, following
the old squire beyond the door--for after the first moments of stunned
surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with a smile,
had walked out towards his pony. But it was impossible for him to get
away immediately, for John was walking the pony up and down the yard,
and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned.
"You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go spinnin' underhand
ways o' doing us a mischief, for you've got Old Harry to your friend,
though nobody else is, but I tell you for once as we're not dumb
creatures to be abused and made money on by them as ha' got the lash i'
their hands, for want o' knowing how t' undo the tackle. An' if I'm th'
only one as speaks my mind, there's plenty o' the same way o' thinking
i' this parish and the next to 't, for your name's no better than a
brimstone match in everybody's nose--if it isna two-three old folks as
you think o' saving your soul by giving 'em a bit o' flannel and a drop
o' porridge. An' you may be right i' thinking it'll take but little to
save your soul, for it'll be the smallest savin' y' iver made, wi' all
your scrapin'."
There are occasions on which two servant-girls and a waggoner may be a
formidable audience, and as the squire rode away on his black pony, even
the gift of short-sightedness did not prevent him from being aware
that Molly and Nancy and Tim were grinning not far from him. Perhaps he
suspected that sour old John was grinning behind him--which was also
the fact. Meanwhile the bull-dog, the black-and-tan terrier, Alick's
sheep-dog, and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony's
heels carried out the idea of Mrs. Poyser's solo in an impressive
quartet.
Mrs. Poyser, however, had no sooner seen the pony move off than she
turned round, gave the two hilarious damsels a look which drove them
into the back kitchen, and unspearing her knitting, began to knit again
with her usual rapidity as she re-entered the house.
"Thee'st done it now," said Mr. Poyser, a little alarmed and uneasy, but
not without some triumphant amusement at his wife's outbreak.
"Yes, I know I've done it," said Mrs. Poyser; "but I've had my say out,
and I shall be th' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i'
living if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind
out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. I shan't repent saying what I
think, if I live to be as old as th' old squire; and there's little
likelihood--for it seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th' only
folks as aren't wanted i' th' other world."
"But thee wutna like moving from th' old place, this Michaelmas
twelvemonth," said Mr. Poyser, "and going into a strange parish, where
thee know'st nobody. It'll be hard upon us both, and upo' Father too."
"Eh, it's no use worreting; there's plenty o' things may happen between
this and Michaelmas twelvemonth. The captain may be master afore them,
for what we know," said Mrs. Poyser, inclined to take an unusually
hopeful view of an embarrassment which had been brought about by her own
merit and not by other people's fault.
"I'm none for worreting," said Mr. Poyser, rising from his
three-cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door; "but I should
be loath to leave th' old place, and the parish where I was bred and
born, and Father afore me. We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt,
and niver thrive again."
| 6,021 | Chapter 32 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter32 | Mrs. Poyser 'Has Her Say Out' The next day Squire Donnithorne visits the Poysers to make a deal with them. He has a possible tenant for the Chase Farm but the man wants more plough land. If the Poysers would give up some plough land, they could have more dairy land and then Mrs. Poyser could make more money with her dairy. The Poysers see through this plan to cheat them of their land. Next, the squire threatens them that if they want their lease renewed, they should comply with his wishes. This is too much for Mrs. Poyser who tells off the squire on behalf of all the tenants for his cheap and miserly ways, for not keeping up the property, and for taking all the profits for himself. He rides off, and Mr. Poyser, though pleased at his wife's action, is worried that they will be evicted. | Commentary on Chapter 32 This is a comic scene where Mrs. Poyser's wit is on display. She mentions that it is worth any price to have had her say, for "There's no pleasure in living if you're to be corked up for iver" . When the squire threatens to evict them, she answers that it won't be so easy to find another tenant to take their place because "a maggot must be born in the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon" . The Poysers worry that they will be evicted on Michaelmas, twelvemonth. This means they have a year from Michael's Mass on Sept. 29, the date when farming contracts were made. Mrs. Poyser says ironically that there is no telling what could have happened by then. This is another bit of foreshadowing. | 221 | 134 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/33.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_33_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 33 | chapter 33 | null | {"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter33", "summary": "More Links It is harvest time, and Mrs. Poyser is the heroine of the valley for speaking her mind to the old squire. Mr. Irwine and his mother admire Mrs. Poyser for her backbone but doubt the old squire will be around much longer. Both Mrs. Poyser and Adam notice changes in Hetty after she receives the letter. She is quieter, more cooperative and less vain. She does her work without scolding and does not want to go anywhere. Adam takes it as a sign she is getting over Arthur. He feels hopeful. The narrator comments on Adam's love for Hetty. On the one hand, he falls in love with her because of the way she looks; he has no idea who she is. But, the narrator thinks Adam's love comes from his strength not his weakness, for love is like a mysterious music set off by beauty, and Hetty touches all the deep places in Adam. His work is prospering, and he can think of marriage. Jonathan Burge offers him a partnership, and so with his two jobs, he can afford to buy a house.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 33 Readers will understand more than Adam does about Hetty's changes. She seems to be hiding away, not wanting to call attention to herself. She has a harder, more mature look. She tries to be agreeable to Adam. She may already suspect that she is pregnant. In any case, she has been abandoned by Arthur and now plays up to Adam, dressing as he likes and acting demure. She is no trouble to her aunt. She depends on others now and must hide what she has done. The narrator tries to speculate on Adam's illusions about Hetty. Are they foolish or noble? They proceed from a noble mind who attributes its own nobility to another, but the love Adam feels is deep nonetheless. If it is an error, it is the error of a good person, one who does not know the minds of women. Eliot, however, by showing us the depth of each character, brings out the contradictions, complexity, and mystery of the human being. We assume we know others, but even people we are close to may not know us. The Poysers have raised Hetty and still they have no idea of the misery she is able to plunge all them into in just a few months."} |
THE barley was all carried at last, and the harvest suppers went by
without waiting for the dismal black crop of beans. The apples and
nuts were gathered and stored; the scent of whey departed from the
farm-houses, and the scent of brewing came in its stead. The woods
behind the Chase, and all the hedgerow trees, took on a solemn splendour
under the dark low-hanging skies. Michaelmas was come, with its fragrant
basketfuls of purple damsons, and its paler purple daisies, and its
lads and lasses leaving or seeking service and winding along between
the yellow hedges, with their bundles under their arms. But though
Michaelmas was come, Mr. Thurle, that desirable tenant, did not come to
the Chase Farm, and the old squire, after all, had been obliged to put
in a new bailiff. It was known throughout the two parishes that the
squire's plan had been frustrated because the Poysers had refused to
be "put upon," and Mrs. Poyser's outbreak was discussed in all
the farm-houses with a zest which was only heightened by frequent
repetition. The news that "Bony" was come back from Egypt was
comparatively insipid, and the repulse of the French in Italy was
nothing to Mrs. Poyser's repulse of the old squire. Mr. Irwine had heard
a version of it in every parishioner's house, with the one exception of
the Chase. But since he had always, with marvellous skill, avoided any
quarrel with Mr. Donnithorne, he could not allow himself the pleasure
of laughing at the old gentleman's discomfiture with any one besides his
mother, who declared that if she were rich she should like to allow Mrs.
Poyser a pension for life, and wanted to invite her to the parsonage
that she might hear an account of the scene from Mrs. Poyser's own lips.
"No, no, Mother," said Mr. Irwine; "it was a little bit of irregular
justice on Mrs. Poyser's part, but a magistrate like me must not
countenance irregular justice. There must be no report spread that I
have taken notice of the quarrel, else I shall lose the little good
influence I have over the old man."
"Well, I like that woman even better than her cream-cheeses," said Mrs.
Irwine. "She has the spirit of three men, with that pale face of hers.
And she says such sharp things too."
"Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor. She's quite original
in her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country
with proverbs. I told you that capital thing I heard her say about
Craig--that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear
him crow. Now that's an AEsop's fable in a sentence."
"But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of
the farm next Michaelmas, eh?" said Mrs. Irwine.
"Oh, that must not be; and Poyser is such a good tenant that Donnithorne
is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than turn them
out. But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Arthur and I must
move heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners as they are
must not go."
"Ah, there's no knowing what may happen before Lady day," said Mrs.
Irwine. "It struck me on Arthur's birthday that the old man was a little
shaken: he's eighty-three, you know. It's really an unconscionable age.
It's only women who have a right to live as long as that."
"When they've got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them,"
said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother's hand.
Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband's occasional forebodings of a notice
to quit with "There's no knowing what may happen before Lady day"--one
of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to
convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really
too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to
imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three. It is
not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good subjects
under that hard condition.
Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Poyser
household. Mrs. Poyser thought she noticed a surprising improvement
in Hetty. To be sure, the girl got "closer tempered, and sometimes she
seemed as if there'd be no drawing a word from her with cart-ropes,"
but she thought much less about her dress, and went after the work quite
eagerly, without any telling. And it was wonderful how she never wanted
to go out now--indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she bore
her aunt's putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the Chase
without the least grumbling or pouting. It must be, after all, that she
had set her heart on Adam at last, and her sudden freak of wanting to
be a lady's maid must have been caused by some little pique or
misunderstanding between them, which had passed by. For whenever Adam
came to the Hall Farm, Hetty seemed to be in better spirits and to talk
more than at other times, though she was almost sullen when Mr. Craig or
any other admirer happened to pay a visit there.
Adam himself watched her at first with trembling anxiety, which gave
way to surprise and delicious hope. Five days after delivering Arthur's
letter, he had ventured to go to the Hall Farm again--not without
dread lest the sight of him might be painful to her. She was not in the
house-place when he entered, and he sat talking to Mr. and Mrs. Poyser
for a few minutes with a heavy fear on his heart that they might
presently tell him Hetty was ill. But by and by there came a light step
that he knew, and when Mrs. Poyser said, "Come, Hetty, where have you
been?" Adam was obliged to turn round, though he was afraid to see the
changed look there must be in her face. He almost started when he saw
her smiling as if she were pleased to see him--looking the same as ever
at a first glance, only that she had her cap on, which he had never seen
her in before when he came of an evening. Still, when he looked at
her again and again as she moved about or sat at her work, there was a
change: the cheeks were as pink as ever, and she smiled as much as she
had ever done of late, but there was something different in her eyes,
in the expression of her face, in all her movements, Adam
thought--something harder, older, less child-like. "Poor thing!" he
said to himself, "that's allays likely. It's because she's had her first
heartache. But she's got a spirit to bear up under it. Thank God for
that."
As the weeks went by, and he saw her always looking pleased to see
him--turning up her lovely face towards him as if she meant him to
understand that she was glad for him to come--and going about her work
in the same equable way, making no sign of sorrow, he began to believe
that her feeling towards Arthur must have been much slighter than he had
imagined in his first indignation and alarm, and that she had been able
to think of her girlish fancy that Arthur was in love with her and would
marry her as a folly of which she was timely cured. And it perhaps was,
as he had sometimes in his more cheerful moments hoped it would be--her
heart was really turning with all the more warmth towards the man she
knew to have a serious love for her.
Possibly you think that Adam was not at all sagacious in his
interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a
sensible man to behave as he did--falling in love with a girl who really
had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary
virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had
fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a patient
trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him. But in
so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find
rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible
men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance,
see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine
themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all
proper occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every
respect--indeed, so as to compel the approbation of all the maiden
ladies in their neighbourhood. But even to this rule an exception will
occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was
one. For my own part, however, I respect him none the less--nay, I think
the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed
Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the
very strength of his nature and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is
it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? To feel its
wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the
delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding
together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration,
melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has
been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one
emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of
self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow and
your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it
a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's
cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or
the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is
like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and
far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius
have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them. It is more
than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a
far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself
there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more
than their prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known
of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this
impersonal expression in beauty (it is needless to say that there are
gentlemen with whiskers dyed and undyed who see none of it whatever),
and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to
the character of the one woman's soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I
fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to continue for a long time
to come, in spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the best
receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind.
Our good Adam had no fine words into which he could put his feeling for
Hetty: he could not disguise mystery in this way with the appearance of
knowledge; he called his love frankly a mystery, as you have heard him.
He only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply, touching
the spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage within
him. How could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in her?
He created the mind he believed in out of his own, which was large,
unselfish, tender.
The hopes he felt about Hetty softened a little his feeling towards
Arthur. Surely his attentions to Hetty must have been of a slight kind;
they were altogether wrong, and such as no man in Arthur's position
ought to have allowed himself, but they must have had an air of
playfulness about them, which had probably blinded him to their danger
and had prevented them from laying any strong hold on Hetty's heart. As
the new promise of happiness rose for Adam, his indignation and jealousy
began to die out. Hetty was not made unhappy; he almost believed that
she liked him best; and the thought sometimes crossed his mind that the
friendship which had once seemed dead for ever might revive in the days
to come, and he would not have to say "good-bye" to the grand old woods,
but would like them better because they were Arthur's. For this new
promise of happiness following so quickly on the shock of pain had an
intoxicating effect on the sober Adam, who had all his life been used to
much hardship and moderate hope. Was he really going to have an easy
lot after all? It seemed so, for at the beginning of November, Jonathan
Burge, finding it impossible to replace Adam, had at last made up his
mind to offer him a share in the business, without further condition
than that he should continue to give his energies to it and renounce
all thought of having a separate business of his own. Son-in-law or no
son-in-law, Adam had made himself too necessary to be parted with,
and his headwork was so much more important to Burge than his skill
in handicraft that his having the management of the woods made little
difference in the value of his services; and as to the bargains about
the squire's timber, it would be easy to call in a third person. Adam
saw here an opening into a broadening path of prosperous work such as he
had thought of with ambitious longing ever since he was a lad: he might
come to build a bridge, or a town hall, or a factory, for he had always
said to himself that Jonathan Burge's building business was like an
acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree. So he gave his hand
to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his mind full of happy
visions, in which (my refined reader will perhaps be shocked when I
say it) the image of Hetty hovered, and smiled over plans for seasoning
timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to the cheapening of
bricks per thousand by water-carriage, and a favourite scheme for the
strengthening of roofs and walls with a peculiar form of iron girder.
What then? Adam's enthusiasm lay in these things; and our love is
inwrought in our enthusiasm as electricity is inwrought in the air,
exalting its power by a subtle presence.
Adam would be able to take a separate house now, and provide for his
mother in the old one; his prospects would justify his marrying very
soon, and if Dinah consented to have Seth, their mother would perhaps
be more contented to live apart from Adam. But he told himself that he
would not be hasty--he would not try Hetty's feeling for him until it
had had time to grow strong and firm. However, tomorrow, after church,
he would go to the Hall Farm and tell them the news. Mr. Poyser, he
knew, would like it better than a five-pound note, and he should see if
Hetty's eyes brightened at it. The months would be short with all he had
to fill his mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come over him of
late must not hurry him into any premature words. Yet when he got home
and told his mother the good news, and ate his supper, while she sat
by almost crying for joy and wanting him to eat twice as much as usual
because of this good-luck, he could not help preparing her gently for
the coming change by talking of the old house being too small for them
all to go on living in it always.
| 3,750 | Chapter 33 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter33 | More Links It is harvest time, and Mrs. Poyser is the heroine of the valley for speaking her mind to the old squire. Mr. Irwine and his mother admire Mrs. Poyser for her backbone but doubt the old squire will be around much longer. Both Mrs. Poyser and Adam notice changes in Hetty after she receives the letter. She is quieter, more cooperative and less vain. She does her work without scolding and does not want to go anywhere. Adam takes it as a sign she is getting over Arthur. He feels hopeful. The narrator comments on Adam's love for Hetty. On the one hand, he falls in love with her because of the way she looks; he has no idea who she is. But, the narrator thinks Adam's love comes from his strength not his weakness, for love is like a mysterious music set off by beauty, and Hetty touches all the deep places in Adam. His work is prospering, and he can think of marriage. Jonathan Burge offers him a partnership, and so with his two jobs, he can afford to buy a house. | Commentary on Chapter 33 Readers will understand more than Adam does about Hetty's changes. She seems to be hiding away, not wanting to call attention to herself. She has a harder, more mature look. She tries to be agreeable to Adam. She may already suspect that she is pregnant. In any case, she has been abandoned by Arthur and now plays up to Adam, dressing as he likes and acting demure. She is no trouble to her aunt. She depends on others now and must hide what she has done. The narrator tries to speculate on Adam's illusions about Hetty. Are they foolish or noble? They proceed from a noble mind who attributes its own nobility to another, but the love Adam feels is deep nonetheless. If it is an error, it is the error of a good person, one who does not know the minds of women. Eliot, however, by showing us the depth of each character, brings out the contradictions, complexity, and mystery of the human being. We assume we know others, but even people we are close to may not know us. The Poysers have raised Hetty and still they have no idea of the misery she is able to plunge all them into in just a few months. | 266 | 212 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/34.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_34_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 34 | chapter 34 | null | {"name": "Chapter 34", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter34", "summary": "The Betrothal Adam walks Hetty home after church one Sunday in November. He asks her to take his arm. He is more impatient about her now and is waiting for a sign from Hetty to declare his love. He tells her his good news about becoming a partner with Jonathan Burge. Suddenly, she is alarmed, for she remembers that the partnership was supposed to be coupled with an engagement to Mary Burge. Just when she was counting on Adam, he seems to slip away. She cries, and Adam guesses it is because of Mary Burge. He believes Hetty has come to love him and proposes marriage. She accepts. They rush home to tell the Poysers, who are overjoyed. It is what they had wished. They set the marriage date for the spring so they will have time to get ready. Mr. Poyser tells Hetty to kiss Adam, and she turns away. Then he tells Adam he should kiss his fiancee. Adam gives Hetty a kiss on the lips. Hetty feels nothing for Adam, but she is content to be loved and taken care of. It's not Arthur or what she expected, but it will do.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 34 Readers will know why Hetty has \"more luxuriant womanliness\" than before, but Adam does not guess the possible reason. Adam does not seem to take it ill that Hetty does not come forth with a kiss on her own. Perhaps he thinks her shy. It is obvious she is looking for security, for she no longer has youthful hopes of love. The reader certainly guesses Hetty is pregnant and wonders if she knows. Although a woman today would certainly know by this time she was going to have a baby, Hetty is probably ignorant of such things and has no one to ask. Eliot never says outright that Hetty is pregnant, but it becomes plain in the next chapter. Knowing what we know about Hetty, there is no way this marriage could be happy. Even if disaster were not waiting, Adam would surely be disappointed to find Hetty did not love him. Her pretense could not hold up for long. For the moment, he is deliriously happy; his life has purpose and direction now."} |
IT was a dry Sunday, and really a pleasant day for the 2d of November.
There was no sunshine, but the clouds were high, and the wind was so
still that the yellow leaves which fluttered down from the hedgerow elms
must have fallen from pure decay. Nevertheless, Mrs. Poyser did not go
to church, for she had taken a cold too serious to be neglected; only
two winters ago she had been laid up for weeks with a cold; and since
his wife did not go to church, Mr. Poyser considered that on the whole
it would be as well for him to stay away too and "keep her company." He
could perhaps have given no precise form to the reasons that determined
this conclusion, but it is well known to all experienced minds that our
firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which
words are quite too coarse a medium. However it was, no one from the
Poyser family went to church that afternoon except Hetty and the boys;
yet Adam was bold enough to join them after church, and say that he
would walk home with them, though all the way through the village he
appeared to be chiefly occupied with Marty and Tommy, telling them about
the squirrels in Binton Coppice, and promising to take them there some
day. But when they came to the fields he said to the boys, "Now, then,
which is the stoutest walker? Him as gets to th' home-gate first shall
be the first to go with me to Binton Coppice on the donkey. But Tommy
must have the start up to the next stile, because he's the smallest."
Adam had never behaved so much like a determined lover before. As soon
as the boys had both set off, he looked down at Hetty and said, "Won't
you hang on my arm, Hetty?" in a pleading tone, as if he had already
asked her and she had refused. Hetty looked up at him smilingly and put
her round arm through his in a moment. It was nothing to her, putting
her arm through Adam's, but she knew he cared a great deal about having
her arm through his, and she wished him to care. Her heart beat no
faster, and she looked at the half-bare hedgerows and the ploughed field
with the same sense of oppressive dulness as before. But Adam scarcely
felt that he was walking. He thought Hetty must know that he was
pressing her arm a little--a very little. Words rushed to his lips that
he dared not utter--that he had made up his mind not to utter yet--and
so he was silent for the length of that field. The calm patience
with which he had once waited for Hetty's love, content only with her
presence and the thought of the future, had forsaken him since that
terrible shock nearly three months ago. The agitations of jealousy had
given a new restlessness to his passion--had made fear and uncertainty
too hard almost to bear. But though he might not speak to Hetty of his
love, he would tell her about his new prospects and see if she would be
pleased. So when he was enough master of himself to talk, he said, "I'm
going to tell your uncle some news that'll surprise him, Hetty; and I
think he'll be glad to hear it too."
"What's that?" Hetty said indifferently.
"Why, Mr. Burge has offered me a share in his business, and I'm going to
take it."
There was a change in Hetty's face, certainly not produced by any
agreeable impression from this news. In fact she felt a momentary
annoyance and alarm, for she had so often heard it hinted by her uncle
that Adam might have Mary Burge and a share in the business any day,
if he liked, that she associated the two objects now, and the thought
immediately occurred that perhaps Adam had given her up because of
what had happened lately, and had turned towards Mary Burge. With that
thought, and before she had time to remember any reasons why it could
not be true, came a new sense of forsakenness and disappointment. The
one thing--the one person--her mind had rested on in its dull weariness,
had slipped away from her, and peevish misery filled her eyes with
tears. She was looking on the ground, but Adam saw her face, saw the
tears, and before he had finished saying, "Hetty, dear Hetty, what
are you crying for?" his eager rapid thought had flown through all the
causes conceivable to him, and had at last alighted on half the true
one. Hetty thought he was going to marry Mary Burge--she didn't like him
to marry--perhaps she didn't like him to marry any one but herself? All
caution was swept away--all reason for it was gone, and Adam could feel
nothing but trembling joy. He leaned towards her and took her hand, as
he said:
"I could afford to be married now, Hetty--I could make a wife
comfortable; but I shall never want to be married if you won't have me."
Hetty looked up at him and smiled through her tears, as she had done to
Arthur that first evening in the wood, when she had thought he was not
coming, and yet he came. It was a feebler relief, a feebler triumph she
felt now, but the great dark eyes and the sweet lips were as beautiful
as ever, perhaps more beautiful, for there was a more luxuriant
womanliness about Hetty of late. Adam could hardly believe in the
happiness of that moment. His right hand held her left, and he pressed
her arm close against his heart as he leaned down towards her.
"Do you really love me, Hetty? Will you be my own wife, to love and take
care of as long as I live?"
Hetty did not speak, but Adam's face was very close to hers, and she
put up her round cheek against his, like a kitten. She wanted to be
caressed--she wanted to feel as if Arthur were with her again.
Adam cared for no words after that, and they hardly spoke through the
rest of the walk. He only said, "I may tell your uncle and aunt, mayn't
I, Hetty?" and she said, "Yes."
The red fire-light on the hearth at the Hall Farm shone on joyful faces
that evening, when Hetty was gone upstairs and Adam took the opportunity
of telling Mr. and Mrs. Poyser and the grandfather that he saw his way
to maintaining a wife now, and that Hetty had consented to have him.
"I hope you have no objections against me for her husband," said Adam;
"I'm a poor man as yet, but she shall want nothing as I can work for."
"Objections?" said Mr. Poyser, while the grandfather leaned forward and
brought out his long "Nay, nay." "What objections can we ha' to you,
lad? Never mind your being poorish as yet; there's money in your
head-piece as there's money i' the sown field, but it must ha' time.
You'n got enough to begin on, and we can do a deal tow'rt the bit o'
furniture you'll want. Thee'st got feathers and linen to spare--plenty,
eh?"
This question was of course addressed to Mrs. Poyser, who was wrapped up
in a warm shawl and was too hoarse to speak with her usual facility.
At first she only nodded emphatically, but she was presently unable to
resist the temptation to be more explicit.
"It ud be a poor tale if I hadna feathers and linen," she said,
hoarsely, "when I never sell a fowl but what's plucked, and the wheel's
a-going every day o' the week."
"Come, my wench," said Mr. Poyser, when Hetty came down, "come and kiss
us, and let us wish you luck."
Hetty went very quietly and kissed the big good-natured man.
"There!" he said, patting her on the back, "go and kiss your aunt and
your grandfather. I'm as wishful t' have you settled well as if you was
my own daughter; and so's your aunt, I'll be bound, for she's done by
you this seven 'ear, Hetty, as if you'd been her own. Come, come, now,"
he went on, becoming jocose, as soon as Hetty had kissed her aunt and
the old man, "Adam wants a kiss too, I'll warrant, and he's a right to
one now."
Hetty turned away, smiling, towards her empty chair.
"Come, Adam, then, take one," persisted Mr. Poyser, "else y' arena half
a man."
Adam got up, blushing like a small maiden--great strong fellow as he
was--and, putting his arm round Hetty stooped down and gently kissed her
lips.
It was a pretty scene in the red fire-light; for there were no
candles--why should there be, when the fire was so bright and was
reflected from all the pewter and the polished oak? No one wanted to
work on a Sunday evening. Even Hetty felt something like contentment
in the midst of all this love. Adam's attachment to her, Adam's caress,
stirred no passion in her, were no longer enough to satisfy her vanity,
but they were the best her life offered her now--they promised her some
change.
There was a great deal of discussion before Adam went away, about the
possibility of his finding a house that would do for him to settle in.
No house was empty except the one next to Will Maskery's in the village,
and that was too small for Adam now. Mr. Poyser insisted that the best
plan would be for Seth and his mother to move and leave Adam in the old
home, which might be enlarged after a while, for there was plenty of
space in the woodyard and garden; but Adam objected to turning his
mother out.
"Well, well," said Mr. Poyser at last, "we needna fix everything
to-night. We must take time to consider. You canna think o' getting
married afore Easter. I'm not for long courtships, but there must be a
bit o' time to make things comfortable."
"Aye, to be sure," said Mrs. Poyser, in a hoarse whisper; "Christian
folks can't be married like cuckoos, I reckon."
"I'm a bit daunted, though," said Mr. Poyser, "when I think as we may
have notice to quit, and belike be forced to take a farm twenty mile
off."
"Eh," said the old man, staring at the floor and lifting his hands up
and down, while his arms rested on the elbows of his chair, "it's a poor
tale if I mun leave th' ould spot an be buried in a strange parish. An'
you'll happen ha' double rates to pay," he added, looking up at his son.
"Well, thee mustna fret beforehand, father," said Martin the younger.
"Happen the captain 'ull come home and make our peace wi' th' old
squire. I build upo' that, for I know the captain 'll see folks righted
if he can."
| 2,690 | Chapter 34 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter34 | The Betrothal Adam walks Hetty home after church one Sunday in November. He asks her to take his arm. He is more impatient about her now and is waiting for a sign from Hetty to declare his love. He tells her his good news about becoming a partner with Jonathan Burge. Suddenly, she is alarmed, for she remembers that the partnership was supposed to be coupled with an engagement to Mary Burge. Just when she was counting on Adam, he seems to slip away. She cries, and Adam guesses it is because of Mary Burge. He believes Hetty has come to love him and proposes marriage. She accepts. They rush home to tell the Poysers, who are overjoyed. It is what they had wished. They set the marriage date for the spring so they will have time to get ready. Mr. Poyser tells Hetty to kiss Adam, and she turns away. Then he tells Adam he should kiss his fiancee. Adam gives Hetty a kiss on the lips. Hetty feels nothing for Adam, but she is content to be loved and taken care of. It's not Arthur or what she expected, but it will do. | Commentary on Chapter 34 Readers will know why Hetty has "more luxuriant womanliness" than before, but Adam does not guess the possible reason. Adam does not seem to take it ill that Hetty does not come forth with a kiss on her own. Perhaps he thinks her shy. It is obvious she is looking for security, for she no longer has youthful hopes of love. The reader certainly guesses Hetty is pregnant and wonders if she knows. Although a woman today would certainly know by this time she was going to have a baby, Hetty is probably ignorant of such things and has no one to ask. Eliot never says outright that Hetty is pregnant, but it becomes plain in the next chapter. Knowing what we know about Hetty, there is no way this marriage could be happy. Even if disaster were not waiting, Adam would surely be disappointed to find Hetty did not love him. Her pretense could not hold up for long. For the moment, he is deliriously happy; his life has purpose and direction now. | 267 | 178 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/35.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_35_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 35 | chapter 35 | null | {"name": "Chapter 35", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter35", "summary": "The Hidden Dread Adam doesn't see much of Hetty during the winter between November and February because he is working two jobs and getting ready for the wedding in March. Two rooms are prepared for Hetty and Adam in the Bede home, so that Seth and Lisbeth can stay in the house. Adam does not know why Hetty seems depressed sometimes and thinks it's because of his mother living with them. Mrs. Poyser is surprised at Hetty's ability to take on extra housework at Hall Farm and assumes she is learning how to be a housewife. In February Hetty goes to Treddleston to get some things for her wedding. She wears her red cloak and bonnet and wanders about in a daze, feeling lost. When she looks at a pond and wonders if she could drown herself in it, it is understood that she is pregnant. The narrator finally answers the reader's questions about Hetty's condition, but indirectly, since she cannot discuss it openly with a Victorian audience. She calls the pregnancy \"the hidden dread\" and says Hetty only found out after her engagement to Adam. The narrator gives pride as a reason Hetty does not tell anyone. She thinks Arthur cannot do anything for her because her one dread is discovery, and he cannot save her from that. Now, she thinks she must run away. The only thought is that she has to hide, so that no one will ever know what happened to her. Telling her aunt she is going to see Dinah Morris for a while, she leaves by coach, silently crying tears at parting from Adam, who had given her love and protection. They will not miss her for at least two weeks. She plans to go to Arthur at Windsor, for surely he will take care of her. She knows she will never see home again.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 35 This is the last chapter of the fourth book, the book where the consequences of the love affair between Hetty and Arthur come out. It opened with the crisis of Adam seeing them kiss, and it ends with Hetty running away, approximately eight months pregnant, trying to escape discovery. The next book will reveal the full tragedy. The narrator tries to explain Hetty's puzzling behavior. She doesn't really understand she is pregnant for a long time, apparently, a detail hard for a modern reader to swallow. Her character has been explained, however, as not wanting to face unpleasant facts. And, most women at this time were ignorant of anatomy and sex, having to learn things from other women. Hetty, like Arthur, depends on the opinions others have of her. She seems to have little moral integrity of her own. For instance, she never seems to give one thought to the baby or what she could do for it. She waits so long to admit the problem and to do anything, because like Arthur, she thinks something will happen to save her from this fate, a miscarriage perhaps. Equally hard to understand is how she could hide it, but with aprons and cloaks, it might be possible. One also wonders why she waits to contact Arthur as he told her to do if there was any trouble. The narrator explains that Hetty does not think that Arthur could cover up for her. He can take care of her and give her money, but he cannot save her reputation. This reminds us again of the small town atmosphere. If she goes to anyone she knows for help--Arthur and Dinah are the two who might do something--they would have to let her family and friends know. In her pride, she believes herself alone in her suffering, and the best solution for her is to disappear, so at least her reputation will be saved. Hetty's reasoning is not that of an adult, and by shifting to Hetty's childish and fearful point of view in this chapter and in the fifth book, Eliot does something surprising no doubt for a Victorian audience. She does not try to excuse Hetty as a fallen woman, but she makes her plight sympathetic and understandable. We must have human pity for her. Her grief and fear make her close to insane in her thinking and actions. Arthur had thought to himself that even in the worst case, he could help Hetty, make it up to her, and make her glad that she had been with him. The evil consequences are more than he could have imagined and cannot be fixed with money. Anyone would be sorely tested by this trial, but Hetty does not have the inner resources or faith, like Dinah would, to survive such an experience and to make courageous choices."} |
IT was a busy time for Adam--the time between the beginning of November
and the beginning of February, and he could see little of Hetty, except
on Sundays. But a happy time, nevertheless, for it was taking him nearer
and nearer to March, when they were to be married, and all the little
preparations for their new housekeeping marked the progress towards the
longed-for day. Two new rooms had been "run up" to the old house, for
his mother and Seth were to live with them after all. Lisbeth had cried
so piteously at the thought of leaving Adam that he had gone to Hetty
and asked her if, for the love of him, she would put up with his
mother's ways and consent to live with her. To his great delight, Hetty
said, "Yes; I'd as soon she lived with us as not." Hetty's mind was
oppressed at that moment with a worse difficulty than poor Lisbeth's
ways; she could not care about them. So Adam was consoled for the
disappointment he had felt when Seth had come back from his visit to
Snowfield and said "it was no use--Dinah's heart wasna turned towards
marrying." For when he told his mother that Hetty was willing they
should all live together and there was no more need of them to think of
parting, she said, in a more contented tone than he had heard her speak
in since it had been settled that he was to be married, "Eh, my lad,
I'll be as still as th' ould tabby, an' ne'er want to do aught but
th' offal work, as she wonna like t' do. An' then we needna part the
platters an' things, as ha' stood on the shelf together sin' afore thee
wast born."
There was only one cloud that now and then came across Adam's sunshine:
Hetty seemed unhappy sometimes. But to all his anxious, tender
questions, she replied with an assurance that she was quite contented
and wished nothing different; and the next time he saw her she was more
lively than usual. It might be that she was a little overdone with work
and anxiety now, for soon after Christmas Mrs. Poyser had taken another
cold, which had brought on inflammation, and this illness had confined
her to her room all through January. Hetty had to manage everything
downstairs, and half-supply Molly's place too, while that good damsel
waited on her mistress, and she seemed to throw herself so entirely into
her new functions, working with a grave steadiness which was new in her,
that Mr. Poyser often told Adam she was wanting to show him what a
good housekeeper he would have; but he "doubted the lass was o'erdoing
it--she must have a bit o' rest when her aunt could come downstairs."
This desirable event of Mrs. Poyser's coming downstairs happened in the
early part of February, when some mild weather thawed the last patch of
snow on the Binton Hills. On one of these days, soon after her aunt came
down, Hetty went to Treddleston to buy some of the wedding things which
were wanting, and which Mrs. Poyser had scolded her for neglecting,
observing that she supposed "it was because they were not for th'
outside, else she'd ha' bought 'em fast enough."
It was about ten o'clock when Hetty set off, and the slight hoar-frost
that had whitened the hedges in the early morning had disappeared as
the sun mounted the cloudless sky. Bright February days have a stronger
charm of hope about them than any other days in the year. One likes
to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the
patient plough-horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that
the beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the
same: their notes are as clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on
the trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy fields are! And
the dark purplish brown of the ploughed earth and of the bare branches
is beautiful too. What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or
rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so
when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me
like our English Loamshire--the rich land tilled with just as much care,
the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have
come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not
in Loamshire: an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has
stood perhaps by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad sunshine
by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was
gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who
knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony
would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous
nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or
among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there
might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps a young
blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing
shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost
lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath,
yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness.
Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the
blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came
close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear
with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in
it: no wonder he needs a suffering God.
Hetty, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is
turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not that
she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think
with hope of the long unfolding year. She hardly knows that the sun is
shining; and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for
something at which she herself trembles and shudders. She only wants to
be out of the high-road, that she may walk slowly and not care how her
face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts; and through this gate
she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows. Her great
dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who is
desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave tender
man. But there are no tears in them: her tears were all wept away in
the weary night, before she went to sleep. At the next stile the pathway
branches off: there are two roads before her--one along by the hedgerow,
which will by and by lead her into the road again, the other across
the fields, which will take her much farther out of the way into the
Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see nobody. She chooses
this and begins to walk a little faster, as if she had suddenly thought
of an object towards which it was worth while to hasten. Soon she is in
the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes gradually downwards, and
she leaves the level ground to follow the slope. Farther on there is a
clump of trees on the low ground, and she is making her way towards it.
No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with
the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low
beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the
stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has
thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone
by, and now at last she is come to see it. She clasps her hands round
her knees, and leans forward, and looks earnestly at it, as if trying to
guess what sort of bed it would make for her young round limbs.
No, she has not courage to jump into that cold watery bed, and if
she had, they might find her--they might find out why she had drowned
herself. There is but one thing left to her: she must go away, go where
they can't find her.
After the first on-coming of her great dread, some weeks after her
betrothal to Adam, she had waited and waited, in the blind vague hope
that something would happen to set her free from her terror; but she
could wait no longer. All the force of her nature had been concentrated
on the one effort of concealment, and she had shrunk with irresistible
dread from every course that could tend towards a betrayal of her
miserable secret. Whenever the thought of writing to Arthur had occurred
to her, she had rejected it. He could do nothing for her that would
shelter her from discovery and scorn among the relatives and neighbours
who once more made all her world, now her airy dream had vanished. Her
imagination no longer saw happiness with Arthur, for he could do
nothing that would satisfy or soothe her pride. No, something else
would happen--something must happen--to set her free from this dread. In
young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in
some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that
a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they
will die.
But now necessity was pressing hard upon her--now the time of her
marriage was close at hand--she could no longer rest in this blind
trust. She must run away; she must hide herself where no familiar eyes
could detect her; and then the terror of wandering out into the world,
of which she knew nothing, made the possibility of going to Arthur a
thought which brought some comfort with it. She felt so helpless now, so
unable to fashion the future for herself, that the prospect of throwing
herself on him had a relief in it which was stronger than her pride. As
she sat by the pool and shuddered at the dark cold water, the hope that
he would receive her tenderly--that he would care for her and think for
her--was like a sense of lulling warmth, that made her for the moment
indifferent to everything else; and she began now to think of nothing
but the scheme by which she should get away.
She had had a letter from Dinah lately, full of kind words about the
coming marriage, which she had heard of from Seth; and when Hetty had
read this letter aloud to her uncle, he had said, "I wish Dinah 'ud come
again now, for she'd be a comfort to your aunt when you're gone. What
do you think, my wench, o' going to see her as soon as you can be spared
and persuading her to come back wi' you? You might happen persuade her
wi' telling her as her aunt wants her, for all she writes o' not being
able to come." Hetty had not liked the thought of going to Snowfield,
and felt no longing to see Dinah, so she only said, "It's so far off,
Uncle." But now she thought this proposed visit would serve as a pretext
for going away. She would tell her aunt when she got home again that she
should like the change of going to Snowfield for a week or ten days. And
then, when she got to Stoniton, where nobody knew her, she would ask
for the coach that would take her on the way to Windsor. Arthur was at
Windsor, and she would go to him.
As soon as Hetty had determined on this scheme, she rose from the
grassy bank of the pool, took up her basket, and went on her way to
Treddleston, for she must buy the wedding things she had come out for,
though she would never want them. She must be careful not to raise any
suspicion that she was going to run away.
Mrs. Poyser was quite agreeably surprised that Hetty wished to go and
see Dinah and try to bring her back to stay over the wedding. The sooner
she went the better, since the weather was pleasant now; and Adam, when
he came in the evening, said, if Hetty could set off to-morrow, he
would make time to go with her to Treddleston and see her safe into the
Stoniton coach.
"I wish I could go with you and take care of you, Hetty," he said, the
next morning, leaning in at the coach door; "but you won't stay much
beyond a week--the time 'ull seem long."
He was looking at her fondly, and his strong hand held hers in its
grasp. Hetty felt a sense of protection in his presence--she was used
to it now: if she could have had the past undone and known no other love
than her quiet liking for Adam! The tears rose as she gave him the last
look.
"God bless her for loving me," said Adam, as he went on his way to work
again, with Gyp at his heels.
But Hetty's tears were not for Adam--not for the anguish that would come
upon him when he found she was gone from him for ever. They were for the
misery of her own lot, which took her away from this brave tender man
who offered up his whole life to her, and threw her, a poor helpless
suppliant, on the man who would think it a misfortune that she was
obliged to cling to him.
At three o'clock that day, when Hetty was on the coach that was to take
her, they said, to Leicester--part of the long, long way to Windsor--she
felt dimly that she might be travelling all this weary journey towards
the beginning of new misery.
Yet Arthur was at Windsor; he would surely not be angry with her. If he
did not mind about her as he used to do, he had promised to be good to
her.
Book Five
| 3,308 | Chapter 35 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter35 | The Hidden Dread Adam doesn't see much of Hetty during the winter between November and February because he is working two jobs and getting ready for the wedding in March. Two rooms are prepared for Hetty and Adam in the Bede home, so that Seth and Lisbeth can stay in the house. Adam does not know why Hetty seems depressed sometimes and thinks it's because of his mother living with them. Mrs. Poyser is surprised at Hetty's ability to take on extra housework at Hall Farm and assumes she is learning how to be a housewife. In February Hetty goes to Treddleston to get some things for her wedding. She wears her red cloak and bonnet and wanders about in a daze, feeling lost. When she looks at a pond and wonders if she could drown herself in it, it is understood that she is pregnant. The narrator finally answers the reader's questions about Hetty's condition, but indirectly, since she cannot discuss it openly with a Victorian audience. She calls the pregnancy "the hidden dread" and says Hetty only found out after her engagement to Adam. The narrator gives pride as a reason Hetty does not tell anyone. She thinks Arthur cannot do anything for her because her one dread is discovery, and he cannot save her from that. Now, she thinks she must run away. The only thought is that she has to hide, so that no one will ever know what happened to her. Telling her aunt she is going to see Dinah Morris for a while, she leaves by coach, silently crying tears at parting from Adam, who had given her love and protection. They will not miss her for at least two weeks. She plans to go to Arthur at Windsor, for surely he will take care of her. She knows she will never see home again. | Commentary on Chapter 35 This is the last chapter of the fourth book, the book where the consequences of the love affair between Hetty and Arthur come out. It opened with the crisis of Adam seeing them kiss, and it ends with Hetty running away, approximately eight months pregnant, trying to escape discovery. The next book will reveal the full tragedy. The narrator tries to explain Hetty's puzzling behavior. She doesn't really understand she is pregnant for a long time, apparently, a detail hard for a modern reader to swallow. Her character has been explained, however, as not wanting to face unpleasant facts. And, most women at this time were ignorant of anatomy and sex, having to learn things from other women. Hetty, like Arthur, depends on the opinions others have of her. She seems to have little moral integrity of her own. For instance, she never seems to give one thought to the baby or what she could do for it. She waits so long to admit the problem and to do anything, because like Arthur, she thinks something will happen to save her from this fate, a miscarriage perhaps. Equally hard to understand is how she could hide it, but with aprons and cloaks, it might be possible. One also wonders why she waits to contact Arthur as he told her to do if there was any trouble. The narrator explains that Hetty does not think that Arthur could cover up for her. He can take care of her and give her money, but he cannot save her reputation. This reminds us again of the small town atmosphere. If she goes to anyone she knows for help--Arthur and Dinah are the two who might do something--they would have to let her family and friends know. In her pride, she believes herself alone in her suffering, and the best solution for her is to disappear, so at least her reputation will be saved. Hetty's reasoning is not that of an adult, and by shifting to Hetty's childish and fearful point of view in this chapter and in the fifth book, Eliot does something surprising no doubt for a Victorian audience. She does not try to excuse Hetty as a fallen woman, but she makes her plight sympathetic and understandable. We must have human pity for her. Her grief and fear make her close to insane in her thinking and actions. Arthur had thought to himself that even in the worst case, he could help Hetty, make it up to her, and make her glad that she had been with him. The evil consequences are more than he could have imagined and cannot be fixed with money. Anyone would be sorely tested by this trial, but Hetty does not have the inner resources or faith, like Dinah would, to survive such an experience and to make courageous choices. | 415 | 478 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/36.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_36_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 36 | chapter 36 | null | {"name": "Chapter 36", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter36", "summary": "Book Fifth Chapter 36: The Journey in Hope Hetty sets out with her little saved money, with no idea where Windsor is or how long it takes to get there. The coachman tells her Windsor is near London. She despairs and decides to take carriers' carts and farmer's wagons because the coach costs too much. On her own now with no knowledge of the big world, she realizes that her whole life has been managed for her, and she remembers her kind uncle and home. Now she can only have a hidden life because of the shame. She thinks Arthur perhaps can shelter her from this. She is proud and afraid of poverty and begging. She walks until tired and then begins to sob. Catching a ride on a cart, she makes it to the next town and gets a room. The clerk at the coach office writes down the stops she has to go through to get to Windsor. She is still a hundred miles away. On the seventh day she reaches Windsor with no money left and is fainting from hunger at the door of the Green Man inn where Arthur is supposed to be. The landlord takes her in and gives her a meal, telling her that Arthur is no longer there, for his regiment left for Ireland. Hetty collapses, and the landlady, seeing she is pregnant but a respectable looking girl, puts her to bed.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 36 Hetty longs to be with someone familiar who will take care of her, for she has been taken care of all her life, and she is frightened and not physically strong. She gets help from strangers because she is pretty and looks in trouble, though she is proud. While suffering makes Adam and Dinah more sympathetic to others, it has the opposite effect on Hetty. She can think of no one's suffering but her own. She does not think of the baby or Adam or the sorrow of the family she leaves behind. Yet she notices things keenly like a starving person, such as the friendly little spaniel on the road. When her one hope of Arthur is gone, she collapses and has nothing to hold her up. She goes farther and farther away from hope and from a solution, like the slippery slope that Adam mentions in his father's case: \"there's no slipping up hill\" when once you begin the downward path. Hetty is close to the bottom."} |
A LONG, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the
familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the
rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called
by duty, not urged by dread.
What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer
melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of
definite fear, repeating again and again the same small round of
memories--shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images
of what was to come--seeing nothing in this wide world but the little
history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her
pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford
always to go in the coaches--and she felt sure she could not, for the
journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected--it was
plain that she must trust to carriers' carts or slow waggons; and what
a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The
burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman
among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside
him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the
dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the
stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many
cuts with his whip and glances at Hetty out of the corner of his eye,
he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, "He's pretty
nigh six foot, I'll be bound, isna he, now?"
"Who?" said Hetty, rather startled.
"Why, the sweetheart as you've left behind, or else him as you're goin'
arter--which is it?"
Hetty felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this
coachman must know something about her. He must know Adam, and might
tell him where she was gone, for it is difficult to country people to
believe that those who make a figure in their own parish are not known
everywhere else, and it was equally difficult to Hetty to understand
that chance words could happen to apply closely to her circumstances.
She was too frightened to speak.
"Hegh, hegh!" said the coachman, seeing that his joke was not so
gratifying as he had expected, "you munna take it too ser'ous; if he's
behaved ill, get another. Such a pretty lass as you can get a sweetheart
any day."
Hetty's fear was allayed by and by, when she found that the coachman
made no further allusion to her personal concerns; but it still had the
effect of preventing her from asking him what were the places on the
road to Windsor. She told him she was only going a little way out of
Stoniton, and when she got down at the inn where the coach stopped, she
hastened away with her basket to another part of the town. When she
had formed her plan of going to Windsor, she had not foreseen any
difficulties except that of getting away, and after she had overcome
this by proposing the visit to Dinah, her thoughts flew to the meeting
with Arthur and the question how he would behave to her--not resting on
any probable incidents of the journey. She was too entirely ignorant
of traveling to imagine any of its details, and with all her store
of money--her three guineas--in her pocket, she thought herself amply
provided. It was not until she found how much it cost her to get to
Stoniton that she began to be alarmed about the journey, and then, for
the first time, she felt her ignorance as to the places that must be
passed on her way. Oppressed with this new alarm, she walked along the
grim Stoniton streets, and at last turned into a shabby little inn,
where she hoped to get a cheap lodging for the night. Here she asked
the landlord if he could tell her what places she must go to, to get to
Windsor.
"Well, I can't rightly say. Windsor must be pretty nigh London, for it's
where the king lives," was the answer. "Anyhow, you'd best go t' Ashby
next--that's south'ard. But there's as many places from here to London
as there's houses in Stoniton, by what I can make out. I've never been
no traveller myself. But how comes a lone young woman like you to be
thinking o' taking such a journey as that?"
"I'm going to my brother--he's a soldier at Windsor," said Hetty,
frightened at the landlord's questioning look. "I can't afford to go
by the coach; do you think there's a cart goes toward Ashby in the
morning?"
"Yes, there may be carts if anybody knowed where they started from; but
you might run over the town before you found out. You'd best set off and
walk, and trust to summat overtaking you."
Every word sank like lead on Hetty's spirits; she saw the journey
stretch bit by bit before her now. Even to get to Ashby seemed a hard
thing: it might take the day, for what she knew, and that was nothing
to the rest of the journey. But it must be done--she must get to Arthur.
Oh, how she yearned to be again with somebody who would care for her!
She who had never got up in the morning without the certainty of seeing
familiar faces, people on whom she had an acknowledged claim; whose
farthest journey had been to Rosseter on the pillion with her uncle;
whose thoughts had always been taking holiday in dreams of pleasure,
because all the business of her life was managed for her--this
kittenlike Hetty, who till a few months ago had never felt any other
grief than that of envying Mary Burge a new ribbon, or being girded
at by her aunt for neglecting Totty, must now make her toilsome way in
loneliness, her peaceful home left behind for ever, and nothing but a
tremulous hope of distant refuge before her. Now for the first time, as
she lay down to-night in the strange hard bed, she felt that her home
had been a happy one, that her uncle had been very good to her, that
her quiet lot at Hayslope among the things and people she knew, with her
little pride in her one best gown and bonnet, and nothing to hide from
any one, was what she would like to wake up to as a reality, and find
that all the feverish life she had known besides was a short nightmare.
She thought of all she had left behind with yearning regret for her own
sake. Her own misery filled her heart--there was no room in it for other
people's sorrow. And yet, before the cruel letter, Arthur had been so
tender and loving. The memory of that had still a charm for her, though
it was no more than a soothing draught that just made pain bearable.
For Hetty could conceive no other existence for herself in future than
a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have had no
delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew no
romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the
source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to
understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond
the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have
any more definite idea of her probable future than that Arthur would
take care of her somehow, and shelter her from anger and scorn. He would
not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could think
of nothing he could give towards which she looked with longing and
ambition.
The next morning she rose early, and taking only some milk and bread
for her breakfast, set out to walk on the road towards Ashby, under a
leaden-coloured sky, with a narrowing streak of yellow, like a departing
hope, on the edge of the horizon. Now in her faintness of heart at the
length and difficulty of her journey, she was most of all afraid of
spending her money, and becoming so destitute that she would have to ask
people's charity; for Hettv had the pride not only of a proud nature
but of a proud class--the class that pays the most poor-rates, and
most shudders at the idea of profiting by a poor-rate. It had not yet
occurred to her that she might get money for her locket and earrings
which she carried with her, and she applied all her small arithmetic
and knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and how many rides
were contained in her two guineas, and the odd shillings, which had
a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes of the other
bright-flaming coin.
For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely, always
fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most distant
visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint joy when she
had reached it. But when she came to the fourth milestone, the first she
had happened to notice among the long grass by the roadside, and read
that she was still only four miles beyond Stoniton, her courage sank.
She had come only this little way, and yet felt tired, and almost hungry
again in the keen morning air; for though Hetty was accustomed to much
movement and exertion indoors, she was not used to long walks which
produced quite a different sort of fatigue from that of household
activity. As she was looking at the milestone she felt some drops
falling on her face--it was beginning to rain. Here was a new trouble
which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed
down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of
a stile and began to sob hysterically. The beginning of hardship is like
the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet,
if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite
and find it possible to go on. When Hetty recovered from her burst of
weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she
must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter.
Presently, as she walked on wearily, she heard the rumbling of heavy
wheels behind her; a covered waggon was coming, creeping slowly along
with a slouching driver cracking his whip beside the horses. She waited
for it, thinking that if the waggoner were not a very sour-looking man,
she would ask him to take her up. As the waggon approached her, the
driver had fallen behind, but there was something in the front of the
big vehicle which encouraged her. At any previous moment in her life
she would not have noticed it, but now, the new susceptibility that
suffering had awakened in her caused this object to impress her
strongly. It was only a small white-and-liver-coloured spaniel which
sat on the front ledge of the waggon, with large timid eyes, and an
incessant trembling in the body, such as you may have seen in some of
these small creatures. Hetty cared little for animals, as you know,
but at this moment she felt as if the helpless timid creature had some
fellowship with her, and without being quite aware of the reason, she
was less doubtful about speaking to the driver, who now came forward--a
large ruddy man, with a sack over his shoulders, by way of scarf or
mantle.
"Could you take me up in your waggon, if you're going towards Ashby?"
said Hetty. "I'll pay you for it."
"Aw," said the big fellow, with that slowly dawning smile which belongs
to heavy faces, "I can take y' up fawst enough wi'out bein' paid for't
if you dooant mind lyin' a bit closish a-top o' the wool-packs. Where do
you coom from? And what do you want at Ashby?"
"I come from Stoniton. I'm going a long way--to Windsor."
"What! Arter some service, or what?"
"Going to my brother--he's a soldier there."
"Well, I'm going no furder nor Leicester--and fur enough too--but I'll
take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th' hosses
wooant feel YOUR weight no more nor they feel the little doog there, as
I puck up on the road a fortni't agoo. He war lost, I b'lieve, an's been
all of a tremble iver sin'. Come, gi' us your basket an' come behind and
let me put y' in."
To lie on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the
awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she half-slept
away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down
and have "some victual"; he himself was going to eat his dinner at this
"public." Late at night they reached Leicester, and so this second day
of Hetty's journey was past. She had spent no money except what she
had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow journeying would be
intolerable for her another day, and in the morning she found her way
to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor, and see if it would
cost her too much to go part of the distance by coach again. Yes! The
distance was too great--the coaches were too dear--she must give them
up; but the elderly clerk at the office, touched by her pretty anxious
face, wrote down for her the names of the chief places she must pass
through. This was the only comfort she got in Leicester, for the men
stared at her as she went along the street, and for the first time in
her life Hetty wished no one would look at her. She set out walking
again; but this day she was fortunate, for she was soon overtaken by
a carrier's cart which carried her to Hinckley, and by the help of a
return chaise, with a drunken postilion--who frightened her by driving
like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting hilarious remarks at her,
twisting himself backwards on his saddle--she was before night in the
heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a hundred miles from
Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it was, and what hard work
for her to find her way in it! She went by mistake to Stratford-on-Avon,
finding Stratford set down in her list of places, and then she was told
she had come a long way out of the right road. It was not till the fifth
day that she got to Stony Stratford. That seems but a slight journey as
you look at the map, or remember your own pleasant travels to and from
the meadowy banks of the Avon. But how wearily long it was to Hetty!
It seemed to her as if this country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and
dotted houses, and villages, and market-towns--all so much alike to her
indifferent eyes--must have no end, and she must go on wandering among
them for ever, waiting tired at toll-gates for some cart to come, and
then finding the cart went only a little way--a very little way--to the
miller's a mile off perhaps; and she hated going into the public houses,
where she must go to get food and ask questions, because there were
always men lounging there, who stared at her and joked her rudely. Her
body was very weary too with these days of new fatigue and anxiety; they
had made her look more pale and worn than all the time of hidden dread
she had gone through at home. When at last she reached Stony Stratford,
her impatience and weariness had become too strong for her economical
caution; she determined to take the coach for the rest of the way,
though it should cost her all her remaining money. She would need
nothing at Windsor but to find Arthur. When she had paid the fare for
the last coach, she had only a shilling; and as she got down at the
sign of the Green Man in Windsor at twelve o'clock in the middle of the
seventh day, hungry and faint, the coachman came up, and begged her
to "remember him." She put her hand in her pocket and took out the
shilling, but the tears came with the sense of exhaustion and the
thought that she was giving away her last means of getting food, which
she really required before she could go in search of Arthur. As she
held out the shilling, she lifted up her dark tear-filled eyes to the
coachman's face and said, "Can you give me back sixpence?"
"No, no," he said, gruffly, "never mind--put the shilling up again."
The landlord of the Green Man had stood near enough to witness this
scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep his
good nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And that lovely
tearful face of Hetty's would have found out the sensitive fibre in most
men.
"Come, young woman, come in," he said, "and have adrop o' something;
you're pretty well knocked up, I can see that."
He took her into the bar and said to his wife, "Here, missis, take this
young woman into the parlour; she's a little overcome"--for Hetty's
tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical tears: she thought
she had no reason for weeping now, and was vexed that she was too weak
and tired to help it. She was at Windsor at last, not far from Arthur.
She looked with eager, hungry eyes at the bread and meat and beer that
the landlady brought her, and for some minutes she forgot everything
else in the delicious sensations of satisfying hunger and recovering
from exhaustion. The landlady sat opposite to her as she ate, and looked
at her earnestly. No wonder: Hetty had thrown off her bonnet, and her
curls had fallen down. Her face was all the more touching in its
youth and beauty because of its weary look, and the good woman's eyes
presently wandered to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her
journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye
detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed.
"Why, you're not very fit for travelling," she said, glancing while she
spoke at Hetty's ringless hand. "Have you come far?"
"Yes," said Hetty, roused by this question to exert more self-command,
and feeling the better for the food she had taken. "I've come a good
long way, and it's very tiring. But I'm better now. Could you tell me
which way to go to this place?" Here Hetty took from her pocket a bit
of paper: it was the end of Arthur's letter on which he had written his
address.
While she was speaking, the landlord had come in and had begun to look
at her as earnestly as his wife had done. He took up the piece of paper
which Hetty handed across the table, and read the address.
"Why, what do you want at this house?" he said. It is in the nature of
innkeepers and all men who have no pressing business of their own to ask
as many questions as possible before giving any information.
"I want to see a gentleman as is there," said Hetty.
"But there's no gentleman there," returned the landlord. "It's shut
up--been shut up this fortnight. What gentleman is it you want? Perhaps
I can let you know where to find him."
"It's Captain Donnithorne," said Hetty tremulously, her heart beginning
to beat painfully at this disappointment of her hope that she should
find Arthur at once.
"Captain Donnithorne? Stop a bit," said the landlord, slowly. "Was he
in the Loamshire Militia? A tall young officer with a fairish skin and
reddish whiskers--and had a servant by the name o' Pym?"
"Oh yes," said Hetty; "you know him--where is he?"
"A fine sight o' miles away from here. The Loamshire Militia's gone to
Ireland; it's been gone this fortnight."
"Look there! She's fainting," said the landlady, hastening to support
Hetty, who had lost her miserable consciousness and looked like a
beautiful corpse. They carried her to the sofa and loosened her dress.
"Here's a bad business, I suspect," said the landlord, as he brought in
some water.
"Ah, it's plain enough what sort of business it is," said the wife.
"She's not a common flaunting dratchell, I can see that. She looks like
a respectable country girl, and she comes from a good way off, to judge
by her tongue. She talks something like that ostler we had that come
from the north. He was as honest a fellow as we ever had about the
house--they're all honest folks in the north."
"I never saw a prettier young woman in my life," said the husband.
"She's like a pictur in a shop-winder. It goes to one's 'eart to look at
her."
"It 'ud have been a good deal better for her if she'd been uglier and
had more conduct," said the landlady, who on any charitable construction
must have been supposed to have more "conduct" than beauty. "But she's
coming to again. Fetch a drop more water."
| 5,136 | Chapter 36 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter36 | Book Fifth Chapter 36: The Journey in Hope Hetty sets out with her little saved money, with no idea where Windsor is or how long it takes to get there. The coachman tells her Windsor is near London. She despairs and decides to take carriers' carts and farmer's wagons because the coach costs too much. On her own now with no knowledge of the big world, she realizes that her whole life has been managed for her, and she remembers her kind uncle and home. Now she can only have a hidden life because of the shame. She thinks Arthur perhaps can shelter her from this. She is proud and afraid of poverty and begging. She walks until tired and then begins to sob. Catching a ride on a cart, she makes it to the next town and gets a room. The clerk at the coach office writes down the stops she has to go through to get to Windsor. She is still a hundred miles away. On the seventh day she reaches Windsor with no money left and is fainting from hunger at the door of the Green Man inn where Arthur is supposed to be. The landlord takes her in and gives her a meal, telling her that Arthur is no longer there, for his regiment left for Ireland. Hetty collapses, and the landlady, seeing she is pregnant but a respectable looking girl, puts her to bed. | Commentary on Chapter 36 Hetty longs to be with someone familiar who will take care of her, for she has been taken care of all her life, and she is frightened and not physically strong. She gets help from strangers because she is pretty and looks in trouble, though she is proud. While suffering makes Adam and Dinah more sympathetic to others, it has the opposite effect on Hetty. She can think of no one's suffering but her own. She does not think of the baby or Adam or the sorrow of the family she leaves behind. Yet she notices things keenly like a starving person, such as the friendly little spaniel on the road. When her one hope of Arthur is gone, she collapses and has nothing to hold her up. She goes farther and farther away from hope and from a solution, like the slippery slope that Adam mentions in his father's case: "there's no slipping up hill" when once you begin the downward path. Hetty is close to the bottom. | 297 | 173 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/37.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_37_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 37 | chapter 37 | null | {"name": "Chapter 37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter37", "summary": "The Journey in Despair Hetty is in bed the rest of the day, too ill to think. She has no hope left. The next day she tries to think of a plan. She cannot get any work in her condition. Remembering a starving unwed mother and child at Hayslope who had been sent to the parish workhouse, a fate to be feared, she longs to be back home safe. No one will welcome a runaway in her condition. Above all, she does not want her family to find out what has happened to her. She decides to sell the presents Arthur gave her, and if she is not strong enough to commit suicide, she will find Dinah. Hetty gets money from the landlord for her earrings and locket and sets out back north again. She goes on and on, without a clear plan, until she gets to Stratford-on-Avon. She walks into the surrounding fields looking for a pool to drown herself. She finds a pool, but not able to throw herself in, she falls asleep there. In the cold and dark she awakens in fear. Remembering a shepherd's hovel nearby, she gropes until she finds it, and sleeps there on a bed of straw. In the morning, a gruff shepherd tells her to get back to the road because she looks like a \"wild woman\" . She continues her journey north towards Dinah in Snowfield.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 37 Hetty finds she cannot commit suicide because she has, the narrator tells us, \"the luxurious nature of a round, soft-coated pet animal\" . She is torn between thoughts of suicide, begging, the workhouse, and throwing herself on the mercy of her aunt and uncle. She wants to go on living as long as possible, but she has no hope that she can be delivered from the evil she is in. She does not think she can even tell Dinah. When she thinks of death, she does not know about an afterlife, for she is not a religious person. She begins to have a hard look, like a wild animal, like the wild woman the shepherd sees in her. The narrator says she has a \"Medusa face\" . Medusa was a monster with the face of a woman and hair of snakes whose look could turn someone to stone. This is a strange image for Hetty whom we have been led to believe was more like a soft and helpless animal, a little dog that drew the affection of others. Eliot prepares us here for the major transformation Hetty is undergoing. Without any help or spiritual life to sustain her, she is coming close to the madness that destroys the moral sense in a person, never a strong point with Hetty anyway. We will not be surprised at what she might do in her desperation. At this point she seems scarcely aware of the child she is carrying except as baggage and shame. When Hetty wakes up in the shepherd's hut, she is so glad to be alive that she passionately kisses her own arms. After repeating that Hetty has no sorrow except for herself, the narrator confesses to be sorry for her: \"My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet\" . Though the narrator says some harsh things of Hetty, she wants the reader to pity her fate by understanding step by step, how she arrived there."} |
HETTY was too ill through the rest of that day for any questions to be
addressed to her--too ill even to think with any distinctness of the
evils that were to come. She only felt that all her hope was crushed,
and that instead of having found a refuge she had only reached the
borders of a new wilderness where no goal lay before her. The sensations
of bodily sickness, in a comfortable bed, and with the tendance of the
good-natured landlady, made a sort of respite for her; such a respite as
there is in the faint weariness which obliges a man to throw himself on
the sand instead of toiling onward under the scorching sun.
But when sleep and rest had brought back the strength necessary for the
keenness of mental suffering--when she lay the next morning looking at
the growing light which was like a cruel task-master returning to urge
from her a fresh round of hated hopeless labour--she began to think what
course she must take, to remember that all her money was gone, to
look at the prospect of further wandering among strangers with the new
clearness shed on it by the experience of her journey to Windsor. But
which way could she turn? It was impossible for her to enter into any
service, even if she could obtain it. There was nothing but immediate
beggary before her. She thought of a young woman who had been found
against the church wall at Hayslope one Sunday, nearly dead with cold
and hunger--a tiny infant in her arms. The woman was rescued and taken
to the parish. "The parish!" You can perhaps hardly understand the
effect of that word on a mind like Hetty's, brought up among people who
were somewhat hard in their feelings even towards poverty, who lived
among the fields, and had little pity for want and rags as a cruel
inevitable fate such as they sometimes seem in cities, but held them
a mark of idleness and vice--and it was idleness and vice that brought
burdens on the parish. To Hetty the "parish" was next to the prison
in obloquy, and to ask anything of strangers--to beg--lay in the same
far-off hideous region of intolerable shame that Hetty had all her life
thought it impossible she could ever come near. But now the remembrance
of that wretched woman whom she had seen herself, on her way from
church, being carried into Joshua Rann's, came back upon her with the
new terrible sense that there was very little now to divide HER from
the same lot. And the dread of bodily hardship mingled with the dread
of shame; for Hetty had the luxurious nature of a round soft-coated pet
animal.
How she yearned to be back in her safe home again, cherished and cared
for as she had always been! Her aunt's scolding about trifles would have
been music to her ears now; she longed for it; she used to hear it in a
time when she had only trifles to hide. Could she be the same Hetty that
used to make up the butter in the dairy with the Guelder roses peeping
in at the window--she, a runaway whom her friends would not open their
doors to again, lying in this strange bed, with the knowledge that
she had no money to pay for what she received, and must offer those
strangers some of the clothes in her basket? It was then she thought of
her locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie near, she reached it
and spread the contents on the bed before her. There were the locket and
ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes, and with them there was a
beautiful silver thimble which Adam had bought her, the words "Remember
me" making the ornament of the border; a steel purse, with her one
shilling in it; and a small red-leather case, fastening with a strap.
Those beautiful little ear-rings, with their delicate pearls and garnet,
that she had tried in her ears with such longing in the bright sunshine
on the 30th of July! She had no longing to put them in her ears now: her
head with its dark rings of hair lay back languidly on the pillow, and
the sadness that rested about her brow and eyes was something too hard
for regretful memory. Yet she put her hands up to her ears: it was
because there were some thin gold rings in them, which were also worth
a little money. Yes, she could surely get some money for her ornaments:
those Arthur had given her must have cost a great deal of money. The
landlord and landlady had been good to her; perhaps they would help her
to get the money for these things.
But this money would not keep her long. What should she do when it was
gone? Where should she go? The horrible thought of want and beggary
drove her once to think she would go back to her uncle and aunt and ask
them to forgive her and have pity on her. But she shrank from that idea
again, as she might have shrunk from scorching metal. She could never
endure that shame before her uncle and aunt, before Mary Burge, and the
servants at the Chase, and the people at Broxton, and everybody who knew
her. They should never know what had happened to her. What could she do?
She would go away from Windsor--travel again as she had done the last
week, and get among the flat green fields with the high hedges round
them, where nobody could see her or know her; and there, perhaps, when
there was nothing else she could do, she should get courage to drown
herself in some pond like that in the Scantlands. Yes, she would get
away from Windsor as soon as possible: she didn't like these people at
the inn to know about her, to know that she had come to look for Captain
Donnithorne. She must think of some reason to tell them why she had
asked for him.
With this thought she began to put the things back into her pocket,
meaning to get up and dress before the landlady came to her. She had her
hand on the red-leather case, when it occurred to her that there might
be something in this case which she had forgotten--something worth
selling; for without knowing what she should do with her life, she
craved the means of living as long as possible; and when we desire
eagerly to find something, we are apt to search for it in hopeless
places. No, there was nothing but common needles and pins, and dried
tulip-petals between the paper leaves where she had written down her
little money-accounts. But on one of these leaves there was a name,
which, often as she had seen it before, now flashed on Hetty's mind like
a newly discovered message. The name was--Dinah Morris, Snowfield. There
was a text above it, written, as well as the name, by Dinah's own hand
with a little pencil, one evening that they were sitting together and
Hetty happened to have the red case lying open before her. Hetty did not
read the text now: she was only arrested by the name. Now, for the first
time, she remembered without indifference the affectionate kindness
Dinah had shown her, and those words of Dinah in the bed-chamber--that
Hetty must think of her as a friend in trouble. Suppose she were to go
to Dinah, and ask her to help her? Dinah did not think about things as
other people did. She was a mystery to Hetty, but Hetty knew she was
always kind. She couldn't imagine Dinah's face turning away from her in
dark reproof or scorn, Dinah's voice willingly speaking ill of her, or
rejoicing in her misery as a punishment. Dinah did not seem to belong to
that world of Hetty's, whose glance she dreaded like scorching fire. But
even to her Hetty shrank from beseeching and confession. She could not
prevail on herself to say, "I will go to Dinah": she only thought of
that as a possible alternative, if she had not courage for death.
The good landlady was amazed when she saw Hetty come downstairs soon
after herself, neatly dressed, and looking resolutely self-possessed.
Hetty told her she was quite well this morning. She had only been very
tired and overcome with her journey, for she had come a long way to ask
about her brother, who had run away, and they thought he was gone for a
soldier, and Captain Donnithorne might know, for he had been very
kind to her brother once. It was a lame story, and the landlady looked
doubtfully at Hetty as she told it; but there was a resolute air of
self-reliance about her this morning, so different from the helpless
prostration of yesterday, that the landlady hardly knew how to make a
remark that might seem like prying into other people's affairs. She only
invited her to sit down to breakfast with them, and in the course of it
Hetty brought out her ear-rings and locket, and asked the landlord if
he could help her to get money for them. Her journey, she said, had cost
her much more than she expected, and now she had no money to get back to
her friends, which she wanted to do at once.
It was not the first time the landlady had seen the ornaments, for she
had examined the contents of Hetty's pocket yesterday, and she and her
husband had discussed the fact of a country girl having these beautiful
things, with a stronger conviction than ever that Hetty had been
miserably deluded by the fine young officer.
"Well," said the landlord, when Hetty had spread the precious trifles
before him, "we might take 'em to the jeweller's shop, for there's one
not far off; but Lord bless you, they wouldn't give you a quarter o'
what the things are worth. And you wouldn't like to part with 'em?" he
added, looking at her inquiringly.
"Oh, I don't mind," said Hetty, hastily, "so as I can get money to go
back."
"And they might think the things were stolen, as you wanted to sell
'em," he went on, "for it isn't usual for a young woman like you to have
fine jew'llery like that."
The blood rushed to Hetty's face with anger. "I belong to respectable
folks," she said; "I'm not a thief."
"No, that you aren't, I'll be bound," said the landlady; "and you'd no
call to say that," looking indignantly at her husband. "The things were
gev to her: that's plain enough to be seen."
"I didn't mean as I thought so," said the husband, apologetically,
"but I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he wouldn't be
offering much money for 'em."
"Well," said the wife, "suppose you were to advance some money on the
things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem 'em when she got home,
she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two months, we might
do as we liked with 'em."
I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady had
no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature in the
ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed, the effect they
would have in that case on the mind of the grocer's wife had presented
itself with remarkable vividness to her rapid imagination. The landlord
took up the ornaments and pushed out his lips in a meditative manner.
He wished Hetty well, doubtless; but pray, how many of your well-wishers
would decline to make a little gain out of you? Your landlady is
sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you highly, and will
really rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but at the same
time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a percentage as
possible.
"How much money do you want to get home with, young woman?" said the
well-wisher, at length.
"Three guineas," answered Hetty, fixing on the sum she set out with, for
want of any other standard, and afraid of asking too much.
"Well, I've no objections to advance you three guineas," said the
landlord; "and if you like to send it me back and get the jewellery
again, you can, you know. The Green Man isn't going to run away."
"Oh yes, I'll be very glad if you'll give me that," said Hetty, relieved
at the thought that she would not have to go to the jeweller's and be
stared at and questioned.
"But if you want the things again, you'll write before long," said the
landlady, "because when two months are up, we shall make up our minds as
you don't want 'em."
"Yes," said Hetty indifferently.
The husband and wife were equally content with this arrangement. The
husband thought, if the ornaments were not redeemed, he could make a
good thing of it by taking them to London and selling them. The wife
thought she would coax the good man into letting her keep them. And
they were accommodating Hetty, poor thing--a pretty, respectable-looking
young woman, apparently in a sad case. They declined to take anything
for her food and bed: she was quite welcome. And at eleven o'clock Hetty
said "Good-bye" to them with the same quiet, resolute air she had worn
all the morning, mounting the coach that was to take her twenty miles
back along the way she had come.
There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the
last hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect
contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense
of dependence.
Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make
life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know
her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Dinah. She
would wander out of sight, and drown herself where her body would never
be found, and no one should know what had become of her.
When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take cheap
rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without distinct
purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the way she had
come, though she was determined not to go back to her own country.
Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the grassy Warwickshire
fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows that made a hiding-place
even in this leafless season. She went more slowly than she came, often
getting over the stiles and sitting for hours under the hedgerows,
looking before her with blank, beautiful eyes; fancying herself at the
edge of a hidden pool, low down, like that in the Scantlands; wondering
if it were very painful to be drowned, and if there would be anything
worse after death than what she dreaded in life. Religious doctrines had
taken no hold on Hetty's mind. She was one of those numerous people
who have had godfathers and godmothers, learned their catechism, been
confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and yet, for any practical
result of strength in life, or trust in death, have never appropriated a
single Christian idea or Christian feeling. You would misunderstand
her thoughts during these wretched days, if you imagined that they were
influenced either by religious fears or religious hopes.
She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone before by
mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her former way towards
it--fields among which she thought she might find just the sort of pool
she had in her mind. Yet she took care of her money still; she carried
her basket; death seemed still a long way off, and life was so strong
in her. She craved food and rest--she hastened towards them at the very
moment she was picturing to herself the bank from which she would leap
towards death. It was already five days since she had left Windsor, for
she had wandered about, always avoiding speech or questioning looks,
and recovering her air of proud self-dependence whenever she was under
observation, choosing her decent lodging at night, and dressing herself
neatly in the morning, and setting off on her way steadily, or remaining
under shelter if it rained, as if she had a happy life to cherish.
And yet, even in her most self-conscious moments, the face was sadly
different from that which had smiled at itself in the old specked glass,
or smiled at others when they glanced at it admiringly. A hard and even
fierce look had come in the eyes, though their lashes were as long as
ever, and they had all their dark brightness. And the cheek was never
dimpled with smiles now. It was the same rounded, pouting, childish
prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from it--the
sadder for its beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with the
passionate, passionless lips.
At last she was among the fields she had been dreaming of, on a long
narrow pathway leading towards a wood. If there should be a pool in that
wood! It would be better hidden than one in the fields. No, it was not a
wood, only a wild brake, where there had once been gravel-pits, leaving
mounds and hollows studded with brushwood and small trees. She roamed up
and down, thinking there was perhaps a pool in every hollow before she
came to it, till her limbs were weary, and she sat down to rest. The
afternoon was far advanced, and the leaden sky was darkening, as if the
sun were setting behind it. After a little while Hetty started up again,
feeling that darkness would soon come on; and she must put off finding
the pool till to-morrow, and make her way to some shelter for the night.
She had quite lost her way in the fields, and might as well go in one
direction as another, for aught she knew. She walked through field after
field, and no village, no house was in sight; but there, at the corner
of this pasture, there was a break in the hedges; the land seemed to
dip down a little, and two trees leaned towards each other across the
opening. Hetty's heart gave a great beat as she thought there must be
a pool there. She walked towards it heavily over the tufted grass, with
pale lips and a sense of trembling. It was as if the thing were come in
spite of herself, instead of being the object of her search.
There it was, black under the darkening sky: no motion, no sound near.
She set down her basket, and then sank down herself on the grass,
trembling. The pool had its wintry depth now: by the time it got
shallow, as she remembered the pools did at Hayslope, in the summer,
no one could find out that it was her body. But then there was her
basket--she must hide that too. She must throw it into the water--make
it heavy with stones first, and then throw it in. She got up to look
about for stones, and soon brought five or six, which she laid down
beside her basket, and then sat down again. There was no need to
hurry--there was all the night to drown herself in. She sat leaning her
elbow on the basket. She was weary, hungry. There were some buns in her
basket--three, which she had supplied herself with at the place where
she ate her dinner. She took them out now and ate them eagerly, and then
sat still again, looking at the pool. The soothed sensation that came
over her from the satisfaction of her hunger, and this fixed dreamy
attitude, brought on drowsiness, and presently her head sank down on her
knees. She was fast asleep.
When she awoke it was deep night, and she felt chill. She was frightened
at this darkness--frightened at the long night before her. If she could
but throw herself into the water! No, not yet. She began to walk about
that she might get warm again, as if she would have more resolution
then. Oh how long the time was in that darkness! The bright hearth and
the warmth and the voices of home, the secure uprising and lying down,
the familiar fields, the familiar people, the Sundays and holidays with
their simple joys of dress and feasting--all the sweets of her young
life rushed before her now, and she seemed to be stretching her arms
towards them across a great gulf. She set her teeth when she thought of
Arthur. She cursed him, without knowing what her cursing would do. She
wished he too might know desolation, and cold, and a life of shame that
he dared not end by death.
The horror of this cold, and darkness, and solitude--out of all human
reach--became greater every long minute. It was almost as if she were
dead already, and knew that she was dead, and longed to get back to life
again. But no: she was alive still; she had not taken the dreadful
leap. She felt a strange contradictory wretchedness and exultation:
wretchedness, that she did not dare to face death; exultation, that she
was still in life--that she might yet know light and warmth again. She
walked backwards and forwards to warm herself, beginning to discern
something of the objects around her, as her eyes became accustomed to
the night--the darker line of the hedge, the rapid motion of some living
creature--perhaps a field-mouse--rushing across the grass. She no longer
felt as if the darkness hedged her in. She thought she could walk back
across the field, and get over the stile; and then, in the very next
field, she thought she remembered there was a hovel of furze near a
sheepfold. If she could get into that hovel, she would be warmer. She
could pass the night there, for that was what Alick did at Hayslope
in lambing-time. The thought of this hovel brought the energy of a new
hope. She took up her basket and walked across the field, but it was
some time before she got in the right direction for the stile. The
exercise and the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to her,
however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude. There
were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as she set down
her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of their movement
comforted her, for it assured her that her impression was right--this
was the field where she had seen the hovel, for it was the field where
the sheep were. Right on along the path, and she would get to it. She
reached the opposite gate, and felt her way along its rails and the
rails of the sheep-fold, till her hand encountered the pricking of the
gorsy wall. Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped
her way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open.
It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw on
the ground. Hetty sank down on the straw with a sense of escape. Tears
came--she had never shed tears before since she left Windsor--tears and
sobs of hysterical joy that she had still hold of life, that she
was still on the familiar earth, with the sheep near her. The very
consciousness of her own limbs was a delight to her: she turned up her
sleeves, and kissed her arms with the passionate love of life. Soon
warmth and weariness lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell
continually into dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool
again--fancying that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking
with a start, and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless
sleep came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against
the gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal
terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it--the relief of
unconsciousness.
Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It seemed to
Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into another dream--that
she was in the hovel, and her aunt was standing over her with a candle
in her hand. She trembled under her aunt's glance, and opened her eyes.
There was no candle, but there was light in the hovel--the light of
early morning through the open door. And there was a face looking down
on her; but it was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a
smock-frock.
"Why, what do you do here, young woman?" the man said roughly.
Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had
done in her momentary dream under her aunt's glance. She felt that she
was like a beggar already--found sleeping in that place. But in spite of
her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence
here, that she found words at once.
"I lost my way," she said. "I'm travelling--north'ard, and I got away
from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Will you
tell me the way to the nearest village?"
She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to
adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket.
The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any
answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the
door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood still,
and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, "Aw, I can show
you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin' out o'
the highroad?" he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. "Y'ull be gettin'
into mischief, if you dooant mind."
"Yes," said Hetty, "I won't do it again. I'll keep in the road, if
you'll be so good as show me how to get to it."
"Why dooant you keep where there's a finger-poasses an' folks to ax the
way on?" the man said, still more gruffly. "Anybody 'ud think you was a
wild woman, an' look at yer."
Hetty was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this last
suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she followed him out of
the hovel she thought she would give him a sixpence for telling her the
way, and then he would not suppose she was wild. As he stopped to point
out the road to her, she put her hand in her pocket to get the six-pence
ready, and when he was turning away, without saying good-morning,
she held it out to him and said, "Thank you; will you please to take
something for your trouble?"
He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, "I want none o' your
money. You'd better take care on't, else you'll get it stool from yer,
if you go trapesin' about the fields like a mad woman a-thatway."
The man left her without further speech, and Hetty held on her way.
Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no use to think of
drowning herself--she could not do it, at least while she had money left
to buy food and strength to journey on. But the incident on her waking
this morning heightened her dread of that time when her money would be
all gone; she would have to sell her basket and clothes then, and she
would really look like a beggar or a wild woman, as the man had said.
The passionate joy in life she had felt in the night, after escaping
from the brink of the black cold death in the pool, was gone now.
Life now, by the morning light, with the impression of that man's hard
wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death--it was worse; it
was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she shrank and shrank
as she did from the black pool, and yet could find no refuge from it.
She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had still
two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days more, or it
would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within reach of
Dinah. The thought of Dinah urged itself more strongly now, since the
experience of the night had driven her shuddering imagination away from
the pool. If it had been only going to Dinah--if nobody besides Dinah
would ever know--Hetty could have made up her mind to go to her. The
soft voice, the pitying eyes, would have drawn her. But afterwards the
other people must know, and she could no more rush on that shame than
she could rush on death.
She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair to give
her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was getting less
and less able to bear the day's weariness. And yet--such is the strange
action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking desire towards the very
ends we dread--Hetty, when she set out again from Norton, asked the
straightest road northwards towards Stonyshire, and kept it all that
day.
Poor wandering Hetty, with the rounded childish face and the hard,
unloving, despairing soul looking out of it--with the narrow heart
and narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own, and
tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My heart bleeds
for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet, or seated in
a cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road before her, never
thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger comes and makes her
desire that a village may be near.
What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from
all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to
life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it?
God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!
| 7,094 | Chapter 37 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter37 | The Journey in Despair Hetty is in bed the rest of the day, too ill to think. She has no hope left. The next day she tries to think of a plan. She cannot get any work in her condition. Remembering a starving unwed mother and child at Hayslope who had been sent to the parish workhouse, a fate to be feared, she longs to be back home safe. No one will welcome a runaway in her condition. Above all, she does not want her family to find out what has happened to her. She decides to sell the presents Arthur gave her, and if she is not strong enough to commit suicide, she will find Dinah. Hetty gets money from the landlord for her earrings and locket and sets out back north again. She goes on and on, without a clear plan, until she gets to Stratford-on-Avon. She walks into the surrounding fields looking for a pool to drown herself. She finds a pool, but not able to throw herself in, she falls asleep there. In the cold and dark she awakens in fear. Remembering a shepherd's hovel nearby, she gropes until she finds it, and sleeps there on a bed of straw. In the morning, a gruff shepherd tells her to get back to the road because she looks like a "wild woman" . She continues her journey north towards Dinah in Snowfield. | Commentary on Chapter 37 Hetty finds she cannot commit suicide because she has, the narrator tells us, "the luxurious nature of a round, soft-coated pet animal" . She is torn between thoughts of suicide, begging, the workhouse, and throwing herself on the mercy of her aunt and uncle. She wants to go on living as long as possible, but she has no hope that she can be delivered from the evil she is in. She does not think she can even tell Dinah. When she thinks of death, she does not know about an afterlife, for she is not a religious person. She begins to have a hard look, like a wild animal, like the wild woman the shepherd sees in her. The narrator says she has a "Medusa face" . Medusa was a monster with the face of a woman and hair of snakes whose look could turn someone to stone. This is a strange image for Hetty whom we have been led to believe was more like a soft and helpless animal, a little dog that drew the affection of others. Eliot prepares us here for the major transformation Hetty is undergoing. Without any help or spiritual life to sustain her, she is coming close to the madness that destroys the moral sense in a person, never a strong point with Hetty anyway. We will not be surprised at what she might do in her desperation. At this point she seems scarcely aware of the child she is carrying except as baggage and shame. When Hetty wakes up in the shepherd's hut, she is so glad to be alive that she passionately kisses her own arms. After repeating that Hetty has no sorrow except for herself, the narrator confesses to be sorry for her: "My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet" . Though the narrator says some harsh things of Hetty, she wants the reader to pity her fate by understanding step by step, how she arrived there. | 321 | 338 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/38.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_38_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 38 | chapter 38 | null | {"name": "Chapter 38", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter38", "summary": "The Quest The narrative switches to Adam's point of view. After Hetty has been gone for two weeks, the family begins to worry, and Adam decides to go to Snowfield to get her. Mrs. Poyser tells him to invite Dinah to come back too for the wedding. Adam starts his journey in hope for he has never been happier in his life. When he reaches Dinah's cottage, he asks to see her, but the old woman there says Dinah has gone to Leeds to preach. He then asks to see the other woman, Hetty, but the woman says she has never been there. Now Adam is worried. He wonders if Hetty is with Dinah at Leeds, but the old woman does not have an address for her. Adam next inquires at the coach stop, but she was never on the coach for Snowfield. The innkeeper takes him to Oakbourne in his cart, one of the stops of the Treddleston coach in which she departed. Adam vacillates between fear of an accident and fear that she has run off with Arthur. Adam knows Arthur is in Ireland. The innkeeper in Oakbourne knows Hetty did not take the coach that goes to Snowfield, but he does not know where she went. From here Adam goes to Stoniton, knowing that Hetty must have gone here at first. The coachman remembers her, but not what happened after she left the coach. Adam can trace her no farther and returns home. He tells everything to his brother Seth but not his mother. Seth is surprised when Adam falls on his neck weeping, for he has never seen his brother break down. Next, Adam delivers the news to Mr. Poyser, but he does not tell him his suspicions about Arthur. Mr. Poyser is shocked and apologizes to Adam. Mr. Poyser thinks she did not want to be married and went to become a lady's maid. Adam asks Mr. Poyser to be easy with Hetty if she should decide to come home. They decide to keep everything quiet for now until they find her. Next Adam decides to go to Ireland to find Arthur, where he thinks Hetty has gone. He wants to go secretly and wills everything to Seth, if he should not return. He decides he must also inform Mr. Irwine.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 38 Eliot skillfully builds suspense as a film would do by inter-cutting scenes, returning to the people Hetty has left behind as they realize she is gone. Adam has a piece of the puzzle that the others do not, concerning her involvement with Arthur. Readers know more than Adam does, but we too are waiting to find out what happens to her. Adam's grief is so intense that his old jealousy is aroused, and Seth is worried for him. He hints that he hopes Adam won't do anything rash. He supposedly means suicide, but the reader wonders about his anger and revenge towards Arthur. For the moment, Adam is crushed to realize that Hetty does not want to marry him, that she has run away. Yet, it is significant that he always begs for leniency towards her. He decides that he must tell Mr. Irwine about Hetty and Arthur because \"I can't stand alone in this way any longer\" . He knows now it is too late to protect their secret."} |
THE first ten days after Hetty's departure passed as quietly as any
other days with the family at the Hall Farm, and with Adam at his daily
work. They had expected Hetty to stay away a week or ten days at least,
perhaps a little longer if Dinah came back with her, because there might
then be something to detain them at Snowfield. But when a fortnight had
passed they began to feel a little surprise that Hetty did not return;
she must surely have found it pleasanter to be with Dinah than any one
could have supposed. Adam, for his part, was getting very impatient
to see her, and he resolved that, if she did not appear the next day
(Saturday), he would set out on Sunday morning to fetch her. There
was no coach on a Sunday, but by setting out before it was light, and
perhaps getting a lift in a cart by the way, he would arrive pretty
early at Snowfield, and bring back Hetty the next day--Dinah too, if she
were coming. It was quite time Hetty came home, and he would afford to
lose his Monday for the sake of bringing her.
His project was quite approved at the Farm when he went there on
Saturday evening. Mrs. Poyser desired him emphatically not to come back
without Hetty, for she had been quite too long away, considering the
things she had to get ready by the middle of March, and a week was
surely enough for any one to go out for their health. As for Dinah, Mrs.
Poyser had small hope of their bringing her, unless they could make her
believe the folks at Hayslope were twice as miserable as the folks at
Snowfield. "Though," said Mrs. Poyser, by way of conclusion, "you might
tell her she's got but one aunt left, and SHE'S wasted pretty nigh to
a shadder; and we shall p'rhaps all be gone twenty mile farther off her
next Michaelmas, and shall die o' broken hearts among strange folks, and
leave the children fatherless and motherless."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who certainly had the air of a man
perfectly heart-whole, "it isna so bad as that. Thee't looking rarely
now, and getting flesh every day. But I'd be glad for Dinah t' come, for
she'd help thee wi' the little uns: they took t' her wonderful."
So at daybreak, on Sunday, Adam set off. Seth went with him the first
mile or two, for the thought of Snowfield and the possibility that Dinah
might come again made him restless, and the walk with Adam in the cold
morning air, both in their best clothes, helped to give him a sense of
Sunday calm. It was the last morning in February, with a low grey sky,
and a slight hoar-frost on the green border of the road and on the black
hedges. They heard the gurgling of the full brooklet hurrying down the
hill, and the faint twittering of the early birds. For they walked in
silence, though with a pleased sense of companionship.
"Good-bye, lad," said Adam, laying his hand on Seth's shoulder and
looking at him affectionately as they were about to part. "I wish thee
wast going all the way wi' me, and as happy as I am."
"I'm content, Addy, I'm content," said Seth cheerfully. "I'll be an old
bachelor, belike, and make a fuss wi' thy children."
They turned away from each other, and Seth walked leisurely homeward,
mentally repeating one of his favourite hymns--he was very fond of
hymns:
Dark and cheerless is the morn
Unaccompanied by thee:
Joyless is the day's return
Till thy mercy's beams I see:
Till thou inward light impart,
Glad my eyes and warm my heart.
Visit, then, this soul of mine,
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief--
Fill me, Radiancy Divine,
Scatter all my unbelief.
More and more thyself display,
Shining to the perfect day.
Adam walked much faster, and any one coming along the Oakbourne road
at sunrise that morning must have had a pleasant sight in this tall
broad-chested man, striding along with a carriage as upright and firm
as any soldier's, glancing with keen glad eyes at the dark-blue hills as
they began to show themselves on his way. Seldom in Adam's life had his
face been so free from any cloud of anxiety as it was this morning; and
this freedom from care, as is usual with constructive practical minds
like his, made him all the more observant of the objects round him
and all the more ready to gather suggestions from them towards his
own favourite plans and ingenious contrivances. His happy love--the
knowledge that his steps were carrying him nearer and nearer to Hetty,
who was so soon to be his--was to his thoughts what the sweet morning
air was to his sensations: it gave him a consciousness of well-being
that made activity delightful. Every now and then there was a rush of
more intense feeling towards her, which chased away other images than
Hetty; and along with that would come a wondering thankfulness that
all this happiness was given to him--that this life of ours had such
sweetness in it. For Adam had a devout mind, though he was perhaps
rather impatient of devout words, and his tenderness lay very close
to his reverence, so that the one could hardly be stirred without the
other. But after feeling had welled up and poured itself out in this
way, busy thought would come back with the greater vigour; and this
morning it was intent on schemes by which the roads might be improved
that were so imperfect all through the country, and on picturing all
the benefits that might come from the exertions of a single country
gentleman, if he would set himself to getting the roads made good in his
own district.
It seemed a very short walk, the ten miles to Oakbourne, that pretty
town within sight of the blue hills, where he break-fasted. After
this, the country grew barer and barer: no more rolling woods, no more
wide-branching trees near frequent homesteads, no more bushy hedgerows,
but greystone walls intersecting the meagre pastures, and dismal
wide-scattered greystone houses on broken lands where mines had been and
were no longer. "A hungry land," said Adam to himself. "I'd rather go
south'ard, where they say it's as flat as a table, than come to live
here; though if Dinah likes to live in a country where she can be the
most comfort to folks, she's i' the right to live o' this side; for she
must look as if she'd come straight from heaven, like th' angels in the
desert, to strengthen them as ha' got nothing t' eat." And when at last
he came in sight of Snowfield, he thought it looked like a town that was
"fellow to the country," though the stream through the valley where the
great mill stood gave a pleasant greenness to the lower fields. The town
lay, grim, stony, and unsheltered, up the side of a steep hill, and Adam
did not go forward to it at present, for Seth had told him where to find
Dinah. It was at a thatched cottage outside the town, a little way from
the mill--an old cottage, standing sideways towards the road, with a
little bit of potato-ground before it. Here Dinah lodged with an elderly
couple; and if she and Hetty happened to be out, Adam could learn where
they were gone, or when they would be at home again. Dinah might be out
on some preaching errand, and perhaps she would have left Hetty at home.
Adam could not help hoping this, and as he recognized the cottage by the
roadside before him, there shone out in his face that involuntary smile
which belongs to the expectation of a near joy.
He hurried his step along the narrow causeway, and rapped at the door.
It was opened by a very clean old woman, with a slow palsied shake of
the head.
"Is Dinah Morris at home?" said Adam.
"Eh?...no," said the old woman, looking up at this tall stranger with
a wonder that made her slower of speech than usual. "Will you please to
come in?" she added, retiring from the door, as if recollecting herself.
"Why, ye're brother to the young man as come afore, arena ye?"
"Yes," said Adam, entering. "That was Seth Bede. I'm his brother Adam.
He told me to give his respects to you and your good master."
"Aye, the same t' him. He was a gracious young man. An' ye feature him,
on'y ye're darker. Sit ye down i' th' arm-chair. My man isna come home
from meeting."
Adam sat down patiently, not liking to hurry the shaking old woman with
questions, but looking eagerly towards the narrow twisting stairs in one
corner, for he thought it was possible Hetty might have heard his voice
and would come down them.
"So you're come to see Dinah Morris?" said the old woman, standing
opposite to him. "An' you didn' know she was away from home, then?"
"No," said Adam, "but I thought it likely she might be away, seeing as
it's Sunday. But the other young woman--is she at home, or gone along
with Dinah?"
The old woman looked at Adam with a bewildered air.
"Gone along wi' her?" she said. "Eh, Dinah's gone to Leeds, a big town
ye may ha' heared on, where there's a many o' the Lord's people. She's
been gone sin' Friday was a fortnight: they sent her the money for her
journey. You may see her room here," she went on, opening a door and not
noticing the effect of her words on Adam. He rose and followed her, and
darted an eager glance into the little room with its narrow bed, the
portrait of Wesley on the wall, and the few books lying on the large
Bible. He had had an irrational hope that Hetty might be there. He could
not speak in the first moment after seeing that the room was empty; an
undefined fear had seized him--something had happened to Hetty on the
journey. Still the old woman was so slow of speech and apprehension,
that Hetty might be at Snowfield after all.
"It's a pity ye didna know," she said. "Have ye come from your own
country o' purpose to see her?"
"But Hetty--Hetty Sorrel," said Adam, abruptly; "Where is she?"
"I know nobody by that name," said the old woman, wonderingly. "Is it
anybody ye've heared on at Snowfield?"
"Did there come no young woman here--very young and pretty--Friday was a
fortnight, to see Dinah Morris?"
"Nay; I'n seen no young woman."
"Think; are you quite sure? A girl, eighteen years old, with dark eyes
and dark curly hair, and a red cloak on, and a basket on her arm? You
couldn't forget her if you saw her."
"Nay; Friday was a fortnight--it was the day as Dinah went away--there
come nobody. There's ne'er been nobody asking for her till you come, for
the folks about know as she's gone. Eh dear, eh dear, is there summat
the matter?"
The old woman had seen the ghastly look of fear in Adam's face. But he
was not stunned or confounded: he was thinking eagerly where he could
inquire about Hetty.
"Yes; a young woman started from our country to see Dinah, Friday was a
fortnight. I came to fetch her back. I'm afraid something has happened
to her. I can't stop. Good-bye."
He hastened out of the cottage, and the old woman followed him to the
gate, watching him sadly with her shaking head as he almost ran towards
the town. He was going to inquire at the place where the Oakbourne coach
stopped.
No! No young woman like Hetty had been seen there. Had any accident
happened to the coach a fortnight ago? No. And there was no coach to
take him back to Oakbourne that day. Well, he would walk: he couldn't
stay here, in wretched inaction. But the innkeeper, seeing that Adam was
in great anxiety, and entering into this new incident with the eagerness
of a man who passes a great deal of time with his hands in his pockets
looking into an obstinately monotonous street, offered to take him back
to Oakbourne in his own "taxed cart" this very evening. It was not five
o'clock; there was plenty of time for Adam to take a meal and yet to get
to Oakbourne before ten o'clock. The innkeeper declared that he really
wanted to go to Oakbourne, and might as well go to-night; he should have
all Monday before him then. Adam, after making an ineffectual attempt
to eat, put the food in his pocket, and, drinking a draught of ale,
declared himself ready to set off. As they approached the cottage, it
occurred to him that he would do well to learn from the old woman
where Dinah was to be found in Leeds: if there was trouble at the Hall
Farm--he only half-admitted the foreboding that there would be--the
Poysers might like to send for Dinah. But Dinah had not left any
address, and the old woman, whose memory for names was infirm, could not
recall the name of the "blessed woman" who was Dinah's chief friend in
the Society at Leeds.
During that long, long journey in the taxed cart, there was time for
all the conjectures of importunate fear and struggling hope. In the very
first shock of discovering that Hetty had not been to Snowfield, the
thought of Arthur had darted through Adam like a sharp pang, but he
tried for some time to ward off its return by busying himself with modes
of accounting for the alarming fact, quite apart from that intolerable
thought. Some accident had happened. Hetty had, by some strange chance,
got into a wrong vehicle from Oakbourne: she had been taken ill, and did
not want to frighten them by letting them know. But this frail fence
of vague improbabilities was soon hurled down by a rush of distinct
agonizing fears. Hetty had been deceiving herself in thinking that she
could love and marry him: she had been loving Arthur all the while; and
now, in her desperation at the nearness of their marriage, she had run
away. And she was gone to him. The old indignation and jealousy
rose again, and prompted the suspicion that Arthur had been dealing
falsely--had written to Hetty--had tempted her to come to him--being
unwilling, after all, that she should belong to another man besides
himself. Perhaps the whole thing had been contrived by him, and he had
given her directions how to follow him to Ireland--for Adam knew that
Arthur had been gone thither three weeks ago, having recently learnt it
at the Chase. Every sad look of Hetty's, since she had been engaged
to Adam, returned upon him now with all the exaggeration of painful
retrospect. He had been foolishly sanguine and confident. The poor thing
hadn't perhaps known her own mind for a long while; had thought that
she could forget Arthur; had been momentarily drawn towards the man who
offered her a protecting, faithful love. He couldn't bear to blame her:
she never meant to cause him this dreadful pain. The blame lay with
that man who had selfishly played with her heart--had perhaps even
deliberately lured her away.
At Oakbourne, the ostler at the Royal Oak remembered such a young woman
as Adam described getting out of the Treddleston coach more than a
fortnight ago--wasn't likely to forget such a pretty lass as that in
a hurry--was sure she had not gone on by the Buxton coach that went
through Snowfield, but had lost sight of her while he went away with the
horses and had never set eyes on her again. Adam then went straight to
the house from which the Stonition coach started: Stoniton was the
most obvious place for Hetty to go to first, whatever might be
her destination, for she would hardly venture on any but the chief
coach-roads. She had been noticed here too, and was remembered to have
sat on the box by the coachman; but the coachman could not be seen, for
another man had been driving on that road in his stead the last three or
four days. He could probably be seen at Stoniton, through inquiry at the
inn where the coach put up. So the anxious heart-stricken Adam must of
necessity wait and try to rest till morning--nay, till eleven o'clock,
when the coach started.
At Stoniton another delay occurred, for the old coachman who had driven
Hetty would not be in the town again till night. When he did come he
remembered Hetty well, and remembered his own joke addressed to her,
quoting it many times to Adam, and observing with equal frequency that
he thought there was something more than common, because Hetty had not
laughed when he joked her. But he declared, as the people had done at
the inn, that he had lost sight of Hetty directly she got down. Part of
the next morning was consumed in inquiries at every house in the town
from which a coach started--(all in vain, for you know Hetty did not
start from Stonition by coach, but on foot in the grey morning)--and
then in walking out to the first toll-gates on the different lines of
road, in the forlorn hope of finding some recollection of her there. No,
she was not to be traced any farther; and the next hard task for Adam
was to go home and carry the wretched tidings to the Hall Farm. As to
what he should do beyond that, he had come to two distinct resolutions
amidst the tumult of thought and feeling which was going on within him
while he went to and fro. He would not mention what he knew of Arthur
Donnithorne's behaviour to Hetty till there was a clear necessity for
it: it was still possible Hetty might come back, and the disclosure
might be an injury or an offence to her. And as soon as he had been home
and done what was necessary there to prepare for his further absence, he
would start off to Ireland: if he found no trace of Hetty on the road,
he would go straight to Arthur Donnithorne and make himself certain
how far he was acquainted with her movements. Several times the thought
occurred to him that he would consult Mr. Irwine, but that would be
useless unless he told him all, and so betrayed the secret about Arthur.
It seems strange that Adam, in the incessant occupation of his mind
about Hetty, should never have alighted on the probability that she had
gone to Windsor, ignorant that Arthur was no longer there. Perhaps the
reason was that he could not conceive Hetty's throwing herself on Arthur
uncalled; he imagined no cause that could have driven her to such
a step, after that letter written in August. There were but two
alternatives in his mind: either Arthur had written to her again and
enticed her away, or she had simply fled from her approaching marriage
with himself because she found, after all, she could not love him well
enough, and yet was afraid of her friends' anger if she retracted.
With this last determination on his mind, of going straight to Arthur,
the thought that he had spent two days in inquiries which had proved to
be almost useless, was torturing to Adam; and yet, since he would not
tell the Poysers his conviction as to where Hetty was gone, or his
intention to follow her thither, he must be able to say to them that he
had traced her as far as possible.
It was after twelve o'clock on Tuesday night when Adam reached
Treddleston; and, unwilling to disturb his mother and Seth, and also
to encounter their questions at that hour, he threw himself without
undressing on a bed at the "Waggon Overthrown," and slept hard from pure
weariness. Not more than four hours, however, for before five o'clock he
set out on his way home in the faint morning twilight. He always kept a
key of the workshop door in his pocket, so that he could let himself in;
and he wished to enter without awaking his mother, for he was anxious
to avoid telling her the new trouble himself by seeing Seth first, and
asking him to tell her when it should be necessary. He walked gently
along the yard, and turned the key gently in the door; but, as he
expected, Gyp, who lay in the workshop, gave a sharp bark. It subsided
when he saw Adam, holding up his finger at him to impose silence, and
in his dumb, tailless joy he must content himself with rubbing his body
against his master's legs.
Adam was too heart-sick to take notice of Gyp's fondling. He threw
himself on the bench and stared dully at the wood and the signs of work
around him, wondering if he should ever come to feel pleasure in them
again, while Gyp, dimly aware that there was something wrong with his
master, laid his rough grey head on Adam's knee and wrinkled his brows
to look up at him. Hitherto, since Sunday afternoon, Adam had been
constantly among strange people and in strange places, having no
associations with the details of his daily life, and now that by the
light of this new morning he was come back to his home and surrounded
by the familiar objects that seemed for ever robbed of their charm, the
reality--the hard, inevitable reality of his troubles pressed upon him
with a new weight. Right before him was an unfinished chest of drawers,
which he had been making in spare moments for Hetty's use, when his home
should be hers.
Seth had not heard Adam's entrance, but he had been roused by Gyp's
bark, and Adam heard him moving about in the room above, dressing
himself. Seth's first thoughts were about his brother: he would come
home to-day, surely, for the business would be wanting him sadly by
to-morrow, but it was pleasant to think he had had a longer holiday than
he had expected. And would Dinah come too? Seth felt that that was the
greatest happiness he could look forward to for himself, though he had
no hope left that she would ever love him well enough to marry him; but
he had often said to himself, it was better to be Dinah's friend and
brother than any other woman's husband. If he could but be always near
her, instead of living so far off!
He came downstairs and opened the inner door leading from the kitchen
into the workshop, intending to let out Gyp; but he stood still in
the doorway, smitten with a sudden shock at the sight of Adam seated
listlessly on the bench, pale, unwashed, with sunken blank eyes, almost
like a drunkard in the morning. But Seth felt in an instant what the
marks meant--not drunkenness, but some great calamity. Adam looked up at
him without speaking, and Seth moved forward towards the bench, himself
trembling so that speech did not come readily.
"God have mercy on us, Addy," he said, in a low voice, sitting down on
the bench beside Adam, "what is it?"
Adam was unable to speak. The strong man, accustomed to suppress the
signs of sorrow, had felt his heart swell like a child's at this first
approach of sympathy. He fell on Seth's neck and sobbed.
Seth was prepared for the worst now, for, even in his recollections of
their boyhood, Adam had never sobbed before.
"Is it death, Adam? Is she dead?" he asked, in a low tone, when Adam
raised his head and was recovering himself.
"No, lad; but she's gone--gone away from us. She's never been to
Snowfield. Dinah's been gone to Leeds ever since last Friday was a
fortnight, the very day Hetty set out. I can't find out where she went
after she got to Stoniton."
Seth was silent from utter astonishment: he knew nothing that could
suggest to him a reason for Hetty's going away.
"Hast any notion what she's done it for?" he said, at last.
"She can't ha' loved me. She didn't like our marriage when it came
nigh--that must be it," said Adam. He had determined to mention no
further reason.
"I hear Mother stirring," said Seth. "Must we tell her?"
"No, not yet," said Adam, rising from the bench and pushing the hair
from his face, as if he wanted to rouse himself. "I can't have her told
yet; and I must set out on another journey directly, after I've been to
the village and th' Hall Farm. I can't tell thee where I'm going, and
thee must say to her I'm gone on business as nobody is to know anything
about. I'll go and wash myself now." Adam moved towards the door of the
workshop, but after a step or two he turned round, and, meeting Seth's
eyes with a calm sad glance, he said, "I must take all the money out
o' the tin box, lad; but if anything happens to me, all the rest 'll be
thine, to take care o' Mother with."
Seth was pale and trembling: he felt there was some terrible secret
under all this. "Brother," he said, faintly--he never called Adam
"Brother" except in solemn moments--"I don't believe you'll do anything
as you can't ask God's blessing on."
"Nay, lad," said Adam, "don't be afraid. I'm for doing nought but what's
a man's duty."
The thought that if he betrayed his trouble to his mother, she would
only distress him by words, half of blundering affection, half of
irrepressible triumph that Hetty proved as unfit to be his wife as she
had always foreseen, brought back some of his habitual firmness and
self-command. He had felt ill on his journey home--he told her when she
came down--had stayed all night at Tredddleston for that reason; and a
bad headache, that still hung about him this morning, accounted for his
paleness and heavy eyes.
He determined to go to the village, in the first place, attend to his
business for an hour, and give notice to Burge of his being obliged to
go on a journey, which he must beg him not to mention to any one; for
he wished to avoid going to the Hall Farm near breakfast-time, when the
children and servants would be in the house-place, and there must be
exclamations in their hearing about his having returned without Hetty.
He waited until the clock struck nine before he left the work-yard at
the village, and set off, through the fields, towards the Farm. It was
an immense relief to him, as he came near the Home Close, to see Mr.
Poyser advancing towards him, for this would spare him the pain of going
to the house. Mr. Poyser was walking briskly this March morning, with a
sense of spring business on his mind: he was going to cast the master's
eye on the shoeing of a new cart-horse, carrying his spud as a useful
companion by the way. His surprise was great when he caught sight of
Adam, but he was not a man given to presentiments of evil.
"Why, Adam, lad, is't you? Have ye been all this time away and not
brought the lasses back, after all? Where are they?"
"No, I've not brought 'em," said Adam, turning round, to indicate that
he wished to walk back with Mr. Poyser.
"Why," said Martin, looking with sharper attention at Adam, "ye look
bad. Is there anything happened?"
"Yes," said Adam, heavily. "A sad thing's happened. I didna find Hetty
at Snowfield."
Mr. Poyser's good-natured face showed signs of troubled astonishment.
"Not find her? What's happened to her?" he said, his thoughts flying at
once to bodily accident.
"That I can't tell, whether anything's happened to her. She never went
to Snowfield--she took the coach to Stoniton, but I can't learn nothing
of her after she got down from the Stoniton coach."
"Why, you donna mean she's run away?" said Martin, standing still, so
puzzled and bewildered that the fact did not yet make itself felt as a
trouble by him.
"She must ha' done," said Adam. "She didn't like our marriage when it
came to the point--that must be it. She'd mistook her feelings."
Martin was silent for a minute or two, looking on the ground and rooting
up the grass with his spud, without knowing what he was doing. His usual
slowness was always trebled when the subject of speech was painful. At
last he looked up, right in Adam's face, saying, "Then she didna deserve
t' ha' ye, my lad. An' I feel i' fault myself, for she was my niece, and
I was allays hot for her marr'ing ye. There's no amends I can make ye,
lad--the more's the pity: it's a sad cut-up for ye, I doubt."
Adam could say nothing; and Mr. Poyser, after pursuing his walk for a
little while, went on, "I'll be bound she's gone after trying to get a
lady's maid's place, for she'd got that in her head half a year ago, and
wanted me to gi' my consent. But I'd thought better on her"--he added,
shaking his head slowly and sadly--"I'd thought better on her, nor to
look for this, after she'd gi'en y' her word, an' everything been got
ready."
Adam had the strongest motives for encouraging this supposition in Mr.
Poyser, and he even tried to believe that it might possibly be true. He
had no warrant for the certainty that she was gone to Arthur.
"It was better it should be so," he said, as quietly as he could, "if
she felt she couldn't like me for a husband. Better run away before than
repent after. I hope you won't look harshly on her if she comes back, as
she may do if she finds it hard to get on away from home."
"I canna look on her as I've done before," said Martin decisively.
"She's acted bad by you, and by all of us. But I'll not turn my back on
her: she's but a young un, and it's the first harm I've knowed on her.
It'll be a hard job for me to tell her aunt. Why didna Dinah come back
wi' ye? She'd ha' helped to pacify her aunt a bit."
"Dinah wasn't at Snowfield. She's been gone to Leeds this fortnight, and
I couldn't learn from th' old woman any direction where she is at Leeds,
else I should ha' brought it you."
"She'd a deal better be staying wi' her own kin," said Mr. Poyser,
indignantly, "than going preaching among strange folks a-that'n."
"I must leave you now, Mr. Poyser," said Adam, "for I've a deal to see
to."
"Aye, you'd best be after your business, and I must tell the missis when
I go home. It's a hard job."
"But," said Adam, "I beg particular, you'll keep what's happened quiet
for a week or two. I've not told my mother yet, and there's no knowing
how things may turn out."
"Aye, aye; least said, soonest mended. We'n no need to say why the match
is broke off, an' we may hear of her after a bit. Shake hands wi' me,
lad: I wish I could make thee amends."
There was something in Martin Poyser's throat at that moment which
caused him to bring out those scanty words in rather a broken fashion.
Yet Adam knew what they meant all the better, and the two honest men
grasped each other's hard hands in mutual understanding.
There was nothing now to hinder Adam from setting off. He had told Seth
to go to the Chase and leave a message for the squire, saying that Adam
Bede had been obliged to start off suddenly on a journey--and to say as
much, and no more, to any one else who made inquiries about him. If the
Poysers learned that he was gone away again, Adam knew they would infer
that he was gone in search of Hetty.
He had intended to go right on his way from the Hall Farm, but now the
impulse which had frequently visited him before--to go to Mr. Irwine,
and make a confidant of him--recurred with the new force which belongs
to a last opportunity. He was about to start on a long journey--a
difficult one--by sea--and no soul would know where he was gone. If
anything happened to him? Or, if he absolutely needed help in any matter
concerning Hetty? Mr. Irwine was to be trusted; and the feeling which
made Adam shrink from telling anything which was her secret must give
way before the need there was that she should have some one else besides
himself who would be prepared to defend her in the worst extremity.
Towards Arthur, even though he might have incurred no new guilt, Adam
felt that he was not bound to keep silence when Hetty's interest called
on him to speak.
"I must do it," said Adam, when these thoughts, which had spread
themselves through hours of his sad journeying, now rushed upon him in
an instant, like a wave that had been slowly gathering; "it's the right
thing. I can't stand alone in this way any longer."
| 8,160 | Chapter 38 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter38 | The Quest The narrative switches to Adam's point of view. After Hetty has been gone for two weeks, the family begins to worry, and Adam decides to go to Snowfield to get her. Mrs. Poyser tells him to invite Dinah to come back too for the wedding. Adam starts his journey in hope for he has never been happier in his life. When he reaches Dinah's cottage, he asks to see her, but the old woman there says Dinah has gone to Leeds to preach. He then asks to see the other woman, Hetty, but the woman says she has never been there. Now Adam is worried. He wonders if Hetty is with Dinah at Leeds, but the old woman does not have an address for her. Adam next inquires at the coach stop, but she was never on the coach for Snowfield. The innkeeper takes him to Oakbourne in his cart, one of the stops of the Treddleston coach in which she departed. Adam vacillates between fear of an accident and fear that she has run off with Arthur. Adam knows Arthur is in Ireland. The innkeeper in Oakbourne knows Hetty did not take the coach that goes to Snowfield, but he does not know where she went. From here Adam goes to Stoniton, knowing that Hetty must have gone here at first. The coachman remembers her, but not what happened after she left the coach. Adam can trace her no farther and returns home. He tells everything to his brother Seth but not his mother. Seth is surprised when Adam falls on his neck weeping, for he has never seen his brother break down. Next, Adam delivers the news to Mr. Poyser, but he does not tell him his suspicions about Arthur. Mr. Poyser is shocked and apologizes to Adam. Mr. Poyser thinks she did not want to be married and went to become a lady's maid. Adam asks Mr. Poyser to be easy with Hetty if she should decide to come home. They decide to keep everything quiet for now until they find her. Next Adam decides to go to Ireland to find Arthur, where he thinks Hetty has gone. He wants to go secretly and wills everything to Seth, if he should not return. He decides he must also inform Mr. Irwine. | Commentary on Chapter 38 Eliot skillfully builds suspense as a film would do by inter-cutting scenes, returning to the people Hetty has left behind as they realize she is gone. Adam has a piece of the puzzle that the others do not, concerning her involvement with Arthur. Readers know more than Adam does, but we too are waiting to find out what happens to her. Adam's grief is so intense that his old jealousy is aroused, and Seth is worried for him. He hints that he hopes Adam won't do anything rash. He supposedly means suicide, but the reader wonders about his anger and revenge towards Arthur. For the moment, Adam is crushed to realize that Hetty does not want to marry him, that she has run away. Yet, it is significant that he always begs for leniency towards her. He decides that he must tell Mr. Irwine about Hetty and Arthur because "I can't stand alone in this way any longer" . He knows now it is too late to protect their secret. | 528 | 174 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/39.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_39_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 39 | chapter 39 | null | {"name": "Chapter 39", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter39", "summary": "The Tidings When Arthur arrives at the parsonage, he is kept waiting as Mr. Irwine talks to a strange man . When Adam is admitted, he tells Mr. Irwine that he has come to him for help because he looks up to him the most and must tell him some painful news. Mr. Irwine is looking at Adam strangely and has his hand on a letter. Adam tells him Hetty has run away and that he is going to look for her. Mr. Irwine asks if Adam knows why she ran away. Adam says there is someone else involved. Mr. Irwine looks relieved. Adam then tells him the other person is Arthur, and Mr. Irwine is shocked and full of grief as Adam tells about the secret meetings and how he made Arthur write the letter to Hetty. Mr. Irwine then tells Adam to prepare himself for a heavy blow. He can at least thank God he is not the guilty one. He shows Adam the letter from a magistrate in Stoniton with news of Hetty. She has been arrested for killing her baby. Adam is stricken, saying Hetty never had a child. The letter mentions that she denies having a baby, but there is evidence. Mr. Irwine says they can only hope she didn't do it. The trial is coming soon. Adam says he forgives Hetty, but he will bring Arthur back to see Hetty's misery; it is all his fault. Arthur, however, is on his way home already because his grandfather has sent for him. Mr. Irwine switches Adam's attention to Hetty and advises him to go to Stoniton with him to identify Hetty. He tells Adam there are others to think of in this crisis.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 39 Eliot shocks the characters and readers at the same time by skillfully postponing the outcome of Hetty's tortured journey until we hear this official report reach her family and friends. Eliot further delays telling the details and final scenes of Hetty's story until the trial. Adam's blow is hard to witness, for he has tried so hard and was so close, he thought, to happiness: \"O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too to hard to think she is wicked\" . Mr. Irwine comes into his own as the moral leader in this crisis. It is clear that he first thought Adam was the father of the baby. Relieved at first when Adam says it was someone else, he is doubly hurt to find the man is Arthur. He remembers Arthur trying to confess something to him. Though crushed himself for his protege and surrogate son, Mr. Irwine thinks of others and how to soften the blow so that the right things can be done. Adam claims that Arthur is to blame and should suffer the consequences, not Hetty. He continues to load all the guilt on Arthur. Mr. Irwine counsels Adam wisely against revenge, and tells him that Arthur's suffering will be worse, since he caused the tragedy. He must put his attention on giving help. Knowing everyone's nature, Mr. Irwine begins skillfully to orchestrate the community response, fulfilling his office of spiritual counselor admirably. He gives Adam some action to do--come with him to Stoniton Prison."} |
ADAM turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest
stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Irwine might be gone
out--hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together produced a state of
strong excitement before he reached the rectory gate, and outside it he
saw the deep marks of a recent hoof on the gravel.
But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and though
there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr. Irwine's: it
had evidently had a journey this morning, and must belong to some one
who had come on business. Mr. Irwine was at home, then; but Adam could
hardly find breath and calmness to tell Carroll that he wanted to speak
to the rector. The double suffering of certain and uncertain sorrow had
begun to shake the strong man. The butler looked at him wonderingly, as
he threw himself on a bench in the passage and stared absently at the
clock on the opposite wall. The master had somebody with him, he said,
but he heard the study door open--the stranger seemed to be coming out,
and as Adam was in a hurry, he would let the master know at once.
Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the
last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Adam
watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some
reason for doing so. In our times of bitter suffering there are almost
always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything
but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came
to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us
in our sleep.
Carroll, coming back, recalled Adam to the sense of his burden. He
was to go into the study immediately. "I can't think what that strange
person's come about," the butler added, from mere incontinence of
remark, as he preceded Adam to the door, "he's gone i' the dining-room.
And master looks unaccountable--as if he was frightened." Adam took no
notice of the words: he could not care about other people's business.
But when he entered the study and looked in Mr. Irwine's face, he felt
in an instant that there was a new expression in it, strangely different
from the warm friendliness it had always worn for him before. A letter
lay open on the table, and Mr. Irwine's hand was on it, but the changed
glance he cast on Adam could not be owing entirely to preoccupation with
some disagreeable business, for he was looking eagerly towards the door,
as if Adam's entrance were a matter of poignant anxiety to him.
"You want to speak to me, Adam," he said, in that low constrainedly
quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to suppress agitation.
"Sit down here." He pointed to a chair just opposite to him, at no more
than a yard's distance from his own, and Adam sat down with a sense
that this cold manner of Mr. Irwine's gave an additional unexpected
difficulty to his disclosure. But when Adam had made up his mind to
a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but imperative
reasons.
"I come to you, sir," he said, "as the gentleman I look up to most of
anybody. I've something very painful to tell you--something as it'll
pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o' the wrong
other people have done, you'll see I didn't speak till I'd good reason."
Mr. Irwine nodded slowly, and Adam went on rather tremulously, "You was
t' ha' married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o' the fifteenth o'
this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th' happiest man i' the
parish. But a dreadful blow's come upon me."
Mr. Irwine started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but then,
determined to control himself, walked to the window and looked out.
"She's gone away, sir, and we don't know where. She said she was going
to Snowfield o' Friday was a fortnight, and I went last Sunday to
fetch her back; but she'd never been there, and she took the coach to
Stoniton, and beyond that I can't trace her. But now I'm going a long
journey to look for her, and I can't trust t' anybody but you where I'm
going."
Mr. Irwine came back from the window and sat down.
"Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?" he said.
"It's plain enough she didn't want to marry me, sir," said Adam. "She
didn't like it when it came so near. But that isn't all, I doubt.
There's something else I must tell you, sir. There's somebody else
concerned besides me."
A gleam of something--it was almost like relief or joy--came across the
eager anxiety of Mr. Irwine's face at that moment. Adam was looking on
the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak.
But when he went on, he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr.
Irwine. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching.
"You know who's the man I've reckoned my greatest friend," he said, "and
used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i' working for him,
and had felt so ever since we were lads...."
Mr. Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Adam's arm,
which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in pain,
said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, "No, Adam, no--don't say
it, for God's sake!"
Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr. Irwine's feeling, repented of the
words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed silence. The grasp
on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Irwine threw himself back in his
chair, saying, "Go on--I must know it."
"That man played with Hetty's feelings, and behaved to her as he'd no
right to do to a girl in her station o' life--made her presents and used
to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only two days before
he went away--found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove.
There'd been nothing said between me and Hetty then, though I'd loved
her for a long while, and she knew it. But I reproached him with his
wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said
solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more
than a bit o' flirting. But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty
he'd meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as
I hadn't understood at the time, as he'd got hold of her heart, and
I thought she'd belike go on thinking of him and never come to love
another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter, and she
seemed to bear it all after a while better than I'd expected...and she
behaved kinder and kinder to me...I daresay she didn't know her own
feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too
late...I don't want to blame her...I can't think as she meant to deceive
me. But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and--you know the rest,
sir. But it's on my mind as he's been false to me, and 'ticed her away,
and she's gone to him--and I'm going now to see, for I can never go to
work again till I know what's become of her."
During Adam's narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his
self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him.
It was a bitter remembrance to him now--that morning when Arthur
breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a
confession. It was plain enough now what he had wanted to confess. And
if their words had taken another turn...if he himself had been less
fastidious about intruding on another man's secrets...it was cruel
to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and
misery. He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination which
the present sheds back upon the past. But every other feeling as it
rushed upon his was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity,
for the man who sat before him--already so bruised, going forth with sad
blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close
upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever to have
feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that comes
over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he must
inflict on Adam was already present to him. Again he put his hand on
the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said
solemnly:
"Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life. You
can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both
tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than
any you have yet known. But you are not guilty--you have not the worst
of all sorrows. God help him who has!"
The two pale faces looked at each other; in Adam's there was trembling
suspense, in Mr. Irwine's hesitating, shrinking pity. But he went on.
"I have had news of Hetty this morning. She is not gone to him. She is
in Stonyshire--at Stoniton."
Adam started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have leaped
to her that moment. But Mr. Irwine laid hold of his arm again and said,
persuasively, "Wait, Adam, wait." So he sat down.
"She is in a very unhappy position--one which will make it worse for you
to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for ever."
Adam's lips moved tremulously, but no sound came. They moved again, and
he whispered, "Tell me."
"She has been arrested...she is in prison."
It was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of resistance
into Adam. The blood rushed to his face, and he said, loudly and
sharply, "For what?"
"For a great crime--the murder of her child."
"It CAN'T BE!" Adam almost shouted, starting up from his chair and
making a stride towards the door; but he turned round again, setting his
back against the bookcase, and looking fiercely at Mr. Irwine. "It isn't
possible. She never had a child. She can't be guilty. WHO says it?"
"God grant she may be innocent, Adam. We can still hope she is."
"But who says she is guilty?" said Adam violently. "Tell me everything."
"Here is a letter from the magistrate before whom she was taken, and the
constable who arrested her is in the dining-room. She will not confess
her name or where she comes from; but I fear, I fear, there can be no
doubt it is Hetty. The description of her person corresponds, only
that she is said to look very pale and ill. She had a small red-leather
pocket-book in her pocket with two names written in it--one at the
beginning, 'Hetty Sorrel, Hayslope,' and the other near the end, 'Dinah
Morris, Snowfield.' She will not say which is her own name--she denies
everything, and will answer no questions, and application has been made
to me, as a magistrate, that I may take measures for identifying her,
for it was thought probable that the name which stands first is her own
name."
"But what proof have they got against her, if it IS Hetty?" said Adam,
still violently, with an effort that seemed to shake his whole frame.
"I'll not believe it. It couldn't ha' been, and none of us know it."
"Terrible proof that she was under the temptation to commit the crime;
but we have room to hope that she did not really commit it. Try and read
that letter, Adam."
Adam took the letter between his shaking hands and tried to fix his eyes
steadily on it. Mr. Irwine meanwhile went out to give some orders. When
he came back, Adam's eyes were still on the first page--he couldn't
read--he could not put the words together and make out what they meant.
He threw it down at last and clenched his fist.
"It's HIS doing," he said; "if there's been any crime, it's at his door,
not at hers. HE taught her to deceive--HE deceived me first. Let 'em put
HIM on his trial--let him stand in court beside her, and I'll tell 'em
how he got hold of her heart, and 'ticed her t' evil, and then lied to
me. Is HE to go free, while they lay all the punishment on her...so weak
and young?"
The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to poor
Adam's maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the corner of the
room as if he saw something there. Then he burst out again, in a tone of
appealing anguish, "I can't bear it...O God, it's too hard to lay upon
me--it's too hard to think she's wicked."
Mr. Irwine had sat down again in silence. He was too wise to utter
soothing words at present, and indeed, the sight of Adam before him,
with that look of sudden age which sometimes comes over a young face in
moments of terrible emotion--the hard bloodless look of the skin, the
deep lines about the quivering mouth, the furrows in the brow--the sight
of this strong firm man shattered by the invisible stroke of sorrow,
moved him so deeply that speech was not easy. Adam stood motionless,
with his eyes vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that
short space he was living through all his love again.
"She can't ha' done it," he said, still without moving his eyes, as
if he were only talking to himself: "it was fear made her hide it...I
forgive her for deceiving me...I forgive thee, Hetty...thee wast
deceived too...it's gone hard wi' thee, my poor Hetty...but they'll
never make me believe it."
He was silent again for a few moments, and then he said, with fierce
abruptness, "I'll go to him--I'll bring him back--I'll make him go and
look at her in her misery--he shall look at her till he can't forget
it--it shall follow him night and day--as long as he lives it shall
follow him--he shan't escape wi' lies this time--I'll fetch him, I'll
drag him myself."
In the act of going towards the door, Adam paused automatically and
looked about for his hat, quite unconscious where he was or who was
present with him. Mr. Irwine had followed him, and now took him by the
arm, saying, in a quiet but decided tone, "No, Adam, no; I'm sure you
will wish to stay and see what good can be done for her, instead of
going on a useless errand of vengeance. The punishment will surely fall
without your aid. Besides, he is no longer in Ireland. He must be on his
way home--or would be, long before you arrived, for his grandfather, I
know, wrote for him to come at least ten days ago. I want you now to go
with me to Stoniton. I have ordered a horse for you to ride with us, as
soon as you can compose yourself."
While Mr. Irwine was speaking, Adam recovered his consciousness of the
actual scene. He rubbed his hair off his forehead and listened.
"Remember," Mr. Irwine went on, "there are others to think of, and
act for, besides yourself, Adam: there are Hetty's friends, the good
Poysers, on whom this stroke will fall more heavily than I can bear to
think. I expect it from your strength of mind, Adam--from your sense of
duty to God and man--that you will try to act as long as action can be
of any use."
In reality, Mr. Irwine proposed this journey to Stoniton for Adam's
own sake. Movement, with some object before him, was the best means of
counteracting the violence of suffering in these first hours.
"You will go with me to Stoniton, Adam?" he said again, after a moment's
pause. "We have to see if it is really Hetty who is there, you know."
"Yes, sir," said Adam, "I'll do what you think right. But the folks at
th' Hall Farm?"
"I wish them not to know till I return to tell them myself. I shall
have ascertained things then which I am uncertain about now, and I shall
return as soon as possible. Come now, the horses are ready."
| 4,245 | Chapter 39 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter39 | The Tidings When Arthur arrives at the parsonage, he is kept waiting as Mr. Irwine talks to a strange man . When Adam is admitted, he tells Mr. Irwine that he has come to him for help because he looks up to him the most and must tell him some painful news. Mr. Irwine is looking at Adam strangely and has his hand on a letter. Adam tells him Hetty has run away and that he is going to look for her. Mr. Irwine asks if Adam knows why she ran away. Adam says there is someone else involved. Mr. Irwine looks relieved. Adam then tells him the other person is Arthur, and Mr. Irwine is shocked and full of grief as Adam tells about the secret meetings and how he made Arthur write the letter to Hetty. Mr. Irwine then tells Adam to prepare himself for a heavy blow. He can at least thank God he is not the guilty one. He shows Adam the letter from a magistrate in Stoniton with news of Hetty. She has been arrested for killing her baby. Adam is stricken, saying Hetty never had a child. The letter mentions that she denies having a baby, but there is evidence. Mr. Irwine says they can only hope she didn't do it. The trial is coming soon. Adam says he forgives Hetty, but he will bring Arthur back to see Hetty's misery; it is all his fault. Arthur, however, is on his way home already because his grandfather has sent for him. Mr. Irwine switches Adam's attention to Hetty and advises him to go to Stoniton with him to identify Hetty. He tells Adam there are others to think of in this crisis. | Commentary on Chapter 39 Eliot shocks the characters and readers at the same time by skillfully postponing the outcome of Hetty's tortured journey until we hear this official report reach her family and friends. Eliot further delays telling the details and final scenes of Hetty's story until the trial. Adam's blow is hard to witness, for he has tried so hard and was so close, he thought, to happiness: "O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too to hard to think she is wicked" . Mr. Irwine comes into his own as the moral leader in this crisis. It is clear that he first thought Adam was the father of the baby. Relieved at first when Adam says it was someone else, he is doubly hurt to find the man is Arthur. He remembers Arthur trying to confess something to him. Though crushed himself for his protege and surrogate son, Mr. Irwine thinks of others and how to soften the blow so that the right things can be done. Adam claims that Arthur is to blame and should suffer the consequences, not Hetty. He continues to load all the guilt on Arthur. Mr. Irwine counsels Adam wisely against revenge, and tells him that Arthur's suffering will be worse, since he caused the tragedy. He must put his attention on giving help. Knowing everyone's nature, Mr. Irwine begins skillfully to orchestrate the community response, fulfilling his office of spiritual counselor admirably. He gives Adam some action to do--come with him to Stoniton Prison. | 412 | 254 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/40.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_40_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 40 | chapter 40 | null | {"name": "Chapter 40", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter40", "summary": "The Bitter Waters Spread When Mr. Irwine returns from Stoniton, his mother tells him Squire Donnithorne is dead. She does not know about the tragedy and rejoices that now her godson Arthur will be the new squire. Mr. Irwine does not send a letter to Arthur about the events because he will be home soon for his grandfather's funeral. He gets some sleep and then prepares to break the news to Hall Farm and to the Bedes. Adam has stayed in Stoniton to be near Hetty though he can't bear to see her. He continues to believe Hetty innocent, though Mr. Irwine knows she is not. He decides to let Adam hope, for he is crushed enough. Irwine thinks at least there could be a pardon. Adam also continues to denounce Arthur as the sole perpetrator of any crime. Irwine finds it hard to hear so much against Arthur to whom he has been a father. The Poysers take the news hard. The trial is to be held the next week, and Martin Poyser will probably be called to testify, but he is so upset by the disgrace to the family, he swears never to see Hetty again. Both old Poyser and Martin are hard against Hetty, but Mrs. Poyser is less severe on her. Martin believes they will have to leave the country now. Mrs. Poyser thinks they should send for Dinah. Lisbeth Bede also wants to send for Dinah in their trouble. Seth offers to go to Leeds to look for her, but Lisbeth won't let him go. Instead, a letter is sent. Mr. Irwine tells Jonathan Burge why Adam will be away from work for a while, and soon all Hayslope and Broxton know the news. A few neighbors go to the Poysers to comfort them, and one of them is Bartle Massey, the school teacher. Then Bartle Massey goes to Mr. Irwine and asks him how Adam is doing. Irwine tells him Adam is taking it hard and still believes in Hetty's innocence. He himself saw Hetty at Stoniton and could not believe the change in her: \"she shrank up like a frightened animal\" . Irwine is afraid Adam could lose control and seek revenge against Arthur. Massey offers to go to Stoniton and stay with Adam until the trial is over. He can keep an eye on him.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 40 The impact of Hetty's crime on the small town is like a bombshell. The Poysers feel betrayed and vow they will have to leave the area for they are ruined forever. Their children will be marked out as having a murderess for a cousin. Mrs. Poyser is surprisingly more understanding and forgiving of Hetty than her husband. Lisbeth and Seth feel sorrow for Adam. Bartle Massey feels his worst opinion of women has been confirmed, but he wants to stick by his friend Adam. Thus, the best and worst of small town life are revealed. Gossip travels fast, and censure as well, but there are friends to stand by each other. Bartle marvels that Mr. Irwine is \"everybody's friend in this business\" . Though he has personal feelings, he puts them aside to help everyone else. He is impartial and therefore, the best kind of help. It is telling that the two people most wanted in the crisis are Dinah and Mr. Irwine, the ones with the largest understanding and skill in healing the hearts of others. Both have religious callings, but the important point for Eliot is their humane point of view. They are able to see a larger picture than the other characters. They are able to hold the community together and comfort those in trouble. These are the kind of human beings a society needs, implies Eliot. They are the exemplars of Eliot's moral standard that goes beyond religious doctrine to the unselfish values of unity and sympathy. In this way, Eliot traces in her story the action that causes healing as well as the action that causes tragedy."} |
MR. IRWINE returned from Stoniton in a post-chaise that night, and the
first words Carroll said to him, as he entered the house, were, that
Squire Donnithorne was dead--found dead in his bed at ten o'clock that
morning--and that Mrs. Irwine desired him to say she should be awake
when Mr. Irwine came home, and she begged him not to go to bed without
seeing her.
"Well, Dauphin," Mrs. Irwine said, as her son entered her room, "you're
come at last. So the old gentleman's fidgetiness and low spirits, which
made him send for Arthur in that sudden way, really meant something. I
suppose Carroll has told you that Donnithorne was found dead in his bed
this morning. You will believe my prognostications another time, though
I daresay I shan't live to prognosticate anything but my own death."
"What have they done about Arthur?" said Mr. Irwine. "Sent a messenger
to await him at Liverpool?"
"Yes, Ralph was gone before the news was brought to us. Dear Arthur, I
shall live now to see him master at the Chase, and making good times on
the estate, like a generous-hearted fellow as he is. He'll be as happy
as a king now."
Mr. Irwine could not help giving a slight groan: he was worn with
anxiety and exertion, and his mother's light words were almost
intolerable.
"What are you so dismal about, Dauphin? Is there any bad news? Or are
you thinking of the danger for Arthur in crossing that frightful Irish
Channel at this time of year?"
"No, Mother, I'm not thinking of that; but I'm not prepared to rejoice
just now."
"You've been worried by this law business that you've been to Stoniton
about. What in the world is it, that you can't tell me?"
"You will know by and by, mother. It would not be right for me to tell
you at present. Good-night: you'll sleep now you have no longer anything
to listen for."
Mr. Irwine gave up his intention of sending a letter to meet Arthur,
since it would not now hasten his return: the news of his grandfather's
death would bring him as soon as he could possibly come. He could go
to bed now and get some needful rest, before the time came for the
morning's heavy duty of carrying his sickening news to the Hall Farm and
to Adam's home.
Adam himself was not come back from Stoniton, for though he shrank from
seeing Hetty, he could not bear to go to a distance from her again.
"It's no use, sir," he said to the rector, "it's no use for me to go
back. I can't go to work again while she's here, and I couldn't bear
the sight o' the things and folks round home. I'll take a bit of a room
here, where I can see the prison walls, and perhaps I shall get, in
time, to bear seeing her."
Adam had not been shaken in his belief that Hetty was innocent of the
crime she was charged with, for Mr. Irwine, feeling that the belief in
her guilt would be a crushing addition to Adam's load, had kept from him
the facts which left no hope in his own mind. There was not any reason
for thrusting the whole burden on Adam at once, and Mr. Irwine, at
parting, only said, "If the evidence should tell too strongly against
her, Adam, we may still hope for a pardon. Her youth and other
circumstances will be a plea for her."
"Ah, and it's right people should know how she was tempted into the
wrong way," said Adam, with bitter earnestness. "It's right they should
know it was a fine gentleman made love to her, and turned her head wi'
notions. You'll remember, sir, you've promised to tell my mother, and
Seth, and the people at the farm, who it was as led her wrong, else
they'll think harder of her than she deserves. You'll be doing her a
hurt by sparing him, and I hold him the guiltiest before God, let her
ha' done what she may. If you spare him, I'll expose him!"
"I think your demand is just, Adam," said Mr. Irwine, "but when you are
calmer, you will judge Arthur more mercifully. I say nothing now, only
that his punishment is in other hands than ours."
Mr. Irwine felt it hard upon him that he should have to tell of Arthur's
sad part in the story of sin and sorrow--he who cared for Arthur with
fatherly affection, who had cared for him with fatherly pride. But he
saw clearly that the secret must be known before long, even apart from
Adam's determination, since it was scarcely to be supposed that Hetty
would persist to the end in her obstinate silence. He made up his mind
to withhold nothing from the Poysers, but to tell them the worst at
once, for there was no time to rob the tidings of their suddenness.
Hetty's trial must come on at the Lent assizes, and they were to be
held at Stoniton the next week. It was scarcely to be hoped that Martin
Poyser could escape the pain of being called as a witness, and it was
better he should know everything as long beforehand as possible.
Before ten o'clock on Thursday morning the home at the Hall Farm was
a house of mourning for a misfortune felt to be worse than death. The
sense of family dishonour was too keen even in the kind-hearted Martin
Poyser the younger to leave room for any compassion towards Hetty. He
and his father were simple-minded farmers, proud of their untarnished
character, proud that they came of a family which had held up its head
and paid its way as far back as its name was in the parish register;
and Hetty had brought disgrace on them all--disgrace that could never
be wiped out. That was the all-conquering feeling in the mind both of
father and son--the scorching sense of disgrace, which neutralised all
other sensibility--and Mr. Irwine was struck with surprise to observe
that Mrs. Poyser was less severe than her husband. We are often startled
by the severity of mild people on exceptional occasions; the reason is,
that mild people are most liable to be under the yoke of traditional
impressions.
"I'm willing to pay any money as is wanted towards trying to bring her
off," said Martin the younger when Mr. Irwine was gone, while the old
grandfather was crying in the opposite chair, "but I'll not go nigh her,
nor ever see her again, by my own will. She's made our bread bitter to
us for all our lives to come, an' we shall ne'er hold up our heads i'
this parish nor i' any other. The parson talks o' folks pitying us: it's
poor amends pity 'ull make us."
"Pity?" said the grandfather, sharply. "I ne'er wanted folks's pity i'
MY life afore...an' I mun begin to be looked down on now, an' me turned
seventy-two last St. Thomas's, an' all th' underbearers and pall-bearers
as I'n picked for my funeral are i' this parish and the next to
't....It's o' no use now...I mun be ta'en to the grave by strangers."
"Don't fret so, father," said Mrs. Poyser, who had spoken very little,
being almost overawed by her husband's unusual hardness and decision.
"You'll have your children wi' you; an' there's the lads and the little
un 'ull grow up in a new parish as well as i' th' old un."
"Ah, there's no staying i' this country for us now," said Mr. Poyser,
and the hard tears trickled slowly down his round cheeks. "We thought
it 'ud be bad luck if the old squire gave us notice this Lady day, but I
must gi' notice myself now, an' see if there can anybody be got to come
an' take to the crops as I'n put i' the ground; for I wonna stay upo'
that man's land a day longer nor I'm forced to't. An' me, as thought him
such a good upright young man, as I should be glad when he come to be
our landlord. I'll ne'er lift my hat to him again, nor sit i' the same
church wi' him...a man as has brought shame on respectable folks...an'
pretended to be such a friend t' everybody....Poor Adam there...a fine
friend he's been t' Adam, making speeches an' talking so fine, an' all
the while poisoning the lad's life, as it's much if he can stay i' this
country any more nor we can."
"An' you t' ha' to go into court, and own you're akin t' her," said the
old man. "Why, they'll cast it up to the little un, as isn't four 'ear
old, some day--they'll cast it up t' her as she'd a cousin tried at the
'sizes for murder."
"It'll be their own wickedness, then," said Mrs. Poyser, with a sob in
her voice. "But there's One above 'ull take care o' the innicent child,
else it's but little truth they tell us at church. It'll be harder nor
ever to die an' leave the little uns, an' nobody to be a mother to 'em."
"We'd better ha' sent for Dinah, if we'd known where she is," said Mr.
Poyser; "but Adam said she'd left no direction where she'd be at Leeds."
"Why, she'd be wi' that woman as was a friend t' her Aunt Judith," said
Mrs. Poyser, comforted a little by this suggestion of her husband.
"I've often heard Dinah talk of her, but I can't remember what name
she called her by. But there's Seth Bede; he's like enough to know, for
she's a preaching woman as the Methodists think a deal on."
"I'll send to Seth," said Mr. Poyser. "I'll send Alick to tell him to
come, or else to send up word o' the woman's name, an' thee canst write
a letter ready to send off to Treddles'on as soon as we can make out a
direction."
"It's poor work writing letters when you want folks to come to you i'
trouble," said Mrs. Poyser. "Happen it'll be ever so long on the road,
an' never reach her at last."
Before Alick arrived with the message, Lisbeth's thoughts too had
already flown to Dinah, and she had said to Seth, "Eh, there's no
comfort for us i' this world any more, wi'out thee couldst get Dinah
Morris to come to us, as she did when my old man died. I'd like her to
come in an' take me by th' hand again, an' talk to me. She'd tell me the
rights on't, belike--she'd happen know some good i' all this trouble an'
heart-break comin' upo' that poor lad, as ne'er done a bit o' wrong in's
life, but war better nor anybody else's son, pick the country round. Eh,
my lad...Adam, my poor lad!"
"Thee wouldstna like me to leave thee, to go and fetch Dinah?" said
Seth, as his mother sobbed and rocked herself to and fro.
"Fetch her?" said Lisbeth, looking up and pausing from her grief, like
a crying child who hears some promise of consolation. "Why, what place
is't she's at, do they say?"
"It's a good way off, mother--Leeds, a big town. But I could be back in
three days, if thee couldst spare me."
"Nay, nay, I canna spare thee. Thee must go an' see thy brother, an'
bring me word what he's a-doin'. Mester Irwine said he'd come an' tell
me, but I canna make out so well what it means when he tells me. Thee
must go thysen, sin' Adam wonna let me go to him. Write a letter to
Dinah canstna? Thee't fond enough o' writin' when nobody wants thee."
"I'm not sure where she'd be i' that big town," said Seth. "If I'd gone
myself, I could ha' found out by asking the members o' the Society. But
perhaps if I put Sarah Williamson, Methodist preacher, Leeds, o'
th' outside, it might get to her; for most like she'd be wi' Sarah
Williamson."
Alick came now with the message, and Seth, finding that Mrs. Poyser was
writing to Dinah, gave up the intention of writing himself; but he went
to the Hall Farm to tell them all he could suggest about the address
of the letter, and warn them that there might be some delay in the
delivery, from his not knowing an exact direction.
On leaving Lisbeth, Mr. Irwine had gone to Jonathan Burge, who had also
a claim to be acquainted with what was likely to keep Adam away from
business for some time; and before six o'clock that evening there were
few people in Broxton and Hayslope who had not heard the sad news. Mr.
Irwine had not mentioned Arthur's name to Burge, and yet the story of
his conduct towards Hetty, with all the dark shadows cast upon it by
its terrible consequences, was presently as well known as that his
grandfather was dead, and that he was come into the estate. For Martin
Poyser felt no motive to keep silence towards the one or two neighbours
who ventured to come and shake him sorrowfully by the hand on the first
day of his trouble; and Carroll, who kept his ears open to all that
passed at the rectory, had framed an inferential version of the story,
and found early opportunities of communicating it.
One of those neighbours who came to Martin Poyser and shook him by the
hand without speaking for some minutes was Bartle Massey. He had shut
up his school, and was on his way to the rectory, where he arrived about
half-past seven in the evening, and, sending his duty to Mr. Irwine,
begged pardon for troubling him at that hour, but had something
particular on his mind. He was shown into the study, where Mr. Irwine
soon joined him.
"Well, Bartle?" said Mr. Irwine, putting out his hand. That was not his
usual way of saluting the schoolmaster, but trouble makes us treat all
who feel with us very much alike. "Sit down."
"You know what I'm come about as well as I do, sir, I daresay," said
Bartle.
"You wish to know the truth about the sad news that has reached
you...about Hetty Sorrel?"
"Nay, sir, what I wish to know is about Adam Bede. I understand you left
him at Stoniton, and I beg the favour of you to tell me what's the state
of the poor lad's mind, and what he means to do. For as for that bit o'
pink-and-white they've taken the trouble to put in jail, I don't value
her a rotten nut--not a rotten nut--only for the harm or good that may
come out of her to an honest man--a lad I've set such store
by--trusted to, that he'd make my bit o' knowledge go a good way in the
world....Why, sir, he's the only scholar I've had in this stupid country
that ever had the will or the head-piece for mathematics. If he hadn't
had so much hard work to do, poor fellow, he might have gone into the
higher branches, and then this might never have happened--might never
have happened."
Bartle was heated by the exertion of walking fast in an agitated frame
of mind, and was not able to check himself on this first occasion of
venting his feelings. But he paused now to rub his moist forehead, and
probably his moist eyes also.
"You'll excuse me, sir," he said, when this pause had given him time to
reflect, "for running on in this way about my own feelings, like that
foolish dog of mine howling in a storm, when there's nobody wants to
listen to me. I came to hear you speak, not to talk myself--if you'll
take the trouble to tell me what the poor lad's doing."
"Don't put yourself under any restraint, Bartle," said Mr. Irwine. "The
fact is, I'm very much in the same condition as you just now; I've a
great deal that's painful on my mind, and I find it hard work to be
quite silent about my own feelings and only attend to others. I share
your concern for Adam, though he is not the only one whose sufferings I
care for in this affair. He intends to remain at Stoniton till after the
trial: it will come on probably a week to-morrow. He has taken a room
there, and I encouraged him to do so, because I think it better he
should be away from his own home at present; and, poor fellow, he still
believes Hetty is innocent--he wants to summon up courage to see her if
he can; he is unwilling to leave the spot where she is."
"Do you think the creatur's guilty, then?" said Bartle. "Do you think
they'll hang her?"
"I'm afraid it will go hard with her. The evidence is very strong. And
one bad symptom is that she denies everything--denies that she has had
a child in the face of the most positive evidence. I saw her myself, and
she was obstinately silent to me; she shrank up like a frightened animal
when she saw me. I was never so shocked in my life as at the change in
her. But I trust that, in the worst case, we may obtain a pardon for the
sake of the innocent who are involved."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Bartle, forgetting in his irritation to whom
he was speaking. "I beg your pardon, sir, I mean it's stuff and nonsense
for the innocent to care about her being hanged. For my own part, I
think the sooner such women are put out o' the world the better; and the
men that help 'em to do mischief had better go along with 'em for that
matter. What good will you do by keeping such vermin alive, eating the
victual that 'ud feed rational beings? But if Adam's fool enough to care
about it, I don't want him to suffer more than's needful....Is he very
much cut up, poor fellow?" Bartle added, taking out his spectacles and
putting them on, as if they would assist his imagination.
"Yes, I'm afraid the grief cuts very deep," said Mr. Irwine. "He looks
terribly shattered, and a certain violence came over him now and then
yesterday, which made me wish I could have remained near him. But I
shall go to Stoniton again to-morrow, and I have confidence enough in
the strength of Adam's principle to trust that he will be able to endure
the worst without being driven to anything rash."
Mr. Irwine, who was involuntarily uttering his own thoughts rather
than addressing Bartle Massey in the last sentence, had in his mind the
possibility that the spirit of vengeance to-wards Arthur, which was
the form Adam's anguish was continually taking, might make him seek an
encounter that was likely to end more fatally than the one in the Grove.
This possibility heightened the anxiety with which he looked forward
to Arthur's arrival. But Bartle thought Mr. Irwine was referring to
suicide, and his face wore a new alarm.
"I'll tell you what I have in my head, sir," he said, "and I hope you'll
approve of it. I'm going to shut up my school--if the scholars come,
they must go back again, that's all--and I shall go to Stoniton and look
after Adam till this business is over. I'll pretend I'm come to look
on at the assizes; he can't object to that. What do you think about it,
sir?"
"Well," said Mr. Irwine, rather hesitatingly, "there would be some real
advantages in that...and I honour you for your friendship towards him,
Bartle. But...you must be careful what you say to him, you know. I'm
afraid you have too little fellow-feeling in what you consider his
weakness about Hetty."
"Trust to me, sir--trust to me. I know what you mean. I've been a fool
myself in my time, but that's between you and me. I shan't thrust myself
on him only keep my eye on him, and see that he gets some good food, and
put in a word here and there."
"Then," said Mr. Irwine, reassured a little as to Bartle's discretion,
"I think you'll be doing a good deed; and it will be well for you to let
Adam's mother and brother know that you're going."
"Yes, sir, yes," said Bartle, rising, and taking off his spectacles,
"I'll do that, I'll do that; though the mother's a whimpering
thing--I don't like to come within earshot of her; however, she's
a straight-backed, clean woman, none of your slatterns. I wish you
good-bye, sir, and thank you for the time you've spared me. You're
everybody's friend in this business--everybody's friend. It's a heavy
weight you've got on your shoulders."
"Good-bye, Bartle, till we meet at Stoniton, as I daresay we shall."
Bartle hurried away from the rectory, evading Carroll's conversational
advances, and saying in an exasperated tone to Vixen, whose short legs
pattered beside him on the gravel, "Now, I shall be obliged to take you
with me, you good-for-nothing woman. You'd go fretting yourself to death
if I left you--you know you would, and perhaps get snapped up by some
tramp. And you'll be running into bad company, I expect, putting your
nose in every hole and corner where you've no business! But if you do
anything disgraceful, I'll disown you--mind that, madam, mind that!"
| 5,560 | Chapter 40 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter40 | The Bitter Waters Spread When Mr. Irwine returns from Stoniton, his mother tells him Squire Donnithorne is dead. She does not know about the tragedy and rejoices that now her godson Arthur will be the new squire. Mr. Irwine does not send a letter to Arthur about the events because he will be home soon for his grandfather's funeral. He gets some sleep and then prepares to break the news to Hall Farm and to the Bedes. Adam has stayed in Stoniton to be near Hetty though he can't bear to see her. He continues to believe Hetty innocent, though Mr. Irwine knows she is not. He decides to let Adam hope, for he is crushed enough. Irwine thinks at least there could be a pardon. Adam also continues to denounce Arthur as the sole perpetrator of any crime. Irwine finds it hard to hear so much against Arthur to whom he has been a father. The Poysers take the news hard. The trial is to be held the next week, and Martin Poyser will probably be called to testify, but he is so upset by the disgrace to the family, he swears never to see Hetty again. Both old Poyser and Martin are hard against Hetty, but Mrs. Poyser is less severe on her. Martin believes they will have to leave the country now. Mrs. Poyser thinks they should send for Dinah. Lisbeth Bede also wants to send for Dinah in their trouble. Seth offers to go to Leeds to look for her, but Lisbeth won't let him go. Instead, a letter is sent. Mr. Irwine tells Jonathan Burge why Adam will be away from work for a while, and soon all Hayslope and Broxton know the news. A few neighbors go to the Poysers to comfort them, and one of them is Bartle Massey, the school teacher. Then Bartle Massey goes to Mr. Irwine and asks him how Adam is doing. Irwine tells him Adam is taking it hard and still believes in Hetty's innocence. He himself saw Hetty at Stoniton and could not believe the change in her: "she shrank up like a frightened animal" . Irwine is afraid Adam could lose control and seek revenge against Arthur. Massey offers to go to Stoniton and stay with Adam until the trial is over. He can keep an eye on him. | Commentary on Chapter 40 The impact of Hetty's crime on the small town is like a bombshell. The Poysers feel betrayed and vow they will have to leave the area for they are ruined forever. Their children will be marked out as having a murderess for a cousin. Mrs. Poyser is surprisingly more understanding and forgiving of Hetty than her husband. Lisbeth and Seth feel sorrow for Adam. Bartle Massey feels his worst opinion of women has been confirmed, but he wants to stick by his friend Adam. Thus, the best and worst of small town life are revealed. Gossip travels fast, and censure as well, but there are friends to stand by each other. Bartle marvels that Mr. Irwine is "everybody's friend in this business" . Though he has personal feelings, he puts them aside to help everyone else. He is impartial and therefore, the best kind of help. It is telling that the two people most wanted in the crisis are Dinah and Mr. Irwine, the ones with the largest understanding and skill in healing the hearts of others. Both have religious callings, but the important point for Eliot is their humane point of view. They are able to see a larger picture than the other characters. They are able to hold the community together and comfort those in trouble. These are the kind of human beings a society needs, implies Eliot. They are the exemplars of Eliot's moral standard that goes beyond religious doctrine to the unselfish values of unity and sympathy. In this way, Eliot traces in her story the action that causes healing as well as the action that causes tragedy. | 585 | 276 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/41.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_41_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 41 | chapter 41 | null | {"name": "Chapter 41", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter41", "summary": "The Eve of the Trial In a rented room in Stoniton, Bartle Massey and Adam await the arrival of Mr. Irwine. Bartle pretends to read, but he is watching Adam who sits haggard and listless. Mr. Irwine comes from the prison where he and the chaplain were talking to Hetty. Adam has requested to see her before the trial, but she is not seeing anyone. She won't even see her family. Mr. Irwine mentions how changed she is and that such a meeting now would be suffering for Adam. Adam asks if Arthur is back. He becomes angry, saying he wants justice done to him. Mr. Irwine says he has left a letter for Arthur as soon as he arrives. He assures Adam that Arthur will suffer and defends him as a weak but not a cruel person. He repeats that vengeance will not help Hetty. Mr. Irwine tries to explain that passion is not justice and Arthur cannot bear all the blame. People are interconnected and evil spreads like a disease. In fact, Adam himself is in danger of committing a wrong. Mr. Poyser is in town for the trial, but Irwine won't let him meet with Adam in his present state because Martin is upset enough. Both Adam and Mr. Irwine express the wish that Dinah were present.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 41 Irwine presents one of Eliot's favorite ideas of the interconnectedness of everyone. Adam wants to pinpoint blame, but evil is like a disease that spreads. Who can say where it starts and stops? Adam himself is taking infection in his desire to do something violent to Arthur. Irwine tries to break the idea to Adam that Hetty could be guilty of a crime that came from what she and Arthur did together. Adam voices another of Eliot's favorite ideas, that evil cannot be undone. The law of cause and effect is scientifically observable and therefore, the moral law requiring unselfish behavior is also practical if one wants to avoid suffering for oneself and others. Irwine assures Adam that Arthur will carry this burden his whole life; therefore, there is no need to punish him. He is punished by a force larger than Adam. Irwine also mentions the fact of Hetty's hardness of heart to Adam. This will be an important point in the trial. Her aunt had called her hard-hearted many times, but this has escalated to bring her to total isolation. Irwine says, \"a fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow-creatures\" . This is the worst sort of suffering, for no healing or transformation can take place. Hetty believes there is no help for her, and in her pride, she will not confess or reach out."} |
AN upper room in a dull Stoniton street, with two beds in it--one laid
on the floor. It is ten o'clock on Thursday night, and the dark wall
opposite the window shuts out the moonlight that might have struggled
with the light of the one dip candle by which Bartle Massey is
pretending to read, while he is really looking over his spectacles at
Adam Bede, seated near the dark window.
You would hardly have known it was Adam without being told. His face has
got thinner this last week: he has the sunken eyes, the neglected beard
of a man just risen from a sick-bed. His heavy black hair hangs over his
forehead, and there is no active impulse in him which inclines him to
push it off, that he may be more awake to what is around him. He has one
arm over the back of the chair, and he seems to be looking down at his
clasped hands. He is roused by a knock at the door.
"There he is," said Bartle Massey, rising hastily and unfastening the
door. It was Mr. Irwine.
Adam rose from his chair with instinctive respect, as Mr. Irwine
approached him and took his hand.
"I'm late, Adam," he said, sitting down on the chair which Bartle placed
for him, "but I was later in setting off from Broxton than I intended
to be, and I have been incessantly occupied since I arrived. I have done
everything now, however--everything that can be done to-night, at least.
Let us all sit down."
Adam took his chair again mechanically, and Bartle, for whom there was
no chair remaining, sat on the bed in the background.
"Have you seen her, sir?" said Adam tremulously.
"Yes, Adam; I and the chaplain have both been with her this evening."
"Did you ask her, sir...did you say anything about me?"
"Yes," said Mr. Irwine, with some hesitation, "I spoke of you. I said
you wished to see her before the trial, if she consented."
As Mr. Irwine paused, Adam looked at him with eager, questioning eyes.
"You know she shrinks from seeing any one, Adam. It is not only
you--some fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her
fellow-creatures. She has scarcely said anything more than 'No' either
to me or the chaplain. Three or four days ago, before you were mentioned
to her, when I asked her if there was any one of her family whom she
would like to see--to whom she could open her mind--she said, with a
violent shudder, 'Tell them not to come near me--I won't see any of
them.'"
Adam's head was hanging down again, and he did not speak. There was
silence for a few minutes, and then Mr. Irwine said, "I don't like
to advise you against your own feelings, Adam, if they now urge you
strongly to go and see her to-morrow morning, even without her consent.
It is just possible, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, that
the interview might affect her favourably. But I grieve to say I have
scarcely any hope of that. She didn't seem agitated when I mentioned
your name; she only said 'No,' in the same cold, obstinate way as usual.
And if the meeting had no good effect on her, it would be pure, useless
suffering to you--severe suffering, I fear. She is very much changed..."
Adam started up from his chair and seized his hat, which lay on the
table. But he stood still then, and looked at Mr. Irwine, as if he had a
question to ask which it was yet difficult to utter. Bartle Massey rose
quietly, turned the key in the door, and put it in his pocket.
"Is he come back?" said Adam at last.
"No, he is not," said Mr. Irwine, quietly. "Lay down your hat, Adam,
unless you like to walk out with me for a little fresh air. I fear you
have not been out again to-day."
"You needn't deceive me, sir," said Adam, looking hard at Mr. Irwine and
speaking in a tone of angry suspicion. "You needn't be afraid of me.
I only want justice. I want him to feel what she feels. It's his
work...she was a child as it 'ud ha' gone t' anybody's heart to look
at...I don't care what she's done...it was him brought her to it. And he
shall know it...he shall feel it...if there's a just God, he shall feel
what it is t' ha' brought a child like her to sin and misery."
"I'm not deceiving you, Adam," said Mr. Irwine. "Arthur Donnithorne is
not come back--was not come back when I left. I have left a letter for
him: he will know all as soon as he arrives."
"But you don't mind about it," said Adam indignantly. "You think it
doesn't matter as she lies there in shame and misery, and he knows
nothing about it--he suffers nothing."
"Adam, he WILL know--he WILL suffer, long and bitterly. He has a heart
and a conscience: I can't be entirely deceived in his character. I am
convinced--I am sure he didn't fall under temptation without a struggle.
He may be weak, but he is not callous, not coldly selfish. I am
persuaded that this will be a shock of which he will feel the effects
all his life. Why do you crave vengeance in this way? No amount of
torture that you could inflict on him could benefit her."
"No--O God, no," Adam groaned out, sinking on his chair again; "but
then, that's the deepest curse of all...that's what makes the blackness
of it...IT CAN NEVER BE UNDONE. My poor Hetty...she can never be my
sweet Hetty again...the prettiest thing God had made--smiling up at
me...I thought she loved me...and was good..."
Adam's voice had been gradually sinking into a hoarse undertone, as if
he were only talking to himself; but now he said abruptly, looking at
Mr. Irwine, "But she isn't as guilty as they say? You don't think she
is, sir? She can't ha' done it."
"That perhaps can never be known with certainty, Adam," Mr. Irwine
answered gently. "In these cases we sometimes form our judgment on what
seems to us strong evidence, and yet, for want of knowing some small
fact, our judgment is wrong. But suppose the worst: you have no right to
say that the guilt of her crime lies with him, and that he ought to bear
the punishment. It is not for us men to apportion the shares of moral
guilt and retribution. We find it impossible to avoid mistakes even in
determining who has committed a single criminal act, and the problem how
far a man is to be held responsible for the unforeseen consequences of
his own deed is one that might well make us tremble to look into it.
The evil consequences that may lie folded in a single act of selfish
indulgence is a thought so awful that it ought surely to awaken some
feeling less presumptuous than a rash desire to punish. You have a mind
that can understand this fully, Adam, when you are calm. Don't suppose
I can't enter into the anguish that drives you into this state
of revengeful hatred. But think of this: if you were to obey your
passion--for it IS passion, and you deceive yourself in calling it
justice--it might be with you precisely as it has been with Arthur; nay,
worse; your passion might lead you yourself into a horrible crime."
"No--not worse," said Adam, bitterly; "I don't believe it's worse--I'd
sooner do it--I'd sooner do a wickedness as I could suffer for by myself
than ha' brought HER to do wickedness and then stand by and see 'em
punish her while they let me alone; and all for a bit o' pleasure, as,
if he'd had a man's heart in him, he'd ha' cut his hand off sooner than
he'd ha' taken it. What if he didn't foresee what's happened? He foresaw
enough; he'd no right to expect anything but harm and shame to her. And
then he wanted to smooth it off wi' lies. No--there's plenty o' things
folks are hanged for not half so hateful as that. Let a man do what he
will, if he knows he's to bear the punishment himself, he isn't half so
bad as a mean selfish coward as makes things easy t' himself and knows
all the while the punishment 'll fall on somebody else."
"There again you partly deceive yourself, Adam. There is no sort of
wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't
isolate yourself and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread.
Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they
breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease. I know, I feel the
terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur's has caused to others;
but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides those who commit
it. An act of vengeance on your part against Arthur would simply be
another evil added to those we are suffering under: you could not bear
the punishment alone; you would entail the worst sorrows on every one
who loves you. You would have committed an act of blind fury that would
leave all the present evils just as they were and add worse evils to
them. You may tell me that you meditate no fatal act of vengeance, but
the feeling in your mind is what gives birth to such actions, and as
long as you indulge it, as long as you do not see that to fix your mind
on Arthur's punishment is revenge, and not justice, you are in danger
of being led on to the commission of some great wrong. Remember what you
told me about your feelings after you had given that blow to Arthur in
the Grove."
Adam was silent: the last words had called up a vivid image of the past,
and Mr. Irwine left him to his thoughts, while he spoke to Bartle Massey
about old Mr. Donnithorne's funeral and other matters of an indifferent
kind. But at length Adam turned round and said, in a more subdued tone,
"I've not asked about 'em at th' Hall Farm, sir. Is Mr. Poyser coming?"
"He is come; he is in Stoniton to-night. But I could not advise him to
see you, Adam. His own mind is in a very perturbed state, and it is best
he should not see you till you are calmer."
"Is Dinah Morris come to 'em, sir? Seth said they'd sent for her."
"No. Mr. Poyser tells me she was not come when he left. They're afraid
the letter has not reached her. It seems they had no exact address."
Adam sat ruminating a little while, and then said, "I wonder if Dinah
'ud ha' gone to see her. But perhaps the Poysers would ha' been sorely
against it, since they won't come nigh her themselves. But I think she
would, for the Methodists are great folks for going into the prisons;
and Seth said he thought she would. She'd a very tender way with her,
Dinah had; I wonder if she could ha' done any good. You never saw her,
sir, did you?"
"Yes, I did. I had a conversation with her--she pleased me a good deal.
And now you mention it, I wish she would come, for it is possible that a
gentle mild woman like her might move Hetty to open her heart. The jail
chaplain is rather harsh in his manner."
"But it's o' no use if she doesn't come," said Adam sadly.
"If I'd thought of it earlier, I would have taken some measures
for finding her out," said Mr. Irwine, "but it's too late now, I
fear...Well, Adam, I must go now. Try to get some rest to-night. God
bless you. I'll see you early to-morrow morning."
| 2,987 | Chapter 41 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter41 | The Eve of the Trial In a rented room in Stoniton, Bartle Massey and Adam await the arrival of Mr. Irwine. Bartle pretends to read, but he is watching Adam who sits haggard and listless. Mr. Irwine comes from the prison where he and the chaplain were talking to Hetty. Adam has requested to see her before the trial, but she is not seeing anyone. She won't even see her family. Mr. Irwine mentions how changed she is and that such a meeting now would be suffering for Adam. Adam asks if Arthur is back. He becomes angry, saying he wants justice done to him. Mr. Irwine says he has left a letter for Arthur as soon as he arrives. He assures Adam that Arthur will suffer and defends him as a weak but not a cruel person. He repeats that vengeance will not help Hetty. Mr. Irwine tries to explain that passion is not justice and Arthur cannot bear all the blame. People are interconnected and evil spreads like a disease. In fact, Adam himself is in danger of committing a wrong. Mr. Poyser is in town for the trial, but Irwine won't let him meet with Adam in his present state because Martin is upset enough. Both Adam and Mr. Irwine express the wish that Dinah were present. | Commentary on Chapter 41 Irwine presents one of Eliot's favorite ideas of the interconnectedness of everyone. Adam wants to pinpoint blame, but evil is like a disease that spreads. Who can say where it starts and stops? Adam himself is taking infection in his desire to do something violent to Arthur. Irwine tries to break the idea to Adam that Hetty could be guilty of a crime that came from what she and Arthur did together. Adam voices another of Eliot's favorite ideas, that evil cannot be undone. The law of cause and effect is scientifically observable and therefore, the moral law requiring unselfish behavior is also practical if one wants to avoid suffering for oneself and others. Irwine assures Adam that Arthur will carry this burden his whole life; therefore, there is no need to punish him. He is punished by a force larger than Adam. Irwine also mentions the fact of Hetty's hardness of heart to Adam. This will be an important point in the trial. Her aunt had called her hard-hearted many times, but this has escalated to bring her to total isolation. Irwine says, "a fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow-creatures" . This is the worst sort of suffering, for no healing or transformation can take place. Hetty believes there is no help for her, and in her pride, she will not confess or reach out. | 323 | 236 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/42.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_42_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 42 | chapter 42 | null | {"name": "Chapter 42", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter42", "summary": "The Morning of the Trial Adam does not go to the trial in the morning but waits till Bartle comes to him at lunchtime to hear about it. He has thought of seeing Hetty because it might melt her hardness if someone forgave her, but still he is afraid to see her in her changed state. The narrator says that the kind of unbearable suffering Adam experiences can be a baptism into a new state of life. He feels as if he is just waking up. He goes through a fire baptism into a new pity. Bartle tells him about the court scene as he tries to get Adam to eat bread and drink wine. The court is filled with spectators. The doctor has testified as to whether she had borne a child, and Martin Poyser testified. It was so hard on Martin that Bartle tells Adam he must be a friend to Poyser now. They made Poyser look at his niece, and she trembled and hid her face in her hands. Mr. Irwine took care of Martin in the courtroom. Irwine will also be a witness on Hetty's behalf. Adam keeps asking about the other evidence, and Bartle says he cannot hide the fact that the doctor's evidence has been hard on her, though she still denies having a child. Adam asks if there is anyone to stand by her in the court? Bartle says only the chaplain. Adam says one man should be there, but since he is not, Adam says he will go. \"I'll stand by her--I'll own her\". Adam admits that he used to be hard, but he will never be hard again. Suddenly, he looks like his old self.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 42 This chapter is important for showing Adam's conversion to a new sense of humanity. He was always a good man, but the narrator says that suffering can be an awakening to a new unselfishness and pity. This baptism of Adam's once again reminds one of Paradise Lost where Adam and Eve have to learn how to be good in a fallen state, how to feel love and compassion for one another, instead of blame. It is to be contrasted, however, with Hetty's response of hardness. Adam's suffering makes him reach out; hers shuts her down. She cannot admit she did anything wrong, and so therefore, no forgiveness and growth can take place. Adam grows to maturity here by putting aside his old moral harshness and deciding to stand by Hetty, even if she committed the crime. He will own her, not be ashamed of her, like her uncle. This is true Christian behavior and more like what Dinah Morris would do. Even his look changes after he softens. He is now closer to the ethic that Bartle announces in this chapter as he praises Mr. Irwine for helping Martin Poyser: \"It's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by his neighbor\" ."} |
AT one o'clock the next day, Adam was alone in his dull upper room;
his watch lay before him on the table, as if he were counting the
long minutes. He had no knowledge of what was likely to be said by
the witnesses on the trial, for he had shrunk from all the particulars
connected with Hetty's arrest and accusation. This brave active man, who
would have hastened towards any danger or toil to rescue Hetty from an
apprehended wrong or misfortune, felt himself powerless to contemplate
irremediable evil and suffering. The susceptibility which would have
been an impelling force where there was any possibility of action became
helpless anguish when he was obliged to be passive, or else sought an
active outlet in the thought of inflicting justice on Arthur. Energetic
natures, strong for all strenuous deeds, will often rush away from a
hopeless sufferer, as if they were hard-hearted. It is the overmastering
sense of pain that drives them. They shrink by an ungovernable instinct,
as they would shrink from laceration. Adam had brought himself to think
of seeing Hetty, if she would consent to see him, because he thought the
meeting might possibly be a good to her--might help to melt away this
terrible hardness they told him of. If she saw he bore her no ill will
for what she had done to him, she might open her heart to him. But this
resolution had been an immense effort--he trembled at the thought of
seeing her changed face, as a timid woman trembles at the thought of
the surgeon's knife, and he chose now to bear the long hours of suspense
rather than encounter what seemed to him the more intolerable agony of
witnessing her trial.
Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration,
the initiation into a new state. The yearning memories, the bitter
regret, the agonized sympathy, the struggling appeals to the Invisible
Right--all the intense emotions which had filled the days and nights of
the past week, and were compressing themselves again like an eager crowd
into the hours of this single morning, made Adam look back on all the
previous years as if they had been a dim sleepy existence, and he had
only now awaked to full consciousness. It seemed to him as if he had
always before thought it a light thing that men should suffer, as if all
that he had himself endured and called sorrow before was only a moment's
stroke that had never left a bruise. Doubtless a great anguish may do
the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a
soul full of new awe and new pity.
"O God," Adam groaned, as he leaned on the table and looked blankly at
the face of the watch, "and men have suffered like this before...and
poor helpless young things have suffered like her....Such a little while
ago looking so happy and so pretty...kissing 'em all, her grandfather
and all of 'em, and they wishing her luck....O my poor, poor
Hetty...dost think on it now?"
Adam started and looked round towards the door. Vixen had begun to
whimper, and there was a sound of a stick and a lame walk on the stairs.
It was Bartle Massey come back. Could it be all over?
Bartle entered quietly, and, going up to Adam, grasped his hand and
said, "I'm just come to look at you, my boy, for the folks are gone out
of court for a bit."
Adam's heart beat so violently he was unable to speak--he could only
return the pressure of his friend's hand--and Bartle, drawing up the
other chair, came and sat in front of him, taking off his hat and his
spectacles.
"That's a thing never happened to me before," he observed, "to go out o'
the door with my spectacles on. I clean forgot to take 'em off."
The old man made this trivial remark, thinking it better not to respond
at all to Adam's agitation: he would gather, in an indirect way, that
there was nothing decisive to communicate at present.
"And now," he said, rising again, "I must see to your having a bit of
the loaf, and some of that wine Mr. Irwine sent this morning. He'll be
angry with me if you don't have it. Come, now," he went on, bringing
forward the bottle and the loaf and pouring some wine into a cup, "I
must have a bit and a sup myself. Drink a drop with me, my lad--drink
with me."
Adam pushed the cup gently away and said, entreatingly, "Tell me about
it, Mr. Massey--tell me all about it. Was she there? Have they begun?"
"Yes, my boy, yes--it's taken all the time since I first went; but
they're slow, they're slow; and there's the counsel they've got for her
puts a spoke in the wheel whenever he can, and makes a deal to do with
cross-examining the witnesses and quarrelling with the other lawyers.
That's all he can do for the money they give him; and it's a big
sum--it's a big sum. But he's a 'cute fellow, with an eye that 'ud pick
the needles out of the hay in no time. If a man had got no feelings, it
'ud be as good as a demonstration to listen to what goes on in court;
but a tender heart makes one stupid. I'd have given up figures for ever
only to have had some good news to bring to you, my poor lad."
"But does it seem to be going against her?" said Adam. "Tell me what
they've said. I must know it now--I must know what they have to bring
against her."
"Why, the chief evidence yet has been the doctors; all but Martin
Poyser--poor Martin. Everybody in court felt for him--it was like one
sob, the sound they made when he came down again. The worst was when
they told him to look at the prisoner at the bar. It was hard work, poor
fellow--it was hard work. Adam, my boy, the blow falls heavily on him
as well as you; you must help poor Martin; you must show courage. Drink
some wine now, and show me you mean to bear it like a man."
Bartle had made the right sort of appeal. Adam, with an air of quiet
obedience, took up the cup and drank a little.
"Tell me how SHE looked," he said presently.
"Frightened, very frightened, when they first brought her in; it was the
first sight of the crowd and the judge, poor creatur. And there's a lot
o' foolish women in fine clothes, with gewgaws all up their arms
and feathers on their heads, sitting near the judge: they've dressed
themselves out in that way, one 'ud think, to be scarecrows and warnings
against any man ever meddling with a woman again. They put up their
glasses, and stared and whispered. But after that she stood like a white
image, staring down at her hands and seeming neither to hear nor see
anything. And she's as white as a sheet. She didn't speak when they
asked her if she'd plead 'guilty' or 'not guilty,' and they pleaded 'not
guilty' for her. But when she heard her uncle's name, there seemed to go
a shiver right through her; and when they told him to look at her, she
hung her head down, and cowered, and hid her face in her hands.
He'd much ado to speak poor man, his voice trembled so. And the
counsellors--who look as hard as nails mostly--I saw, spared him as much
as they could. Mr. Irwine put himself near him and went with him out o'
court. Ah, it's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by a
neighbour and uphold him in such trouble as that."
"God bless him, and you too, Mr. Massey," said Adam, in a low voice,
laying his hand on Bartle's arm.
"Aye, aye, he's good metal; he gives the right ring when you try him,
our parson does. A man o' sense--says no more than's needful. He's not
one of those that think they can comfort you with chattering, as if
folks who stand by and look on knew a deal better what the trouble was
than those who have to bear it. I've had to do with such folks in my
time--in the south, when I was in trouble myself. Mr. Irwine is to be
a witness himself, by and by, on her side, you know, to speak to her
character and bringing up."
"But the other evidence...does it go hard against her!" said Adam. "What
do you think, Mr. Massey? Tell me the truth."
"Yes, my lad, yes. The truth is the best thing to tell. It must come at
last. The doctors' evidence is heavy on her--is heavy. But she's gone
on denying she's had a child from first to last. These poor silly
women-things--they've not the sense to know it's no use denying what's
proved. It'll make against her with the jury, I doubt, her being so
obstinate: they may be less for recommending her to mercy, if the
verdict's against her. But Mr. Irwine 'ull leave no stone unturned with
the judge--you may rely upon that, Adam."
"Is there nobody to stand by her and seem to care for her in the court?"
said Adam.
"There's the chaplain o' the jail sits near her, but he's a sharp
ferrety-faced man--another sort o' flesh and blood to Mr. Irwine. They
say the jail chaplains are mostly the fag-end o' the clergy."
"There's one man as ought to be there," said Adam bitterly. Presently he
drew himself up and looked fixedly out of the window, apparently turning
over some new idea in his mind.
"Mr. Massey," he said at last, pushing the hair off his forehead, "I'll
go back with you. I'll go into court. It's cowardly of me to keep away.
I'll stand by her--I'll own her--for all she's been deceitful. They
oughtn't to cast her off--her own flesh and blood. We hand folks over to
God's mercy, and show none ourselves. I used to be hard sometimes: I'll
never be hard again. I'll go, Mr. Massey--I'll go with you."
There was a decision in Adam's manner which would have prevented Bartle
from opposing him, even if he had wished to do so. He only said, "Take
a bit, then, and another sup, Adam, for the love of me. See, I must stop
and eat a morsel. Now, you take some."
Nerved by an active resolution, Adam took a morsel of bread and drank
some wine. He was haggard and unshaven, as he had been yesterday, but he
stood upright again, and looked more like the Adam Bede of former days.
| 2,755 | Chapter 42 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter42 | The Morning of the Trial Adam does not go to the trial in the morning but waits till Bartle comes to him at lunchtime to hear about it. He has thought of seeing Hetty because it might melt her hardness if someone forgave her, but still he is afraid to see her in her changed state. The narrator says that the kind of unbearable suffering Adam experiences can be a baptism into a new state of life. He feels as if he is just waking up. He goes through a fire baptism into a new pity. Bartle tells him about the court scene as he tries to get Adam to eat bread and drink wine. The court is filled with spectators. The doctor has testified as to whether she had borne a child, and Martin Poyser testified. It was so hard on Martin that Bartle tells Adam he must be a friend to Poyser now. They made Poyser look at his niece, and she trembled and hid her face in her hands. Mr. Irwine took care of Martin in the courtroom. Irwine will also be a witness on Hetty's behalf. Adam keeps asking about the other evidence, and Bartle says he cannot hide the fact that the doctor's evidence has been hard on her, though she still denies having a child. Adam asks if there is anyone to stand by her in the court? Bartle says only the chaplain. Adam says one man should be there, but since he is not, Adam says he will go. "I'll stand by her--I'll own her". Adam admits that he used to be hard, but he will never be hard again. Suddenly, he looks like his old self. | Commentary on Chapter 42 This chapter is important for showing Adam's conversion to a new sense of humanity. He was always a good man, but the narrator says that suffering can be an awakening to a new unselfishness and pity. This baptism of Adam's once again reminds one of Paradise Lost where Adam and Eve have to learn how to be good in a fallen state, how to feel love and compassion for one another, instead of blame. It is to be contrasted, however, with Hetty's response of hardness. Adam's suffering makes him reach out; hers shuts her down. She cannot admit she did anything wrong, and so therefore, no forgiveness and growth can take place. Adam grows to maturity here by putting aside his old moral harshness and deciding to stand by Hetty, even if she committed the crime. He will own her, not be ashamed of her, like her uncle. This is true Christian behavior and more like what Dinah Morris would do. Even his look changes after he softens. He is now closer to the ethic that Bartle announces in this chapter as he praises Mr. Irwine for helping Martin Poyser: "It's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by his neighbor" . | 409 | 211 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/43.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_43_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 43 | chapter 43 | null | {"name": "Chapter 43", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter43", "summary": "The Verdict Adam Bede's tall figure entering the courtroom is striking. Even Mr. Irwine is surprised by the signs of suffering and grief about him. He goes to sit by Hetty's side, but she does not see him, for she stands with her head down, looking at her hands. Adam is looking to see whether she is different, but she is not to him. She still is the pretty sweet girl he fell in love with. The first witness is Sarah Stone, a widowed shopkeeper in Stoniton. She tells how Hetty came to her door one night and out of pity, she took her in. That night, the baby was born, and she herself dressed it in clothes she had made. She took care of the baby and mother and offered to send for Hetty's friends, but Hetty refused. When the woman went out for a while, Hetty ran away with the baby. At this point, Adam is moved and thinks that Hetty couldn't have killed her baby. She must have loved it, but the next witness is the man who found the baby, John Olding, an old peasant man. He was crossing the fields and saw Hetty there. She looked frightened when he came towards her and walked on. He thought she looked crazy. In the field he kept hearing cries but thinking it some animal, he ignored it until it stopped. An hour later he went to where the cries were and found a baby's body. It was cold. He took it to his wife who said it was dead. Then they sent for the constable and began looking for Hetty. They found her the next day, sitting near the place where she had left the baby, apparently in shock, for she did not move until they took her away. Adam's agony is supreme when he realizes what Hetty has done, and he hides his face on his arm and calls to God for help. The jury quickly finds her guilty, but there is no recommendation for mercy, and when the judge hands out the death sentence, Adam reaches out to her, but Hetty screams and faints.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 43 The narrator tells us that Hetty did not receive the mercy of the court, despite all the testimony to her virtuous upbringing by relatives and Mr. Irwine, because of her coldness and hardness. She does not respond, confess, or seem repentant or sorry. It appears to be cold-blooded murder, but from the testimony one gathers Hetty was not completely sane and that furthermore, she was not able to leave the scene, even to save her own life, because of shock or guilt. Though we have been told more details during the court case, there is still the mystery of what happened to make Hetty do this. We have not yet heard her side of it, though the facts seem to warrant the verdict. Eliot's story was timely for her readers because though it was set in an earlier period, infanticide was a common crime in Victorian England and reached crisis proportions by the 1860s. The newspapers were full of cases, and one of the more famous remarks on such a newspaper account was made by writer Matthew Arnold . He was disturbed by the cold impersonality and indifference of the press stories. The facts were given and then the phrase that Arnold found inhumane: \"Wragg is in custody.\" Arnold felt that English society needed to come up with some response a bit more insightful to infanticide other than \"Wragg is in custody,\" as though that solved the problem. Why was Wragg in custody? Who was she? Why was she forced into doing this? What about all the other Wraggs? Eliot takes the bare facts of such a case and takes us inside the heads of the characters to show us how such a heinous crime can be committed by people who are no better or worse than the general population. Eliot chooses the psychological investigation of such an act, but a sociological analysis would show such a high rate of infanticide resulted from the severe pressures and restrictions on women for sexual misconduct, especially of the lower and middle classes, and for having a baby out of wedlock. Hetty goes through the alternatives in her mind. She had few options, unless there were some sympathetic relative. Dinah is a possibility, but Hetty could not hide her shame there or live a normal life afterwards. Hetty knows her uncle's family will not take her back because she dishonors them. Arthur is too far away. Most women had no money of their own or means to get it. Abortion was illegal, difficult, and very dangerous, often killing or maiming the woman. With an illegitimate child, a woman could not get work, a place to live, or get married. She was an outcast and would not be received by decent people. A pregnant servant was thrown into the street or sent to the poorhouse, a place little more than a jail. Prostitution was one avenue chosen by poor women with unwanted infants. A woman in poverty might kill her child to save it from suffering starvation. Infants were regularly abandoned or given to baby farms that, for a fee, would starve the unwanted babies. Upper class women had more choices; with money, they could go to the country, have the child and give it away. These conditions are hard to imagine in the world today where there are many single working mothers and little censure for having a child out of wedlock. Adam's remark that the man should be guilty too and made to pay was especially relevant for a Victorian audience, since the amended Poor Law of 1834 cast all the guilt on the woman alone for support of a bastard child. A man was not legally responsible. Many orphanages refused illegitimate children."} |
THE place fitted up that day as a court of justice was a grand old hall,
now destroyed by fire. The midday light that fell on the close pavement
of human heads was shed through a line of high pointed windows,
variegated with the mellow tints of old painted glass. Grim dusty armour
hung in high relief in front of the dark oaken gallery at the farther
end, and under the broad arch of the great mullioned window opposite was
spread a curtain of old tapestry, covered with dim melancholy figures,
like a dozing indistinct dream of the past. It was a place that through
the rest of the year was haunted with the shadowy memories of old
kings and queens, unhappy, discrowned, imprisoned; but to-day all those
shadows had fled, and not a soul in the vast hall felt the presence of
any but a living sorrow, which was quivering in warm hearts.
But that sorrow seemed to have made it itself feebly felt hitherto, now
when Adam Bede's tall figure was suddenly seen being ushered to the side
of the prisoner's dock. In the broad sunlight of the great hall, among
the sleek shaven faces of other men, the marks of suffering in his face
were startling even to Mr. Irwine, who had last seen him in the dim
light of his small room; and the neighbours from Hayslope who were
present, and who told Hetty Sorrel's story by their firesides in their
old age, never forgot to say how it moved them when Adam Bede, poor
fellow, taller by the head than most of the people round him, came into
court and took his place by her side.
But Hetty did not see him. She was standing in the same position Bartle
Massey had described, her hands crossed over each other and her eyes
fixed on them. Adam had not dared to look at her in the first moments,
but at last, when the attention of the court was withdrawn by the
proceedings he turned his face towards her with a resolution not to
shrink.
Why did they say she was so changed? In the corpse we love, it is the
likeness we see--it is the likeness, which makes itself felt the more
keenly because something else was and is not. There they were--the sweet
face and neck, with the dark tendrils of hair, the long dark lashes, the
rounded cheek and the pouting lips--pale and thin, yes, but like Hetty,
and only Hetty. Others thought she looked as if some demon had cast a
blighting glance upon her, withered up the woman's soul in her, and
left only a hard despairing obstinacy. But the mother's yearning, that
completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of
real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the
debased, degraded man; and to Adam, this pale, hard-looking culprit
was the Hetty who had smiled at him in the garden under the apple-tree
boughs--she was that Hetty's corpse, which he had trembled to look at
the first time, and then was unwilling to turn away his eyes from.
But presently he heard something that compelled him to listen, and made
the sense of sight less absorbing. A woman was in the witness-box, a
middle-aged woman, who spoke in a firm distinct voice. She said, "My
name is Sarah Stone. I am a widow, and keep a small shop licensed to
sell tobacco, snuff, and tea in Church Lane, Stoniton. The prisoner at
the bar is the same young woman who came, looking ill and tired, with
a basket on her arm, and asked for a lodging at my house on Saturday
evening, the 27th of February. She had taken the house for a public,
because there was a figure against the door. And when I said I didn't
take in lodgers, the prisoner began to cry, and said she was too tired
to go anywhere else, and she only wanted a bed for one night. And her
prettiness, and her condition, and something respectable about her
clothes and looks, and the trouble she seemed to be in made me as I
couldn't find in my heart to send her away at once. I asked her to sit
down, and gave her some tea, and asked her where she was going, and
where her friends were. She said she was going home to her friends: they
were farming folks a good way off, and she'd had a long journey that had
cost her more money than she expected, so as she'd hardly any money left
in her pocket, and was afraid of going where it would cost her much. She
had been obliged to sell most of the things out of her basket, but she'd
thankfully give a shilling for a bed. I saw no reason why I shouldn't
take the young woman in for the night. I had only one room, but there
were two beds in it, and I told her she might stay with me. I thought
she'd been led wrong, and got into trouble, but if she was going to her
friends, it would be a good work to keep her out of further harm."
The witness then stated that in the night a child was born, and she
identified the baby-clothes then shown to her as those in which she had
herself dressed the child.
"Those are the clothes. I made them myself, and had kept them by me
ever since my last child was born. I took a deal of trouble both for
the child and the mother. I couldn't help taking to the little thing and
being anxious about it. I didn't send for a doctor, for there seemed no
need. I told the mother in the day-time she must tell me the name of her
friends, and where they lived, and let me write to them. She said, by
and by she would write herself, but not to-day. She would have no nay,
but she would get up and be dressed, in spite of everything I could say.
She said she felt quite strong enough; and it was wonderful what spirit
she showed. But I wasn't quite easy what I should do about her, and
towards evening I made up my mind I'd go, after Meeting was over, and
speak to our minister about it. I left the house about half-past eight
o'clock. I didn't go out at the shop door, but at the back door, which
opens into a narrow alley. I've only got the ground-floor of the
house, and the kitchen and bedroom both look into the alley. I left the
prisoner sitting up by the fire in the kitchen with the baby on her lap.
She hadn't cried or seemed low at all, as she did the night before. I
thought she had a strange look with her eyes, and she got a bit flushed
towards evening. I was afraid of the fever, and I thought I'd call and
ask an acquaintance of mine, an experienced woman, to come back with
me when I went out. It was a very dark night. I didn't fasten the door
behind me; there was no lock; it was a latch with a bolt inside, and
when there was nobody in the house I always went out at the shop door.
But I thought there was no danger in leaving it unfastened that little
while. I was longer than I meant to be, for I had to wait for the woman
that came back with me. It was an hour and a half before we got back,
and when we went in, the candle was standing burning just as I left it,
but the prisoner and the baby were both gone. She'd taken her cloak and
bonnet, but she'd left the basket and the things in it....I was
dreadful frightened, and angry with her for going. I didn't go to give
information, because I'd no thought she meant to do any harm, and I knew
she had money in her pocket to buy her food and lodging. I didn't like
to set the constable after her, for she'd a right to go from me if she
liked."
The effect of this evidence on Adam was electrical; it gave him new
force. Hetty could not be guilty of the crime--her heart must have clung
to her baby--else why should she have taken it with her? She might have
left it behind. The little creature had died naturally, and then she
had hidden it. Babies were so liable to death--and there might be
the strongest suspicions without any proof of guilt. His mind was so
occupied with imaginary arguments against such suspicions, that he
could not listen to the cross-examination by Hetty's counsel, who tried,
without result, to elicit evidence that the prisoner had shown some
movements of maternal affection towards the child. The whole time this
witness was being examined, Hetty had stood as motionless as before: no
word seemed to arrest her ear. But the sound of the next witness's
voice touched a chord that was still sensitive, she gave a start and a
frightened look towards him, but immediately turned away her head and
looked down at her hands as before. This witness was a man, a rough
peasant. He said:
"My name is John Olding. I am a labourer, and live at Tedd's Hole, two
miles out of Stoniton. A week last Monday, towards one o'clock in the
afternoon, I was going towards Hetton Coppice, and about a quarter of a
mile from the coppice I saw the prisoner, in a red cloak, sitting under
a bit of a haystack not far off the stile. She got up when she saw me,
and seemed as if she'd be walking on the other way. It was a regular
road through the fields, and nothing very uncommon to see a young woman
there, but I took notice of her because she looked white and scared. I
should have thought she was a beggar-woman, only for her good clothes. I
thought she looked a bit crazy, but it was no business of mine. I stood
and looked back after her, but she went right on while she was in sight.
I had to go to the other side of the coppice to look after some stakes.
There's a road right through it, and bits of openings here and there,
where the trees have been cut down, and some of 'em not carried away.
I didn't go straight along the road, but turned off towards the middle,
and took a shorter way towards the spot I wanted to get to. I hadn't got
far out of the road into one of the open places before I heard a strange
cry. I thought it didn't come from any animal I knew, but I wasn't for
stopping to look about just then. But it went on, and seemed so strange
to me in that place, I couldn't help stopping to look. I began to think
I might make some money of it, if it was a new thing. But I had hard
work to tell which way it came from, and for a good while I kept looking
up at the boughs. And then I thought it came from the ground; and there
was a lot of timber-choppings lying about, and loose pieces of turf, and
a trunk or two. And I looked about among them, but could find nothing,
and at last the cry stopped. So I was for giving it up, and I went on
about my business. But when I came back the same way pretty nigh an hour
after, I couldn't help laying down my stakes to have another look. And
just as I was stooping and laying down the stakes, I saw something odd
and round and whitish lying on the ground under a nut-bush by the side
of me. And I stooped down on hands and knees to pick it up. And I saw it
was a little baby's hand."
At these words a thrill ran through the court. Hetty was visibly
trembling; now, for the first time, she seemed to be listening to what a
witness said.
"There was a lot of timber-choppings put together just where the ground
went hollow, like, under the bush, and the hand came out from among
them. But there was a hole left in one place and I could see down it
and see the child's head; and I made haste and did away the turf and the
choppings, and took out the child. It had got comfortable clothes on,
but its body was cold, and I thought it must be dead. I made haste back
with it out of the wood, and took it home to my wife. She said it was
dead, and I'd better take it to the parish and tell the constable. And I
said, 'I'll lay my life it's that young woman's child as I met going to
the coppice.' But she seemed to be gone clean out of sight. And I took
the child on to Hetton parish and told the constable, and we went on to
Justice Hardy. And then we went looking after the young woman till dark
at night, and we went and gave information at Stoniton, as they might
stop her. And the next morning, another constable came to me, to go with
him to the spot where I found the child. And when we got there, there
was the prisoner a-sitting against the bush where I found the child; and
she cried out when she saw us, but she never offered to move. She'd got
a big piece of bread on her lap."
Adam had given a faint groan of despair while this witness was speaking.
He had hidden his face on his arm, which rested on the boarding in front
of him. It was the supreme moment of his suffering: Hetty was guilty;
and he was silently calling to God for help. He heard no more of the
evidence, and was unconscious when the case for the prosecution had
closed--unconscious that Mr. Irwine was in the witness-box, telling
of Hetty's unblemished character in her own parish and of the virtuous
habits in which she had been brought up. This testimony could have no
influence on the verdict, but it was given as part of that plea for
mercy which her own counsel would have made if he had been allowed to
speak for her--a favour not granted to criminals in those stern times.
At last Adam lifted up his head, for there was a general movement round
him. The judge had addressed the jury, and they were retiring. The
decisive moment was not far off. Adam felt a shuddering horror that would
not let him look at Hetty, but she had long relapsed into her blank hard
indifference. All eyes were strained to look at her, but she stood like
a statue of dull despair.
There was a mingled rustling, whispering, and low buzzing throughout
the court during this interval. The desire to listen was suspended, and
every one had some feeling or opinion to express in undertones. Adam
sat looking blankly before him, but he did not see the objects that were
right in front of his eyes--the counsel and attorneys talking with an
air of cool business, and Mr. Irwine in low earnest conversation with
the judge--did not see Mr. Irwine sit down again in agitation and shake
his head mournfully when somebody whispered to him. The inward action
was too intense for Adam to take in outward objects until some strong
sensation roused him.
It was not very long, hardly more than a quarter of an hour, before
the knock which told that the jury had come to their decision fell as a
signal for silence on every ear. It is sublime--that sudden pause of a
great multitude which tells that one soul moves in them all. Deeper and
deeper the silence seemed to become, like the deepening night, while the
jurymen's names were called over, and the prisoner was made to hold up
her hand, and the jury were asked for their verdict.
"Guilty."
It was the verdict every one expected, but there was a sigh
of disappointment from some hearts that it was followed by no
recommendation to mercy. Still the sympathy of the court was not with
the prisoner. The unnaturalness of her crime stood out the more harshly
by the side of her hard immovability and obstinate silence. Even the
verdict, to distant eyes, had not appeared to move her, but those who
were near saw her trembling.
The stillness was less intense until the judge put on his black cap, and
the chaplain in his canonicals was observed behind him. Then it deepened
again, before the crier had had time to command silence. If any sound
were heard, it must have been the sound of beating hearts. The judge
spoke, "Hester Sorrel...."
The blood rushed to Hetty's face, and then fled back again as she
looked up at the judge and kept her wide-open eyes fixed on him, as if
fascinated by fear. Adam had not yet turned towards her, there was a
deep horror, like a great gulf, between them. But at the words "and
then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead," a piercing shriek rang
through the hall. It was Hetty's shriek. Adam started to his feet and
stretched out his arms towards her. But the arms could not reach her:
she had fallen down in a fainting-fit, and was carried out of court.
| 3,980 | Chapter 43 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter43 | The Verdict Adam Bede's tall figure entering the courtroom is striking. Even Mr. Irwine is surprised by the signs of suffering and grief about him. He goes to sit by Hetty's side, but she does not see him, for she stands with her head down, looking at her hands. Adam is looking to see whether she is different, but she is not to him. She still is the pretty sweet girl he fell in love with. The first witness is Sarah Stone, a widowed shopkeeper in Stoniton. She tells how Hetty came to her door one night and out of pity, she took her in. That night, the baby was born, and she herself dressed it in clothes she had made. She took care of the baby and mother and offered to send for Hetty's friends, but Hetty refused. When the woman went out for a while, Hetty ran away with the baby. At this point, Adam is moved and thinks that Hetty couldn't have killed her baby. She must have loved it, but the next witness is the man who found the baby, John Olding, an old peasant man. He was crossing the fields and saw Hetty there. She looked frightened when he came towards her and walked on. He thought she looked crazy. In the field he kept hearing cries but thinking it some animal, he ignored it until it stopped. An hour later he went to where the cries were and found a baby's body. It was cold. He took it to his wife who said it was dead. Then they sent for the constable and began looking for Hetty. They found her the next day, sitting near the place where she had left the baby, apparently in shock, for she did not move until they took her away. Adam's agony is supreme when he realizes what Hetty has done, and he hides his face on his arm and calls to God for help. The jury quickly finds her guilty, but there is no recommendation for mercy, and when the judge hands out the death sentence, Adam reaches out to her, but Hetty screams and faints. | Commentary on Chapter 43 The narrator tells us that Hetty did not receive the mercy of the court, despite all the testimony to her virtuous upbringing by relatives and Mr. Irwine, because of her coldness and hardness. She does not respond, confess, or seem repentant or sorry. It appears to be cold-blooded murder, but from the testimony one gathers Hetty was not completely sane and that furthermore, she was not able to leave the scene, even to save her own life, because of shock or guilt. Though we have been told more details during the court case, there is still the mystery of what happened to make Hetty do this. We have not yet heard her side of it, though the facts seem to warrant the verdict. Eliot's story was timely for her readers because though it was set in an earlier period, infanticide was a common crime in Victorian England and reached crisis proportions by the 1860s. The newspapers were full of cases, and one of the more famous remarks on such a newspaper account was made by writer Matthew Arnold . He was disturbed by the cold impersonality and indifference of the press stories. The facts were given and then the phrase that Arnold found inhumane: "Wragg is in custody." Arnold felt that English society needed to come up with some response a bit more insightful to infanticide other than "Wragg is in custody," as though that solved the problem. Why was Wragg in custody? Who was she? Why was she forced into doing this? What about all the other Wraggs? Eliot takes the bare facts of such a case and takes us inside the heads of the characters to show us how such a heinous crime can be committed by people who are no better or worse than the general population. Eliot chooses the psychological investigation of such an act, but a sociological analysis would show such a high rate of infanticide resulted from the severe pressures and restrictions on women for sexual misconduct, especially of the lower and middle classes, and for having a baby out of wedlock. Hetty goes through the alternatives in her mind. She had few options, unless there were some sympathetic relative. Dinah is a possibility, but Hetty could not hide her shame there or live a normal life afterwards. Hetty knows her uncle's family will not take her back because she dishonors them. Arthur is too far away. Most women had no money of their own or means to get it. Abortion was illegal, difficult, and very dangerous, often killing or maiming the woman. With an illegitimate child, a woman could not get work, a place to live, or get married. She was an outcast and would not be received by decent people. A pregnant servant was thrown into the street or sent to the poorhouse, a place little more than a jail. Prostitution was one avenue chosen by poor women with unwanted infants. A woman in poverty might kill her child to save it from suffering starvation. Infants were regularly abandoned or given to baby farms that, for a fee, would starve the unwanted babies. Upper class women had more choices; with money, they could go to the country, have the child and give it away. These conditions are hard to imagine in the world today where there are many single working mothers and little censure for having a child out of wedlock. Adam's remark that the man should be guilty too and made to pay was especially relevant for a Victorian audience, since the amended Poor Law of 1834 cast all the guilt on the woman alone for support of a bastard child. A man was not legally responsible. Many orphanages refused illegitimate children. | 479 | 625 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/44.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_44_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 44 | chapter 44 | null | {"name": "Chapter 44", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter44", "summary": "Arthur's Return Arthur's thoughts on returning to England are all about his grandfather whom he pities and thinks of kindly, and his new position. He is happy and on top of the world thinking that now he has come into his own. He thinks on all the benevolent acts he will accomplish, starting with the Irwines and the Bedes. He has no worry about Hetty, for he had heard she was engaged to Adam. He wants to do something handsome for the couple and is glad he has left behind the mistakes of last summer. Although he is not in love with Hetty, she still causes his heart to beat faster when he thinks of her. When he returns home, the servants are all silent and downcast, but he thinks it is for his grandfather. Mr. Irwine's letter is waiting for him, and he reads it first. It says that Hetty is being tried for child murder in Stoniton. He rushes out of the house, gets his horse and gallops to Stoniton.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 44 As Arthur returns home, he seems to be stuck in the same mode as before. He thinks he just scraped by in the affair with Hetty, and he won't do it again. He vows to be better in the future. The fact that he rushes out of the house to Stoniton as soon as he hears the news confirms Mr. Irwine's better thoughts of Arthur's character. He does not slink away or try to reason himself out of culpability. He rushes to help. Like Adam, Arthur will be baptized anew by Hetty's suffering."} |
When Arthur Donnithorne landed at Liverpool and read the letter from
his Aunt Lydia, briefly announcing his grand-father's death, his first
feeling was, "Poor Grandfather! I wish I could have got to him to be
with him when he died. He might have felt or wished something at the
last that I shall never know now. It was a lonely death."
It is impossible to say that his grief was deeper than that. Pity
and softened memory took place of the old antagonism, and in his busy
thoughts about the future, as the chaise carried him rapidly along
towards the home where he was now to be master, there was a continually
recurring effort to remember anything by which he could show a regard
for his grandfather's wishes, without counteracting his own cherished
aims for the good of the tenants and the estate. But it is not in human
nature--only in human pretence--for a young man like Arthur, with a fine
constitution and fine spirits, thinking well of himself, believing that
others think well of him, and having a very ardent intention to give
them more and more reason for that good opinion--it is not possible for
such a young man, just coming into a splendid estate through the
death of a very old man whom he was not fond of, to feel anything very
different from exultant joy. Now his real life was beginning; now he
would have room and opportunity for action, and he would use them. He
would show the Loamshire people what a fine country gentleman was; he
would not exchange that career for any other under the sun. He felt
himself riding over the hills in the breezy autumn days, looking after
favourite plans of drainage and enclosure; then admired on sombre
mornings as the best rider on the best horse in the hunt; spoken well
of on market-days as a first-rate landlord; by and by making speeches at
election dinners, and showing a wonderful knowledge of agriculture;
the patron of new ploughs and drills, the severe upbraider of negligent
landowners, and withal a jolly fellow that everybody must like--happy
faces greeting him everywhere on his own estate, and the neighbouring
families on the best terms with him. The Irwines should dine with him
every week, and have their own carriage to come in, for in some very
delicate way that Arthur would devise, the lay-impropriator of the
Hayslope tithes would insist on paying a couple of hundreds more to
the vicar; and his aunt should be as comfortable as possible, and go on
living at the Chase, if she liked, in spite of her old-maidish ways--at
least until he was married, and that event lay in the indistinct
background, for Arthur had not yet seen the woman who would play the
lady-wife to the first-rate country gentleman.
These were Arthur's chief thoughts, so far as a man's thoughts through
hours of travelling can be compressed into a few sentences, which are
only like the list of names telling you what are the scenes in a long
long panorama full of colour, of detail, and of life. The happy faces
Arthur saw greeting him were not pale abstractions, but real ruddy
faces, long familiar to him: Martin Poyser was there--the whole Poyser
family.
What--Hetty?
Yes; for Arthur was at ease about Hetty--not quite at ease about the
past, for a certain burning of the ears would come whenever he thought
of the scenes with Adam last August, but at ease about her present lot.
Mr. Irwine, who had been a regular correspondent, telling him all the
news about the old places and people, had sent him word nearly three
months ago that Adam Bede was not to marry Mary Burge, as he had
thought, but pretty Hetty Sorrel. Martin Poyser and Adam himself had
both told Mr. Irwine all about it--that Adam had been deeply in love
with Hetty these two years, and that now it was agreed they were to be
married in March. That stalwart rogue Adam was more susceptible than the
rector had thought; it was really quite an idyllic love affair; and if
it had not been too long to tell in a letter, he would have liked to
describe to Arthur the blushing looks and the simple strong words with
which the fine honest fellow told his secret. He knew Arthur would like
to hear that Adam had this sort of happiness in prospect.
Yes, indeed! Arthur felt there was not air enough in the room to satisfy
his renovated life, when he had read that passage in the letter. He
threw up the windows, he rushed out of doors into the December air, and
greeted every one who spoke to him with an eager gaiety, as if there had
been news of a fresh Nelson victory. For the first time that day since
he had come to Windsor, he was in true boyish spirits. The load that
had been pressing upon him was gone, the haunting fear had vanished. He
thought he could conquer his bitterness towards Adam now--could offer
him his hand, and ask to be his friend again, in spite of that painful
memory which would still make his ears burn. He had been knocked down,
and he had been forced to tell a lie: such things make a scar, do what
we will. But if Adam were the same again as in the old days, Arthur
wished to be the same too, and to have Adam mixed up with his business
and his future, as he had always desired before the accursed meeting
in August. Nay, he would do a great deal more for Adam than he should
otherwise have done, when he came into the estate; Hetty's husband had
a special claim on him--Hetty herself should feel that any pain she
had suffered through Arthur in the past was compensated to her a
hundredfold. For really she could not have felt much, since she had so
soon made up her mind to marry Adam.
You perceive clearly what sort of picture Adam and Hetty made in the
panorama of Arthur's thoughts on his journey homeward. It was March now;
they were soon to be married: perhaps they were already married. And now
it was actually in his power to do a great deal for them. Sweet--sweet
little Hetty! The little puss hadn't cared for him half as much as
he cared for her; for he was a great fool about her still--was almost
afraid of seeing her--indeed, had not cared much to look at any other
woman since he parted from her. That little figure coming towards him in
the Grove, those dark-fringed childish eyes, the lovely lips put up to
kiss him--that picture had got no fainter with the lapse of months. And
she would look just the same. It was impossible to think how he could
meet her: he should certainly tremble. Strange, how long this sort of
influence lasts, for he was certainly not in love with Hetty now. He
had been earnestly desiring, for months, that she should marry Adam,
and there was nothing that contributed more to his happiness in these
moments than the thought of their marriage. It was the exaggerating
effect of imagination that made his heart still beat a little more
quickly at the thought of her. When he saw the little thing again as she
really was, as Adam's wife, at work quite prosaically in her new home,
he should perhaps wonder at the possibility of his past feelings. Thank
heaven it had turned out so well! He should have plenty of affairs and
interests to fill his life now, and not be in danger of playing the fool
again.
Pleasant the crack of the post-boy's whip! Pleasant the sense of being
hurried along in swift ease through English scenes, so like those round
his own home, only not quite so charming. Here was a market-town--very
much like Treddleston--where the arms of the neighbouring lord of the
manor were borne on the sign of the principal inn; then mere fields and
hedges, their vicinity to a market-town carrying an agreeable suggestion
of high rent, till the land began to assume a trimmer look, the woods
were more frequent, and at length a white or red mansion looked down
from a moderate eminence, or allowed him to be aware of its parapet
and chimneys among the dense-looking masses of oaks and elms--masses
reddened now with early buds. And close at hand came the village: the
small church, with its red-tiled roof, looking humble even among the
faded half-timbered houses; the old green gravestones with nettles round
them; nothing fresh and bright but the children, opening round eyes at
the swift post-chaise; nothing noisy and busy but the gaping curs of
mysterious pedigree. What a much prettier village Hayslope was! And it
should not be neglected like this place: vigorous repairs should go
on everywhere among farm-buildings and cottages, and travellers in
post-chaises, coming along the Rosseter road, should do nothing but
admire as they went. And Adam Bede should superintend all the repairs,
for he had a share in Burge's business now, and, if he liked, Arthur
would put some money into the concern and buy the old man out in another
year or two. That was an ugly fault in Arthur's life, that affair last
summer, but the future should make amends. Many men would have retained
a feeling of vindictiveness towards Adam, but he would not--he would
resolutely overcome all littleness of that kind, for he had certainly
been very much in the wrong; and though Adam had been harsh and violent,
and had thrust on him a painful dilemma, the poor fellow was in love,
and had real provocation. No, Arthur had not an evil feeling in his mind
towards any human being: he was happy, and would make every one else
happy that came within his reach.
And here was dear old Hayslope at last, sleeping, on the hill, like a
quiet old place as it was, in the late afternoon sunlight, and opposite
to it the great shoulders of the Binton Hills, below them the purplish
blackness of the hanging woods, and at last the pale front of the Abbey,
looking out from among the oaks of the Chase, as if anxious for the
heir's return. "Poor Grandfather! And he lies dead there. He was a young
fellow once, coming into the estate and making his plans. So the world
goes round! Aunt Lydia must feel very desolate, poor thing; but she
shall be indulged as much as she indulges her fat Fido."
The wheels of Arthur's chaise had been anxiously listened for at the
Chase, for to-day was Friday, and the funeral had already been deferred
two days. Before it drew up on the gravel of the courtyard, all the
servants in the house were assembled to receive him with a grave, decent
welcome, befitting a house of death. A month ago, perhaps, it would have
been difficult for them to have maintained a suitable sadness in their
faces, when Mr. Arthur was come to take possession; but the hearts of
the head-servants were heavy that day for another cause than the death
of the old squire, and more than one of them was longing to be twenty
miles away, as Mr. Craig was, knowing what was to become of Hetty
Sorrel--pretty Hetty Sorrel--whom they used to see every week. They had
the partisanship of household servants who like their places, and
were not inclined to go the full length of the severe indignation felt
against him by the farming tenants, but rather to make excuses for him;
nevertheless, the upper servants, who had been on terms of neighbourly
intercourse with the Poysers for many years, could not help feeling that
the longed-for event of the young squire's coming into the estate had
been robbed of all its pleasantness.
To Arthur it was nothing surprising that the servants looked grave and
sad: he himself was very much touched on seeing them all again, and
feeling that he was in a new relation to them. It was that sort of
pathetic emotion which has more pleasure than pain in it--which is
perhaps one of the most delicious of all states to a good-natured man,
conscious of the power to satisfy his good nature. His heart swelled
agreeably as he said, "Well, Mills, how is my aunt?"
But now Mr. Bygate, the lawyer, who had been in the house ever since
the death, came forward to give deferential greetings and answer all
questions, and Arthur walked with him towards the library, where his
Aunt Lydia was expecting him. Aunt Lydia was the only person in the
house who knew nothing about Hetty. Her sorrow as a maiden daughter
was unmixed with any other thoughts than those of anxiety about funeral
arrangements and her own future lot; and, after the manner of women,
she mourned for the father who had made her life important, all the more
because she had a secret sense that there was little mourning for him in
other hearts.
But Arthur kissed her tearful face more tenderly than he had ever done
in his life before.
"Dear Aunt," he said affectionately, as he held her hand, "YOUR loss is
the greatest of all, but you must tell me how to try and make it up to
you all the rest of your life."
"It was so sudden and so dreadful, Arthur," poor Miss Lydia began,
pouring out her little plaints, and Arthur sat down to listen with
impatient patience. When a pause came, he said:
"Now, Aunt, I'll leave you for a quarter of an hour just to go to my own
room, and then I shall come and give full attention to everything."
"My room is all ready for me, I suppose, Mills?" he said to the butler,
who seemed to be lingering uneasily about the entrance-hall.
"Yes, sir, and there are letters for you; they are all laid on the
writing-table in your dressing-room."
On entering the small anteroom which was called a dressing-room, but
which Arthur really used only to lounge and write in, he just cast his
eyes on the writing-table, and saw that there were several letters and
packets lying there; but he was in the uncomfortable dusty condition
of a man who has had a long hurried journey, and he must really refresh
himself by attending to his toilette a little, before he read his
letters. Pym was there, making everything ready for him, and soon, with
a delightful freshness about him, as if he were prepared to begin a new
day, he went back into his dressing-room to open his letters. The level
rays of the low afternoon sun entered directly at the window, and as
Arthur seated himself in his velvet chair with their pleasant warmth
upon him, he was conscious of that quiet well-being which perhaps you
and I have felt on a sunny afternoon when, in our brightest youth and
health, life has opened a new vista for us, and long to-morrows of
activity have stretched before us like a lovely plain which there was no
need for hurrying to look at, because it was all our own.
The top letter was placed with its address upwards: it was in Mr.
Irwine's handwriting, Arthur saw at once; and below the address was
written, "To be delivered as soon as he arrives." Nothing could have
been less surprising to him than a letter from Mr. Irwine at that
moment: of course, there was something he wished Arthur to know earlier
than it was possible for them to see each other. At such a time as that
it was quite natural that Irwine should have something pressing to say.
Arthur broke the seal with an agreeable anticipation of soon seeing the
writer.
"I send this letter to meet you on your arrival, Arthur, because I may
then be at Stoniton, whither I am called by the most painful duty it has
ever been given me to perform, and it is right that you should know what
I have to tell you without delay.
"I will not attempt to add by one word of reproach to the retribution
that is now falling on you: any other words that I could write at this
moment must be weak and unmeaning by the side of those in which I must
tell you the simple fact.
"Hetty Sorrel is in prison, and will be tried on Friday for the crime of
child-murder."...
Arthur read no more. He started up from his chair and stood for a single
minute with a sense of violent convulsion in his whole frame, as if the
life were going out of him with horrible throbs; but the next minute he
had rushed out of the room, still clutching the letter--he was hurrying
along the corridor, and down the stairs into the hall. Mills was still
there, but Arthur did not see him, as he passed like a hunted man across
the hall and out along the gravel. The butler hurried out after him
as fast as his elderly limbs could run: he guessed, he knew, where the
young squire was going.
When Mills got to the stables, a horse was being saddled, and Arthur was
forcing himself to read the remaining words of the letter. He thrust
it into his pocket as the horse was led up to him, and at that moment
caught sight of Mills' anxious face in front of him.
"Tell them I'm gone--gone to Stoniton," he said in a muffled tone of
agitation--sprang into the saddle, and set off at a gallop.
| 4,025 | Chapter 44 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter44 | Arthur's Return Arthur's thoughts on returning to England are all about his grandfather whom he pities and thinks of kindly, and his new position. He is happy and on top of the world thinking that now he has come into his own. He thinks on all the benevolent acts he will accomplish, starting with the Irwines and the Bedes. He has no worry about Hetty, for he had heard she was engaged to Adam. He wants to do something handsome for the couple and is glad he has left behind the mistakes of last summer. Although he is not in love with Hetty, she still causes his heart to beat faster when he thinks of her. When he returns home, the servants are all silent and downcast, but he thinks it is for his grandfather. Mr. Irwine's letter is waiting for him, and he reads it first. It says that Hetty is being tried for child murder in Stoniton. He rushes out of the house, gets his horse and gallops to Stoniton. | Commentary on Chapter 44 As Arthur returns home, he seems to be stuck in the same mode as before. He thinks he just scraped by in the affair with Hetty, and he won't do it again. He vows to be better in the future. The fact that he rushes out of the house to Stoniton as soon as he hears the news confirms Mr. Irwine's better thoughts of Arthur's character. He does not slink away or try to reason himself out of culpability. He rushes to help. Like Adam, Arthur will be baptized anew by Hetty's suffering. | 240 | 97 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/45.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_45_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 45 | chapter 45 | null | {"name": "Chapter 45", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter45", "summary": "In the Prison Dinah Morris speaks to an older gentleman outside the prison. He is Colonel Townley, the gentleman on horseback who heard Dinah speak on Hayslope Green. He is a magistrate and gets Dinah in to Hetty's cell. She wants to stay with Hetty till the end. Colonel Townley thinks she is brave to stay in a jail cell all night without any light, but Dinah is calm. Townley tells her where Adam is staying. Hetty at first is sullen and withdrawn but finally responds to Dinah's love and is enfolded in her arms. She clings to Dinah, who gently leads her to a full confession of the crime. She tells Hetty that she cannot be forgiven by God until she lets go of her sin, so Hetty tells how she half buried the baby in the wood, hoping someone would find it. She didn't kill it directly. She could only think that if the baby was gone, she could go home. She didn't feel anything for the baby, though its crying went all through her, and that is why she couldn't leave it. She could always hear it crying even after she went away. Then she went back, and it was gone. She sat and waited till they took her. She asks Dinah if now she has confessed, God will make the crying go away. Dinah tells her to kneel down and pray.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 45 Dinah's sure and skillful handling of Hetty, her compassion and lack of fear, gain the reader's admiration. She does not talk down to Hetty, but she tries to put religious precepts into thoughts Hetty can understand. She makes God a friend who will be there at the moment Hetty has to meet death. Dinah makes Hetty understand she is suffering because of her hard heart that shuts out God and human sympathy. She emphasizes God's love and forgiveness, rather than sin and punishment. Once Hetty tells the truth, there is a release and a softening. She accepts Dinah's love, and through that love, she is able to conceive of a divine love. In some ways it is hard to believe that Eliot had given up her Christian faith, because she can so convincingly portray a saint like Dinah. Eliot had immense love and compassion for others, but she herself had ceased to cloak these feelings in religion. What she loved was the humanity of religion, its higher values. She gives her best characters a spiritual and universal outlook. In earlier chapters Hetty and Dinah were contrasted, but here, sympathy has melted all differences. Dinah does not pretend to be superior to Hetty; she just stays with her and gives her comfort."} |
NEAR sunset that evening an elderly gentleman was standing with his back
against the smaller entrance-door of Stoniton jail, saying a few last
words to the departing chaplain. The chaplain walked away, but the
elderly gentleman stood still, looking down on the pavement and stroking
his chin with a ruminating air, when he was roused by a sweet clear
woman's voice, saying, "Can I get into the prison, if you please?"
He turned his head and looked fixedly at the speaker for a few moments
without answering.
"I have seen you before," he said at last. "Do you remember preaching on
the village green at Hayslope in Loamshire?"
"Yes, sir, surely. Are you the gentleman that stayed to listen on
horseback?"
"Yes. Why do you want to go into the prison?"
"I want to go to Hetty Sorrel, the young woman who has been condemned
to death--and to stay with her, if I may be permitted. Have you power in
the prison, sir?"
"Yes; I am a magistrate, and can get admittance for you. But did you
know this criminal, Hetty Sorrel?"
"Yes, we are kin. My own aunt married her uncle, Martin Poyser. But I
was away at Leeds, and didn't know of this great trouble in time to get
here before to-day. I entreat you, sir, for the love of our heavenly
Father, to let me go to her and stay with her."
"How did you know she was condemned to death, if you are only just come
from Leeds?"
"I have seen my uncle since the trial, sir. He is gone back to his home
now, and the poor sinner is forsaken of all. I beseech you to get leave
for me to be with her."
"What! Have you courage to stay all night in the prison? She is very
sullen, and will scarcely make answer when she is spoken to."
"Oh, sir, it may please God to open her heart still. Don't let us
delay."
"Come, then," said the elderly gentleman, ringing and gaining admission,
"I know you have a key to unlock hearts."
Dinah mechanically took off her bonnet and shawl as soon as they were
within the prison court, from the habit she had of throwing them off
when she preached or prayed, or visited the sick; and when they entered
the jailer's room, she laid them down on a chair unthinkingly. There was
no agitation visible in her, but a deep concentrated calmness, as if,
even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen
support.
After speaking to the jailer, the magistrate turned to her and said,
"The turnkey will take you to the prisoner's cell and leave you there
for the night, if you desire it, but you can't have a light during the
night--it is contrary to rules. My name is Colonel Townley: if I can
help you in anything, ask the jailer for my address and come to me.
I take some interest in this Hetty Sorrel, for the sake of that fine
fellow, Adam Bede. I happened to see him at Hayslope the same evening I
heard you preach, and recognized him in court to-day, ill as he looked."
"Ah, sir, can you tell me anything about him? Can you tell me where
he lodges? For my poor uncle was too much weighed down with trouble to
remember."
"Close by here. I inquired all about him of Mr. Irwine. He lodges over
a tinman's shop, in the street on the right hand as you entered the
prison. There is an old school-master with him. Now, good-bye: I wish
you success."
"Farewell, sir. I am grateful to you."
As Dinah crossed the prison court with the turnkey, the solemn evening
light seemed to make the walls higher than they were by day, and the
sweet pale face in the cap was more than ever like a white flower on
this background of gloom. The turnkey looked askance at her all the
while, but never spoke. He somehow felt that the sound of his own rude
voice would be grating just then. He struck a light as they entered the
dark corridor leading to the condemned cell, and then said in his most
civil tone, "It'll be pretty nigh dark in the cell a'ready, but I can
stop with my light a bit, if you like."
"Nay, friend, thank you," said Dinah. "I wish to go in alone."
"As you like," said the jailer, turning the harsh key in the lock and
opening the door wide enough to admit Dinah. A jet of light from his
lantern fell on the opposite corner of the cell, where Hetty was sitting
on her straw pallet with her face buried in her knees. It seemed as if
she were asleep, and yet the grating of the lock would have been likely
to waken her.
The door closed again, and the only light in the cell was that of the
evening sky, through the small high grating--enough to discern human
faces by. Dinah stood still for a minute, hesitating to speak because
Hetty might be asleep, and looking at the motionless heap with a
yearning heart. Then she said, softly, "Hetty!"
There was a slight movement perceptible in Hetty's frame--a start such
as might have been produced by a feeble electrical shock--but she did
not look up. Dinah spoke again, in a tone made stronger by irrepressible
emotion, "Hetty...it's Dinah."
Again there was a slight startled movement through Hetty's frame,
and without uncovering her face, she raised her head a little, as if
listening.
"Hetty...Dinah is come to you."
After a moment's pause, Hetty lifted her head slowly and timidly from
her knees and raised her eyes. The two pale faces were looking at
each other: one with a wild hard despair in it, the other full of sad
yearning love. Dinah unconsciously opened her arms and stretched them
out.
"Don't you know me, Hetty? Don't you remember Dinah? Did you think I
wouldn't come to you in trouble?"
Hetty kept her eyes fixed on Dinah's face--at first like an animal that
gazes, and gazes, and keeps aloof.
"I'm come to be with you, Hetty--not to leave you--to stay with you--to
be your sister to the last."
Slowly, while Dinah was speaking, Hetty rose, took a step forward, and
was clasped in Dinah's arms.
They stood so a long while, for neither of them felt the impulse to move
apart again. Hetty, without any distinct thought of it, hung on this
something that was come to clasp her now, while she was sinking helpless
in a dark gulf; and Dinah felt a deep joy in the first sign that her
love was welcomed by the wretched lost one. The light got fainter as
they stood, and when at last they sat down on the straw pallet together,
their faces had become indistinct.
Not a word was spoken. Dinah waited, hoping for a spontaneous word from
Hetty, but she sat in the same dull despair, only clutching the hand
that held hers and leaning her cheek against Dinah's. It was the human
contact she clung to, but she was not the less sinking into the dark
gulf.
Dinah began to doubt whether Hetty was conscious who it was that sat
beside her. She thought suffering and fear might have driven the poor
sinner out of her mind. But it was borne in upon her, as she afterwards
said, that she must not hurry God's work: we are overhasty to speak--as
if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love
felt through ours. She did not know how long they sat in that way, but
it got darker and darker, till there was only a pale patch of light on
the opposite wall: all the rest was darkness. But she felt the Divine
presence more and more--nay, as if she herself were a part of it, and
it was the Divine pity that was beating in her heart and was willing the
rescue of this helpless one. At last she was prompted to speak and find
out how far Hetty was conscious of the present.
"Hetty," she said gently, "do you know who it is that sits by your
side?"
"Yes," Hetty answered slowly, "it's Dinah."
"And do you remember the time when we were at the Hall Farm together,
and that night when I told you to be sure and think of me as a friend in
trouble?"
"Yes," said Hetty. Then, after a pause, she added, "But you can do
nothing for me. You can't make 'em do anything. They'll hang me o'
Monday--it's Friday now."
As Hetty said the last words, she clung closer to Dinah, shuddering.
"No, Hetty, I can't save you from that death. But isn't the suffering
less hard when you have somebody with you, that feels for you--that you
can speak to, and say what's in your heart?...Yes, Hetty: you lean on
me: you are glad to have me with you."
"You won't leave me, Dinah? You'll keep close to me?"
"No, Hetty, I won't leave you. I'll stay with you to the last....But,
Hetty, there is some one else in this cell besides me, some one close to
you."
Hetty said, in a frightened whisper, "Who?"
"Some one who has been with you through all your hours of sin and
trouble--who has known every thought you have had--has seen where you
went, where you lay down and rose up again, and all the deeds you have
tried to hide in darkness. And on Monday, when I can't follow you--when
my arms can't reach you--when death has parted us--He who is with
us now, and knows all, will be with you then. It makes no
difference--whether we live or die, we are in the presence of God."
"Oh, Dinah, won't nobody do anything for me? Will they hang me for
certain?...I wouldn't mind if they'd let me live."
"My poor Hetty, death is very dreadful to you. I know it's dreadful.
But if you had a friend to take care of you after death--in that
other world--some one whose love is greater than mine--who can do
everything?...If God our Father was your friend, and was willing to
save you from sin and suffering, so as you should neither know wicked
feelings nor pain again? If you could believe he loved you and would
help you, as you believe I love you and will help you, it wouldn't be so
hard to die on Monday, would it?"
"But I can't know anything about it," Hetty said, with sullen sadness.
"Because, Hetty, you are shutting up your soul against him, by trying
to hide the truth. God's love and mercy can overcome all things--our
ignorance, and weakness, and all the burden of our past wickedness--all
things but our wilful sin, sin that we cling to, and will not give up.
You believe in my love and pity for you, Hetty, but if you had not let
me come near you, if you wouldn't have looked at me or spoken to me,
you'd have shut me out from helping you. I couldn't have made you feel
my love; I couldn't have told you what I felt for you. Don't shut God's
love out in that way, by clinging to sin....He can't bless you while
you have one falsehood in your soul; his pardoning mercy can't reach
you until you open your heart to him, and say, 'I have done this great
wickedness; O God, save me, make me pure from sin.' While you cling to
one sin and will not part with it, it must drag you down to misery after
death, as it has dragged you to misery here in this world, my poor, poor
Hetty. It is sin that brings dread, and darkness, and despair: there is
light and blessedness for us as soon as we cast it off. God enters our
souls then, and teaches us, and brings us strength and peace. Cast it
off now, Hetty--now: confess the wickedness you have done--the sin you
have been guilty of against your Heavenly Father. Let us kneel down
together, for we are in the presence of God."
Hetty obeyed Dinah's movement, and sank on her knees. They still held
each other's hands, and there was long silence. Then Dinah said, "Hetty,
we are before God. He is waiting for you to tell the truth."
Still there was silence. At last Hetty spoke, in a tone of beseeching--
"Dinah...help me...I can't feel anything like you...my heart is hard."
Dinah held the clinging hand, and all her soul went forth in her voice:
"Jesus, thou present Saviour! Thou hast known the depths of all sorrow:
thou hast entered that black darkness where God is not, and hast uttered
the cry of the forsaken. Come Lord, and gather of the fruits of thy
travail and thy pleading. Stretch forth thy hand, thou who art mighty
to save to the uttermost, and rescue this lost one. She is clothed round
with thick darkness. The fetters of her sin are upon her, and she cannot
stir to come to thee. She can only feel her heart is hard, and she is
helpless. She cries to me, thy weak creature....Saviour! It is a blind
cry to thee. Hear it! Pierce the darkness! Look upon her with thy face
of love and sorrow that thou didst turn on him who denied thee, and melt
her hard heart.
"See, Lord, I bring her, as they of old brought the sick and helpless,
and thou didst heal them. I bear her on my arms and carry her before
thee. Fear and trembling have taken hold on her, but she trembles only
at the pain and death of the body. Breathe upon her thy life-giving
Spirit, and put a new fear within her--the fear of her sin. Make her
dread to keep the accursed thing within her soul. Make her feel the
presence of the living God, who beholds all the past, to whom the
darkness is as noonday; who is waiting now, at the eleventh hour, for
her to turn to him, and confess her sin, and cry for mercy--now, before
the night of death comes, and the moment of pardon is for ever fled,
like yesterday that returneth not.
"Saviour! It is yet time--time to snatch this poor soul from everlasting
darkness. I believe--I believe in thy infinite love. What is my love or
my pleading? It is quenched in thine. I can only clasp her in my weak
arms and urge her with my weak pity. Thou--thou wilt breathe on the dead
soul, and it shall arise from the unanswering sleep of death.
"Yea, Lord, I see thee, coming through the darkness coming, like the
morning, with healing on thy wings. The marks of thy agony are upon
thee--I see, I see thou art able and willing to save--thou wilt not let
her perish for ever. Come, mighty Saviour! Let the dead hear thy voice.
Let the eyes of the blind be opened. Let her see that God encompasses
her. Let her tremble at nothing but at the sin that cuts her off from
him. Melt the hard heart. Unseal the closed lips: make her cry with her
whole soul, 'Father, I have sinned.'..."
"Dinah," Hetty sobbed out, throwing her arms round Dinah's neck, "I will
speak...I will tell...I won't hide it any more."
But the tears and sobs were too violent. Dinah raised her gently from
her knees and seated her on the pallet again, sitting down by her side.
It was a long time before the convulsed throat was quiet, and even
then they sat some time in stillness and darkness, holding each other's
hands. At last Hetty whispered, "I did do it, Dinah...I buried it in the
wood...the little baby...and it cried...I heard it cry...ever such a way
off...all night...and I went back because it cried."
She paused, and then spoke hurriedly in a louder, pleading tone.
"But I thought perhaps it wouldn't die--there might somebody find it. I
didn't kill it--I didn't kill it myself. I put it down there and covered
it up, and when I came back it was gone....It was because I was so
very miserable, Dinah...I didn't know where to go...and I tried to kill
myself before, and I couldn't. Oh, I tried so to drown myself in the
pool, and I couldn't. I went to Windsor--I ran away--did you know? I
went to find him, as he might take care of me; and he was gone; and then
I didn't know what to do. I daredn't go back home again--I couldn't bear
it. I couldn't have bore to look at anybody, for they'd have scorned me.
I thought o' you sometimes, and thought I'd come to you, for I didn't
think you'd be cross with me, and cry shame on me. I thought I could
tell you. But then the other folks 'ud come to know it at last, and I
couldn't bear that. It was partly thinking o' you made me come toward
Stoniton; and, besides, I was so frightened at going wandering about
till I was a beggar-woman, and had nothing; and sometimes it seemed as
if I must go back to the farm sooner than that. Oh, it was so dreadful,
Dinah...I was so miserable...I wished I'd never been born into this
world. I should never like to go into the green fields again--I hated
'em so in my misery."
Hetty paused again, as if the sense of the past were too strong upon her
for words.
"And then I got to Stoniton, and I began to feel frightened that night,
because I was so near home. And then the little baby was born, when I
didn't expect it; and the thought came into my mind that I might get
rid of it and go home again. The thought came all of a sudden, as I was
lying in the bed, and it got stronger and stronger...I longed so to go
back again...I couldn't bear being so lonely and coming to beg for want.
And it gave me strength and resolution to get up and dress myself. I
felt I must do it...I didn't know how...I thought I'd find a pool, if
I could, like that other, in the corner of the field, in the dark.
And when the woman went out, I felt as if I was strong enough to do
anything...I thought I should get rid of all my misery, and go back
home, and never let 'em know why I ran away. I put on my bonnet and
shawl, and went out into the dark street, with the baby under my cloak;
and I walked fast till I got into a street a good way off, and there
was a public, and I got some warm stuff to drink and some bread. And
I walked on and on, and I hardly felt the ground I trod on; and it got
lighter, for there came the moon--oh, Dinah, it frightened me when it
first looked at me out o' the clouds--it never looked so before; and
I turned out of the road into the fields, for I was afraid o' meeting
anybody with the moon shining on me. And I came to a haystack, where
I thought I could lie down and keep myself warm all night. There was a
place cut into it, where I could make me a bed, and I lay comfortable,
and the baby was warm against me; and I must have gone to sleep for a
good while, for when I woke it was morning, but not very light, and the
baby was crying. And I saw a wood a little way off...I thought there'd
perhaps be a ditch or a pond there...and it was so early I thought I
could hide the child there, and get a long way off before folks was up.
And then I thought I'd go home--I'd get rides in carts and go home and
tell 'em I'd been to try and see for a place, and couldn't get one. I
longed so for it, Dinah, I longed so to be safe at home. I don't know
how I felt about the baby. I seemed to hate it--it was like a heavy
weight hanging round my neck; and yet its crying went through me, and I
daredn't look at its little hands and face. But I went on to the wood,
and I walked about, but there was no water...."
Hetty shuddered. She was silent for some moments, and when she began
again, it was in a whisper.
"I came to a place where there was lots of chips and turf, and I sat
down on the trunk of a tree to think what I should do. And all of a
sudden I saw a hole under the nut-tree, like a little grave. And it
darted into me like lightning--I'd lay the baby there and cover it with
the grass and the chips. I couldn't kill it any other way. And I'd done
it in a minute; and, oh, it cried so, Dinah--I couldn't cover it quite
up--I thought perhaps somebody 'ud come and take care of it, and then
it wouldn't die. And I made haste out of the wood, but I could hear it
crying all the while; and when I got out into the fields, it was as if I
was held fast--I couldn't go away, for all I wanted so to go. And I sat
against the haystack to watch if anybody 'ud come. I was very hungry,
and I'd only a bit of bread left, but I couldn't go away. And after ever
such a while--hours and hours--the man came--him in a smock-frock, and
he looked at me so, I was frightened, and I made haste and went on. I
thought he was going to the wood and would perhaps find the baby. And I
went right on, till I came to a village, a long way off from the wood,
and I was very sick, and faint, and hungry. I got something to eat
there, and bought a loaf. But I was frightened to stay. I heard the baby
crying, and thought the other folks heard it too--and I went on. But
I was so tired, and it was getting towards dark. And at last, by the
roadside there was a barn--ever such a way off any house--like the barn
in Abbot's Close, and I thought I could go in there and hide myself
among the hay and straw, and nobody 'ud be likely to come. I went in,
and it was half full o' trusses of straw, and there was some hay too.
And I made myself a bed, ever so far behind, where nobody could find
me; and I was so tired and weak, I went to sleep....But oh, the baby's
crying kept waking me, and I thought that man as looked at me so was
come and laying hold of me. But I must have slept a long while at last,
though I didn't know, for when I got up and went out of the barn, I
didn't know whether it was night or morning. But it was morning, for
it kept getting lighter, and I turned back the way I'd come. I couldn't
help it, Dinah; it was the baby's crying made me go--and yet I was
frightened to death. I thought that man in the smock-frock 'ud see me
and know I put the baby there. But I went on, for all that. I'd left off
thinking about going home--it had gone out o' my mind. I saw nothing
but that place in the wood where I'd buried the baby...I see it now. Oh
Dinah! shall I allays see it?"
Hetty clung round Dinah and shuddered again. The silence seemed long
before she went on.
"I met nobody, for it was very early, and I got into the wood....I knew
the way to the place...the place against the nut-tree; and I could
hear it crying at every step....I thought it was alive....I don't know
whether I was frightened or glad...I don't know what I felt. I only know
I was in the wood and heard the cry. I don't know what I felt till I saw
the baby was gone. And when I'd put it there, I thought I should like
somebody to find it and save it from dying; but when I saw it was gone,
I was struck like a stone, with fear. I never thought o' stirring, I
felt so weak. I knew I couldn't run away, and everybody as saw me 'ud
know about the baby. My heart went like a stone. I couldn't wish or try
for anything; it seemed like as if I should stay there for ever, and
nothing 'ud ever change. But they came and took me away."
Hetty was silent, but she shuddered again, as if there was still
something behind; and Dinah waited, for her heart was so full that tears
must come before words. At last Hetty burst out, with a sob, "Dinah, do
you think God will take away that crying and the place in the wood, now
I've told everything?"
"Let us pray, poor sinner. Let us fall on our knees again, and pray to
the God of all mercy."
| 6,229 | Chapter 45 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter45 | In the Prison Dinah Morris speaks to an older gentleman outside the prison. He is Colonel Townley, the gentleman on horseback who heard Dinah speak on Hayslope Green. He is a magistrate and gets Dinah in to Hetty's cell. She wants to stay with Hetty till the end. Colonel Townley thinks she is brave to stay in a jail cell all night without any light, but Dinah is calm. Townley tells her where Adam is staying. Hetty at first is sullen and withdrawn but finally responds to Dinah's love and is enfolded in her arms. She clings to Dinah, who gently leads her to a full confession of the crime. She tells Hetty that she cannot be forgiven by God until she lets go of her sin, so Hetty tells how she half buried the baby in the wood, hoping someone would find it. She didn't kill it directly. She could only think that if the baby was gone, she could go home. She didn't feel anything for the baby, though its crying went all through her, and that is why she couldn't leave it. She could always hear it crying even after she went away. Then she went back, and it was gone. She sat and waited till they took her. She asks Dinah if now she has confessed, God will make the crying go away. Dinah tells her to kneel down and pray. | Commentary on Chapter 45 Dinah's sure and skillful handling of Hetty, her compassion and lack of fear, gain the reader's admiration. She does not talk down to Hetty, but she tries to put religious precepts into thoughts Hetty can understand. She makes God a friend who will be there at the moment Hetty has to meet death. Dinah makes Hetty understand she is suffering because of her hard heart that shuts out God and human sympathy. She emphasizes God's love and forgiveness, rather than sin and punishment. Once Hetty tells the truth, there is a release and a softening. She accepts Dinah's love, and through that love, she is able to conceive of a divine love. In some ways it is hard to believe that Eliot had given up her Christian faith, because she can so convincingly portray a saint like Dinah. Eliot had immense love and compassion for others, but she herself had ceased to cloak these feelings in religion. What she loved was the humanity of religion, its higher values. She gives her best characters a spiritual and universal outlook. In earlier chapters Hetty and Dinah were contrasted, but here, sympathy has melted all differences. Dinah does not pretend to be superior to Hetty; she just stays with her and gives her comfort. | 324 | 215 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/46.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_46_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 46 | chapter 46 | null | {"name": "Chapter 46", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter46", "summary": "The Hours of Suspense Bartle Massey announces a visitor to Adam in his Stoniton room where he awaits Hetty's execution. Dinah Morris comes to tell him that Hetty has repented and wants to see Adam, to ask his forgiveness before she dies. Adam, very haggard, says he cannot believe she has to die like that; he believes a pardon will come. He will wait till the last minute before seeing her. He sends his forgiveness through Dinah and says he will come. Bartle, though disliking women, pronounces Dinah to be one woman he approves of. Adam cannot sleep the night before the execution. He bursts out in sorrow, thinking of what Hetty could have been if not for Arthur. Bartle reminds him that Hetty could not have gotten so hard in just a few months. It was in her nature. He says that perhaps some good will come of it all. Adam does not like this philosophy that good can come of evil; her life is ruined, and she is being hanged on the day they would have been married. In the morning, he goes to the prison to talk to Hetty. He cannot bear to see Hetty's eyes; they are so sad, and they are the eyes of the woman he loves. Dinah holds Hetty up as she asks forgiveness. Adam says he forgave her long ago. He feels a release and begins crying. Hetty is shocked by the signs of Adam's suffering and moves towards him, asking if he will kiss her good by. Adam gives her a kiss and will never see her again. Hetty asks Adam to tell Arthur she forgives him, so that God will forgive her.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 46 This is a very emotional chapter, handled with a touching beauty that is one of Eliot's finest storytelling gifts. She is able to understand very subtle and refined human feeling and portray it convincingly. Even Hetty melts a little and is able to contemplate the suffering of another. She is sympathetic in her last hour, able to admit error and to reach out. The reader also believes in the nobility of Adam's love. In the beginning, he seemed to love his idea of Hetty, her beauty and youth. Now, his love is mature and real. He loves Hetty despite what she has done. He is able to forgive and give comfort."} |
ON Sunday morning, when the church bells in Stoniton were ringing for
morning service, Bartle Massey re-entered Adam's room, after a short
absence, and said, "Adam, here's a visitor wants to see you."
Adam was seated with his back towards the door, but he started up and
turned round instantly, with a flushed face and an eager look. His face
was even thinner and more worn than we have seen it before, but he was
washed and shaven this Sunday morning.
"Is it any news?" he said.
"Keep yourself quiet, my lad," said Bartle; "keep quiet. It's not what
you're thinking of. It's the young Methodist woman come from the prison.
She's at the bottom o' the stairs, and wants to know if you think
well to see her, for she has something to say to you about that poor
castaway; but she wouldn't come in without your leave, she said. She
thought you'd perhaps like to go out and speak to her. These preaching
women are not so back'ard commonly," Bartle muttered to himself.
"Ask her to come in," said Adam.
He was standing with his face towards the door, and as Dinah entered,
lifting up her mild grey eyes towards him, she saw at once the great
change that had come since the day when she had looked up at the tall
man in the cottage. There was a trembling in her clear voice as she put
her hand into his and said, "Be comforted, Adam Bede, the Lord has not
forsaken her."
"Bless you for coming to her," Adam said. "Mr. Massey brought me word
yesterday as you was come."
They could neither of them say any more just yet, but stood before each
other in silence; and Bartle Massey, too, who had put on his spectacles,
seemed transfixed, examining Dinah's face. But he recovered himself
first, and said, "Sit down, young woman, sit down," placing the chair
for her and retiring to his old seat on the bed.
"Thank you, friend; I won't sit down," said Dinah, "for I must hasten
back. She entreated me not to stay long away. What I came for, Adam
Bede, was to pray you to go and see the poor sinner and bid her
farewell. She desires to ask your forgiveness, and it is meet you should
see her to-day, rather than in the early morning, when the time will be
short."
Adam stood trembling, and at last sank down on his chair again.
"It won't be," he said, "it'll be put off--there'll perhaps come a
pardon. Mr. Irwine said there was hope. He said, I needn't quite give it
up."
"That's a blessed thought to me," said Dinah, her eyes filling with
tears. "It's a fearful thing hurrying her soul away so fast."
"But let what will be," she added presently. "You will surely come, and
let her speak the words that are in her heart. Although her poor soul is
very dark and discerns little beyond the things of the flesh, she is no
longer hard. She is contrite, she has confessed all to me. The pride of
her heart has given way, and she leans on me for help and desires to
be taught. This fills me with trust, for I cannot but think that the
brethren sometimes err in measuring the Divine love by the sinner's
knowledge. She is going to write a letter to the friends at the Hall
Farm for me to give them when she is gone, and when I told her you were
here, she said, 'I should like to say good-bye to Adam and ask him to
forgive me.' You will come, Adam? Perhaps you will even now come back
with me."
"I can't," Adam said. "I can't say good-bye while there's any hope. I'm
listening, and listening--I can't think o' nothing but that. It can't be
as she'll die that shameful death--I can't bring my mind to it."
He got up from his chair again and looked away out of the window, while
Dinah stood with compassionate patience. In a minute or two he turned
round and said, "I will come, Dinah...to-morrow morning...if it must be.
I may have more strength to bear it, if I know it must be. Tell her, I
forgive her; tell her I will come--at the very last."
"I will not urge you against the voice of your own heart," said Dinah.
"I must hasten back to her, for it is wonderful how she clings now, and
was not willing to let me out of her sight. She used never to make any
return to my affection before, but now tribulation has opened her heart.
Farewell, Adam. Our heavenly Father comfort you and strengthen you
to bear all things." Dinah put out her hand, and Adam pressed it in
silence.
Bartle Massey was getting up to lift the stiff latch of the door for
her, but before he could reach it, she had said gently, "Farewell,
friend," and was gone, with her light step down the stairs.
"Well," said Bartle, taking off his spectacles and putting them into his
pocket, "if there must be women to make trouble in the world, it's
but fair there should be women to be comforters under it; and she's
one--she's one. It's a pity she's a Methodist; but there's no getting a
woman without some foolishness or other."
Adam never went to bed that night. The excitement of suspense,
heightening with every hour that brought him nearer the fatal moment,
was too great, and in spite of his entreaties, in spite of his promises
that he would be perfectly quiet, the schoolmaster watched too.
"What does it matter to me, lad?" Bartle said: "a night's sleep more
or less? I shall sleep long enough, by and by, underground. Let me keep
thee company in trouble while I can."
It was a long and dreary night in that small chamber. Adam would
sometimes get up and tread backwards and forwards along the short space
from wall to wall; then he would sit down and hide his face, and no
sound would be heard but the ticking of the watch on the table, or
the falling of a cinder from the fire which the schoolmaster carefully
tended. Sometimes he would burst out into vehement speech, "If I could
ha' done anything to save her--if my bearing anything would ha' done any
good...but t' have to sit still, and know it, and do nothing...it's
hard for a man to bear...and to think o' what might ha' been now, if
it hadn't been for HIM....O God, it's the very day we should ha' been
married."
"Aye, my lad," said Bartle tenderly, "it's heavy--it's heavy. But you
must remember this: when you thought of marrying her, you'd a notion
she'd got another sort of a nature inside her. You didn't think she
could have got hardened in that little while to do what she's done."
"I know--I know that," said Adam. "I thought she was loving and
tender-hearted, and wouldn't tell a lie, or act deceitful. How could I
think any other way? And if he'd never come near her, and I'd married
her, and been loving to her, and took care of her, she might never
ha' done anything bad. What would it ha' signified--my having a bit o'
trouble with her? It 'ud ha' been nothing to this."
"There's no knowing, my lad--there's no knowing what might have come.
The smart's bad for you to bear now: you must have time--you must have
time. But I've that opinion of you, that you'll rise above it all and be
a man again, and there may good come out of this that we don't see."
"Good come out of it!" said Adam passionately. "That doesn't alter th'
evil: HER ruin can't be undone. I hate that talk o' people, as if there
was a way o' making amends for everything. They'd more need be brought
to see as the wrong they do can never be altered. When a man's spoiled
his fellow-creatur's life, he's no right to comfort himself with
thinking good may come out of it. Somebody else's good doesn't alter her
shame and misery."
"Well, lad, well," said Bartle, in a gentle tone, strangely in contrast
with his usual peremptoriness and impatience of contradiction, "it's
likely enough I talk foolishness. I'm an old fellow, and it's a good
many years since I was in trouble myself. It's easy finding reasons why
other folks should be patient."
"Mr. Massey," said Adam penitently, "I'm very hot and hasty. I owe you
something different; but you mustn't take it ill of me."
"Not I, lad--not I."
So the night wore on in agitation till the chill dawn and the growing
light brought the tremulous quiet that comes on the brink of despair.
There would soon be no more suspense.
"Let us go to the prison now, Mr. Massey," said Adam, when he saw the
hand of his watch at six. "If there's any news come, we shall hear about
it."
The people were astir already, moving rapidly, in one direction, through
the streets. Adam tried not to think where they were going, as they
hurried past him in that short space between his lodging and the prison
gates. He was thankful when the gates shut him in from seeing those
eager people.
No; there was no news come--no pardon--no reprieve.
Adam lingered in the court half an hour before he could bring himself
to send word to Dinah that he was come. But a voice caught his ear: he
could not shut out the words.
"The cart is to set off at half-past seven."
It must be said--the last good-bye: there was no help.
In ten minutes from that time, Adam was at the door of the cell. Dinah
had sent him word that she could not come to him; she could not leave
Hetty one moment; but Hetty was prepared for the meeting.
He could not see her when he entered, for agitation deadened his senses,
and the dim cell was almost dark to him. He stood a moment after the
door closed behind him, trembling and stupefied.
But he began to see through the dimness--to see the dark eyes lifted up
to him once more, but with no smile in them. O God, how sad they looked!
The last time they had met his was when he parted from her with his
heart full of joyous hopeful love, and they looked out with a tearful
smile from a pink, dimpled, childish face. The face was marble now; the
sweet lips were pallid and half-open and quivering; the dimples were all
gone--all but one, that never went; and the eyes--O, the worst of all
was the likeness they had to Hetty's. They were Hetty's eyes looking
at him with that mournful gaze, as if she had come back to him from the
dead to tell him of her misery.
She was clinging close to Dinah; her cheek was against Dinah's. It
seemed as if her last faint strength and hope lay in that contact, and
the pitying love that shone out from Dinah's face looked like a visible
pledge of the Invisible Mercy.
When the sad eyes met--when Hetty and Adam looked at each other--she
felt the change in him too, and it seemed to strike her with fresh
fear. It was the first time she had seen any being whose face seemed to
reflect the change in herself: Adam was a new image of the dreadful past
and the dreadful present. She trembled more as she looked at him.
"Speak to him, Hetty," Dinah said; "tell him what is in your heart."
Hetty obeyed her, like a little child.
"Adam...I'm very sorry...I behaved very wrong to you...will you forgive
me...before I die?"
Adam answered with a half-sob, "Yes, I forgive thee Hetty. I forgave
thee long ago."
It had seemed to Adam as if his brain would burst with the anguish of
meeting Hetty's eyes in the first moments, but the sound of her voice
uttering these penitent words touched a chord which had been less
strained. There was a sense of relief from what was becoming unbearable,
and the rare tears came--they had never come before, since he had hung
on Seth's neck in the beginning of his sorrow.
Hetty made an involuntary movement towards him, some of the love that
she had once lived in the midst of was come near her again. She kept
hold of Dinah's hand, but she went up to Adam and said timidly, "Will
you kiss me again, Adam, for all I've been so wicked?"
Adam took the blanched wasted hand she put out to him, and they gave
each other the solemn unspeakable kiss of a lifelong parting.
"And tell him," Hetty said, in rather a stronger voice, "tell him...for
there's nobody else to tell him...as I went after him and couldn't find
him...and I hated him and cursed him once...but Dinah says I should
forgive him...and I try...for else God won't forgive me."
There was a noise at the door of the cell now--the key was being turned
in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there
were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more--even to
see that Mr. Irwine's face was one of them. He felt that the last
preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. Room
was silently made for him to depart, and he went to his chamber in
loneliness, leaving Bartle Massey to watch and see the end.
| 3,369 | Chapter 46 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter46 | The Hours of Suspense Bartle Massey announces a visitor to Adam in his Stoniton room where he awaits Hetty's execution. Dinah Morris comes to tell him that Hetty has repented and wants to see Adam, to ask his forgiveness before she dies. Adam, very haggard, says he cannot believe she has to die like that; he believes a pardon will come. He will wait till the last minute before seeing her. He sends his forgiveness through Dinah and says he will come. Bartle, though disliking women, pronounces Dinah to be one woman he approves of. Adam cannot sleep the night before the execution. He bursts out in sorrow, thinking of what Hetty could have been if not for Arthur. Bartle reminds him that Hetty could not have gotten so hard in just a few months. It was in her nature. He says that perhaps some good will come of it all. Adam does not like this philosophy that good can come of evil; her life is ruined, and she is being hanged on the day they would have been married. In the morning, he goes to the prison to talk to Hetty. He cannot bear to see Hetty's eyes; they are so sad, and they are the eyes of the woman he loves. Dinah holds Hetty up as she asks forgiveness. Adam says he forgave her long ago. He feels a release and begins crying. Hetty is shocked by the signs of Adam's suffering and moves towards him, asking if he will kiss her good by. Adam gives her a kiss and will never see her again. Hetty asks Adam to tell Arthur she forgives him, so that God will forgive her. | Commentary on Chapter 46 This is a very emotional chapter, handled with a touching beauty that is one of Eliot's finest storytelling gifts. She is able to understand very subtle and refined human feeling and portray it convincingly. Even Hetty melts a little and is able to contemplate the suffering of another. She is sympathetic in her last hour, able to admit error and to reach out. The reader also believes in the nobility of Adam's love. In the beginning, he seemed to love his idea of Hetty, her beauty and youth. Now, his love is mature and real. He loves Hetty despite what she has done. He is able to forgive and give comfort. | 394 | 115 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/47.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_47_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 47 | chapter 47 | null | {"name": "Chapter 47", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter47", "summary": "The Last Moment There is a crowd on the street waiting to see the hanging. They are there to watch the now legendary Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who made Hetty confess, as much as to see the criminal. Dinah stands beside Hetty in the cart as it moves through the streets to the gallows. Dinah tells Hetty to close her eyes, and she begins to pray aloud to keep her thoughts on God and not on the crowd. Suddenly there is a shout. A horseman gallops up with a paper in his hand. It is Arthur Donnithorne with a stay of execution.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 47 Most readers will not mind this sentimental last-minute reprieve with the romantic image of Arthur riding in on his horse to save the day. Equally romantic is the picture of Dinah and Hetty in the cart on the way to the gallows. The crowd is hushed with awe watching them. It is like an old ballad."} |
IT was a sight that some people remembered better even than their own
sorrows--the sight in that grey clear morning, when the fatal cart
with the two young women in it was descried by the waiting watching
multitude, cleaving its way towards the hideous symbol of a deliberately
inflicted sudden death.
All Stoniton had heard of Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who
had brought the obstinate criminal to confess, and there was as much
eagerness to see her as to see the wretched Hetty.
But Dinah was hardly conscious of the multitude. When Hetty had
caught sight of the vast crowd in the distance, she had clutched Dinah
convulsively.
"Close your eyes, Hetty," Dinah said, "and let us pray without ceasing
to God."
And in a low voice, as the cart went slowly along through the midst of
the gazing crowd, she poured forth her soul with the wrestling intensity
of a last pleading, for the trembling creature that clung to her and
clutched her as the only visible sign of love and pity.
Dinah did not know that the crowd was silent, gazing at her with a sort
of awe--she did not even know how near they were to the fatal spot, when
the cart stopped, and she shrank appalled at a loud shout hideous to her
ear, like a vast yell of demons. Hetty's shriek mingled with the sound,
and they clasped each other in mutual horror.
But it was not a shout of execration--not a yell of exultant cruelty.
It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman
cleaving the crowd at full gallop. The horse is hot and distressed, but
answers to the desperate spurring; the rider looks as if his eyes were
glazed by madness, and he saw nothing but what was unseen by others.
See, he has something in his hand--he is holding it up as if it were a
signal.
The Sheriff knows him: it is Arthur Donnithorne, carrying in his hand a
hard-won release from death.
| 504 | Chapter 47 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter47 | The Last Moment There is a crowd on the street waiting to see the hanging. They are there to watch the now legendary Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who made Hetty confess, as much as to see the criminal. Dinah stands beside Hetty in the cart as it moves through the streets to the gallows. Dinah tells Hetty to close her eyes, and she begins to pray aloud to keep her thoughts on God and not on the crowd. Suddenly there is a shout. A horseman gallops up with a paper in his hand. It is Arthur Donnithorne with a stay of execution. | Commentary on Chapter 47 Most readers will not mind this sentimental last-minute reprieve with the romantic image of Arthur riding in on his horse to save the day. Equally romantic is the picture of Dinah and Hetty in the cart on the way to the gallows. The crowd is hushed with awe watching them. It is like an old ballad. | 138 | 60 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/48.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_48_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 48 | chapter 48 | null | {"name": "Chapter 48", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter48", "summary": "Another Meeting in the Wood This is an important chapter winding up the consequences of the love triangle of Arthur, Adam, and Hetty. It is the day after Hetty escapes hanging. Adam has just been to see the Poysers to tell them all that they don't know about the case. He agrees to leave Hayslope with the Poysers and to live near them. Arthur and Adam both walk that evening in the Grove, each thinking of the events that took place there. They meet and see each other's suffering. Arthur asks to speak with Adam, and they go to the Hermitage. Arthur says he is doing what is most painful to him--leaving his home and cherished plans and going to the army. He is leaving the estate in Mr. Irwine's hands, and he begs that Adam will persuade the Poysers to stay. He will not be there, so their honor will not be stained, for he won't be their landlord. Adam says there is pride to consider, but Arthur says he wants to lessen the evil by helping them to stay on the land they have been on for generations. Adam agrees to stay and continue managing the woods. Arthur tells Adam it is worse for him because he caused the tragedy. If he had known Adam loved Hetty, he would have stayed away. He explains that he loved Hetty too, and he will always remember the pain of speaking with her yesterday in prison, and how he wishes he could have gotten her off completely. As it is she will be transported as a criminal and may die an early death. He mentions that he had told Hetty in the letter he would help her, and he would give his life to undo the misery. Adam says he has no right to be hard on someone who is repentant, and he offers to shake Arthur's hand. They feel affection for one another as they had when boys. Arthur says the only consolation he has is that Dinah Morris stayed with Hetty, and for that, he wants to give her his watch and chain as a token of thanks. Adam will give it to her.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 48 This is another moving chapter as the men who loved Hetty make up and shake hands. They will both bear the mark of the tragedy all their lives, but both have been changed and softened into better men. Adam says he will stay \"to do my work well and make the world a bit better place\" . In the end, Adam realizes this is a better ending than revenge: \"sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone\" . Hetty's fate, however, is not so pretty. Transportation to Australia or some other English colony for hard labor was a sentence to a short and miserable life. Hetty, as we know, is not used to hardship, but on the other hand, she has longer to live, to make use of the time for repentance, if she can continue to seek forgiveness. Eliot demonstrates two principles in this reconciliation. First, the theme is repeated that things cannot be undone. Even Arthur's pardon was only partial, and Hetty's life is shattered. On the other hand, Bartle had announced the idea that good can come out of evil. He is shown to be right in the sense that if all the parties, as in this case, come together to make the best emerge out of the wreck, then some growth and progress are possible. Eliot believed in the hallowing of the human heart through sorrow. Bearing some suffering could make one understand the common kinship of all people and bring humility and unselfishness. Even Lisbeth Bede loses her peevishness and surrenders to the greatness of the trouble and to Adam's wishes. The Bedes, the Poysers, the Irwines, Bartle, Dinah, and even Arthur have all done what they could to ensure the smoothest continuance of life for all. This chapter ends the fifth book and the tragic story of Hetty, but the next book brings news of what happened afterwards."} |
THE next day, at evening, two men were walking from opposite points
towards the same scene, drawn thither by a common memory. The scene was
the Grove by Donnithorne Chase: you know who the men were.
The old squire's funeral had taken place that morning, the will had been
read, and now in the first breathing-space, Arthur Donnithorne had come
out for a lonely walk, that he might look fixedly at the new future
before him and confirm himself in a sad resolution. He thought he could
do that best in the Grove.
Adam too had come from Stontion on Monday evening, and to-day he had
not left home, except to go to the family at the Hall Farm and tell
them everything that Mr. Irwine had left untold. He had agreed with the
Poysers that he would follow them to their new neighbourhood, wherever
that might be, for he meant to give up the management of the woods,
and, as soon as it was practicable, he would wind up his business with
Jonathan Burge and settle with his mother and Seth in a home within
reach of the friends to whom he felt bound by a mutual sorrow.
"Seth and me are sure to find work," he said. "A man that's got our
trade at his finger-ends is at home everywhere; and we must make a new
start. My mother won't stand in the way, for she's told me, since I came
home, she'd made up her mind to being buried in another parish, if I
wished it, and if I'd be more comfortable elsewhere. It's wonderful
how quiet she's been ever since I came back. It seems as if the very
greatness o' the trouble had quieted and calmed her. We shall all be
better in a new country, though there's some I shall be loath to leave
behind. But I won't part from you and yours, if I can help it, Mr.
Poyser. Trouble's made us kin."
"Aye, lad," said Martin. "We'll go out o' hearing o' that man's name.
But I doubt we shall ne'er go far enough for folks not to find out as
we've got them belonging to us as are transported o'er the seas, and
were like to be hanged. We shall have that flyin' up in our faces, and
our children's after us."
That was a long visit to the Hall Farm, and drew too strongly on Adam's
energies for him to think of seeing others, or re-entering on his old
occupations till the morrow. "But to-morrow," he said to himself, "I'll
go to work again. I shall learn to like it again some time, maybe; and
it's right whether I like it or not."
This evening was the last he would allow to be absorbed by sorrow:
suspense was gone now, and he must bear the unalterable. He was resolved
not to see Arthur Donnithorne again, if it were possible to avoid him.
He had no message to deliver from Hetty now, for Hetty had seen Arthur.
And Adam distrusted himself--he had learned to dread the violence of his
own feeling. That word of Mr. Irwine's--that he must remember what he
had felt after giving the last blow to Arthur in the Grove--had remained
with him.
These thoughts about Arthur, like all thoughts that are charged with
strong feeling, were continually recurring, and they always called up
the image of the Grove--of that spot under the overarching boughs where
he had caught sight of the two bending figures, and had been possessed
by sudden rage.
"I'll go and see it again to-night for the last time," he said; "it'll
do me good; it'll make me feel over again what I felt when I'd knocked
him down. I felt what poor empty work it was, as soon as I'd done it,
before I began to think he might be dead."
In this way it happened that Arthur and Adam were walking towards the
same spot at the same time.
Adam had on his working-dress again, now, for he had thrown off the
other with a sense of relief as soon as he came home; and if he had had
the basket of tools over his shoulder, he might have been taken, with
his pale wasted face, for the spectre of the Adam Bede who entered the
Grove on that August evening eight months ago. But he had no basket of
tools, and he was not walking with the old erectness, looking keenly
round him; his hands were thrust in his side pockets, and his eyes
rested chiefly on the ground. He had not long entered the Grove, and now
he paused before a beech. He knew that tree well; it was the boundary
mark of his youth--the sign, to him, of the time when some of his
earliest, strongest feelings had left him. He felt sure they would never
return. And yet, at this moment, there was a stirring of affection
at the remembrance of that Arthur Donnithorne whom he had believed in
before he had come up to this beech eight months ago. It was affection
for the dead: THAT Arthur existed no longer.
He was disturbed by the sound of approaching footsteps, but the beech
stood at a turning in the road, and he could not see who was coming
until the tall slim figure in deep mourning suddenly stood before him at
only two yards' distance. They both started, and looked at each other
in silence. Often, in the last fortnight, Adam had imagined himself
as close to Arthur as this, assailing him with words that should be as
harrowing as the voice of remorse, forcing upon him a just share in the
misery he had caused; and often, too, he had told himself that such a
meeting had better not be. But in imagining the meeting he had always
seen Arthur, as he had met him on that evening in the Grove, florid,
careless, light of speech; and the figure before him touched him with
the signs of suffering. Adam knew what suffering was--he could not lay
a cruel finger on a bruised man. He felt no impulse that he needed to
resist. Silence was more just than reproach. Arthur was the first to
speak.
"Adam," he said, quietly, "it may be a good thing that we have met here,
for I wished to see you. I should have asked to see you to-morrow."
He paused, but Adam said nothing.
"I know it is painful to you to meet me," Arthur went on, "but it is not
likely to happen again for years to come."
"No, sir," said Adam, coldly, "that was what I meant to write to you
to-morrow, as it would be better all dealings should be at an end
between us, and somebody else put in my place."
Arthur felt the answer keenly, and it was not without an effort that he
spoke again.
"It was partly on that subject I wished to speak to you. I don't want
to lessen your indignation against me, or ask you to do anything for
my sake. I only wish to ask you if you will help me to lessen the
evil consequences of the past, which is unchangeable. I don't mean
consequences to myself, but to others. It is but little I can do, I
know. I know the worst consequences will remain; but something may be
done, and you can help me. Will you listen to me patiently?"
"Yes, sir," said Adam, after some hesitation; "I'll hear what it is. If
I can help to mend anything, I will. Anger 'ull mend nothing, I know.
We've had enough o' that."
"I was going to the Hermitage," said Arthur. "Will you go there with me
and sit down? We can talk better there."
The Hermitage had never been entered since they left it together, for
Arthur had locked up the key in his desk. And now, when he opened the
door, there was the candle burnt out in the socket; there was the
chair in the same place where Adam remembered sitting; there was the
waste-paper basket full of scraps, and deep down in it, Arthur felt in
an instant, there was the little pink silk handkerchief. It would have
been painful to enter this place if their previous thoughts had been
less painful.
They sat down opposite each other in the old places, and Arthur said,
"I'm going away, Adam; I'm going into the army."
Poor Arthur felt that Adam ought to be affected by this
announcement--ought to have a movement of sympathy towards him. But
Adam's lips remained firmly closed, and the expression of his face
unchanged.
"What I want to say to you," Arthur continued, "is this: one of my
reasons for going away is that no one else may leave Hayslope--may leave
their home on my account. I would do anything, there is no sacrifice
I would not make, to prevent any further injury to others through
my--through what has happened."
Arthur's words had precisely the opposite effect to that he had
anticipated. Adam thought he perceived in them that notion of
compensation for irretrievable wrong, that self-soothing attempt to
make evil bear the same fruits as good, which most of all roused his
indignation. He was as strongly impelled to look painful facts right in
the face as Arthur was to turn away his eyes from them. Moreover, he
had the wakeful suspicious pride of a poor man in the presence of a rich
man. He felt his old severity returning as he said, "The time's past for
that, sir. A man should make sacrifices to keep clear of doing a wrong;
sacrifices won't undo it when it's done. When people's feelings have got
a deadly wound, they can't be cured with favours."
"Favours!" said Arthur, passionately; "no; how can you suppose I meant
that? But the Poysers--Mr. Irwine tells me the Poysers mean to leave the
place where they have lived so many years--for generations. Don't you
see, as Mr. Irwine does, that if they could be persuaded to overcome the
feeling that drives them away, it would be much better for them in the
end to remain on the old spot, among the friends and neighbours who know
them?"
"That's true," said Adam coldly. "But then, sir, folks's feelings are
not so easily overcome. It'll be hard for Martin Poyser to go to a
strange place, among strange faces, when he's been bred up on the Hall
Farm, and his father before him; but then it 'ud be harder for a man
with his feelings to stay. I don't see how the thing's to be made any
other than hard. There's a sort o' damage, sir, that can't be made up
for."
Arthur was silent some moments. In spite of other feelings dominant in
him this evening, his pride winced under Adam's mode of treating him.
Wasn't he himself suffering? Was not he too obliged to renounce his most
cherished hopes? It was now as it had been eight months ago--Adam was
forcing Arthur to feel more intensely the irrevocableness of his own
wrong-doing. He was presenting the sort of resistance that was the most
irritating to Arthur's eager ardent nature. But his anger was subdued
by the same influence that had subdued Adam's when they first confronted
each other--by the marks of suffering in a long familiar face. The
momentary struggle ended in the feeling that he could bear a great deal
from Adam, to whom he had been the occasion of bearing so much; but
there was a touch of pleading, boyish vexation in his tone as he said,
"But people may make injuries worse by unreasonable conduct--by giving
way to anger and satisfying that for the moment, instead of thinking
what will be the effect in the future.
"If I were going to stay here and act as landlord," he added presently,
with still more eagerness--"if I were careless about what I've
done--what I've been the cause of, you would have some excuse, Adam, for
going away and encouraging others to go. You would have some excuse then
for trying to make the evil worse. But when I tell you I'm going away
for years--when you know what that means for me, how it cuts off every
plan of happiness I've ever formed--it is impossible for a sensible
man like you to believe that there is any real ground for the Poysers
refusing to remain. I know their feeling about disgrace--Mr. Irwine has
told me all; but he is of opinion that they might be persuaded out of
this idea that they are disgraced in the eyes of their neighbours,
and that they can't remain on my estate, if you would join him in his
efforts--if you would stay yourself and go on managing the old woods."
Arthur paused a moment and then added, pleadingly, "You know that's a
good work to do for the sake of other people, besides the owner. And
you don't know but that they may have a better owner soon, whom you will
like to work for. If I die, my cousin Tradgett will have the estate and
take my name. He is a good fellow."
Adam could not help being moved: it was impossible for him not to feel
that this was the voice of the honest warm-hearted Arthur whom he had
loved and been proud of in old days; but nearer memories would not be
thrust away. He was silent; yet Arthur saw an answer in his face that
induced him to go on, with growing earnestness.
"And then, if you would talk to the Poysers--if you would talk the
matter over with Mr. Irwine--he means to see you to-morrow--and then if
you would join your arguments to his to prevail on them not to go....I
know, of course, that they would not accept any favour from me--I mean
nothing of that kind--but I'm sure they would suffer less in the end.
Irwine thinks so too. And Mr. Irwine is to have the chief authority
on the estate--he has consented to undertake that. They will really be
under no man but one whom they respect and like. It would be the same
with you, Adam, and it could be nothing but a desire to give me worse
pain that could incline you to go."
Arthur was silent again for a little while, and then said, with some
agitation in his voice, "I wouldn't act so towards you, I know. If you
were in my place and I in yours, I should try to help you to do the
best."
Adam made a hasty movement on his chair and looked on the ground. Arthur
went on, "Perhaps you've never done anything you've had bitterly to
repent of in your life, Adam; if you had, you would be more generous.
You would know then that it's worse for me than for you."
Arthur rose from his seat with the last words, and went to one of the
windows, looking out and turning his back on Adam, as he continued,
passionately, "Haven't I loved her too? Didn't I see her yesterday?
Shan't I carry the thought of her about with me as much as you will? And
don't you think you would suffer more if you'd been in fault?"
There was silence for several minutes, for the struggle in Adam's mind
was not easily decided. Facile natures, whose emotions have little
permanence, can hardly understand how much inward resistance he overcame
before he rose from his seat and turned towards Arthur. Arthur heard the
movement, and turning round, met the sad but softened look with which
Adam said, "It's true what you say, sir. I'm hard--it's in my nature.
I was too hard with my father, for doing wrong. I've been a bit hard t'
everybody but her. I felt as if nobody pitied her enough--her suffering
cut into me so; and when I thought the folks at the farm were too hard
with her, I said I'd never be hard to anybody myself again. But feeling
overmuch about her has perhaps made me unfair to you. I've known what
it is in my life to repent and feel it's too late. I felt I'd been too
harsh to my father when he was gone from me--I feel it now, when I think
of him. I've no right to be hard towards them as have done wrong and
repent."
Adam spoke these words with the firm distinctness of a man who is
resolved to leave nothing unsaid that he is bound to say; but he went on
with more hesitation.
"I wouldn't shake hands with you once, sir, when you asked me--but if
you're willing to do it now, for all I refused then..."
Arthur's white hand was in Adam's large grasp in an instant, and with
that action there was a strong rush, on both sides, of the old, boyish
affection.
"Adam," Arthur said, impelled to full confession now, "it would never
have happened if I'd known you loved her. That would have helped to save
me from it. And I did struggle. I never meant to injure her. I deceived
you afterwards--and that led on to worse; but I thought it was forced
upon me, I thought it was the best thing I could do. And in that letter
I told her to let me know if she were in any trouble: don't think I
would not have done everything I could. But I was all wrong from the
very first, and horrible wrong has come of it. God knows, I'd give my
life if I could undo it."
They sat down again opposite each other, and Adam said, tremulously,
"How did she seem when you left her, sir?"
"Don't ask me, Adam," Arthur said; "I feel sometimes as if I should go
mad with thinking of her looks and what she said to me, and then, that I
couldn't get a full pardon--that I couldn't save her from that wretched
fate of being transported--that I can do nothing for her all those
years; and she may die under it, and never know comfort any more."
"Ah, sir," said Adam, for the first time feeling his own pain merged in
sympathy for Arthur, "you and me'll often be thinking o' the same thing,
when we're a long way off one another. I'll pray God to help you, as I
pray him to help me."
"But there's that sweet woman--that Dinah Morris," Arthur said, pursuing
his own thoughts and not knowing what had been the sense of Adam's
words, "she says she shall stay with her to the very last moment--till
she goes; and the poor thing clings to her as if she found some comfort
in her. I could worship that woman; I don't know what I should do if she
were not there. Adam, you will see her when she comes back. I could say
nothing to her yesterday--nothing of what I felt towards her. Tell her,"
Arthur went on hurriedly, as if he wanted to hide the emotion with which
he spoke, while he took off his chain and watch, "tell her I asked you
to give her this in remembrance of me--of the man to whom she is the
one source of comfort, when he thinks of...I know she doesn't care about
such things--or anything else I can give her for its own sake. But she
will use the watch--I shall like to think of her using it."
"I'll give it to her, sir," Adam said, "and tell her your words. She
told me she should come back to the people at the Hall Farm."
"And you will persuade the Poysers to stay, Adam?" said Arthur, reminded
of the subject which both of them had forgotten in the first interchange
of revived friendship. "You will stay yourself, and help Mr. Irwine to
carry out the repairs and improvements on the estate?"
"There's one thing, sir, that perhaps you don't take account of," said
Adam, with hesitating gentleness, "and that was what made me hang back
longer. You see, it's the same with both me and the Poysers: if we stay,
it's for our own worldly interest, and it looks as if we'd put up with
anything for the sake o' that. I know that's what they'll feel, and
I can't help feeling a little of it myself. When folks have got an
honourable independent spirit, they don't like to do anything that might
make 'em seem base-minded."
"But no one who knows you will think that, Adam. That is not a reason
strong enough against a course that is really more generous, more
unselfish than the other. And it will be known--it shall be made known,
that both you and the Poysers stayed at my entreaty. Adam, don't try to
make things worse for me; I'm punished enough without that."
"No, sir, no," Adam said, looking at Arthur with mournful affection.
"God forbid I should make things worse for you. I used to wish I could
do it, in my passion--but that was when I thought you didn't feel
enough. I'll stay, sir, I'll do the best I can. It's all I've got to
think of now--to do my work well and make the world a bit better place
for them as can enjoy it."
"Then we'll part now, Adam. You will see Mr. Irwine to-morrow, and
consult with him about everything."
"Are you going soon, sir?" said Adam.
"As soon as possible--after I've made the necessary arrangements.
Good-bye, Adam. I shall think of you going about the old place."
"Good-bye, sir. God bless you."
The hands were clasped once more, and Adam left the Hermitage, feeling
that sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone.
As soon as the door was closed behind him, Arthur went to the
waste-paper basket and took out the little pink silk handkerchief.
Book Six
| 5,201 | Chapter 48 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter48 | Another Meeting in the Wood This is an important chapter winding up the consequences of the love triangle of Arthur, Adam, and Hetty. It is the day after Hetty escapes hanging. Adam has just been to see the Poysers to tell them all that they don't know about the case. He agrees to leave Hayslope with the Poysers and to live near them. Arthur and Adam both walk that evening in the Grove, each thinking of the events that took place there. They meet and see each other's suffering. Arthur asks to speak with Adam, and they go to the Hermitage. Arthur says he is doing what is most painful to him--leaving his home and cherished plans and going to the army. He is leaving the estate in Mr. Irwine's hands, and he begs that Adam will persuade the Poysers to stay. He will not be there, so their honor will not be stained, for he won't be their landlord. Adam says there is pride to consider, but Arthur says he wants to lessen the evil by helping them to stay on the land they have been on for generations. Adam agrees to stay and continue managing the woods. Arthur tells Adam it is worse for him because he caused the tragedy. If he had known Adam loved Hetty, he would have stayed away. He explains that he loved Hetty too, and he will always remember the pain of speaking with her yesterday in prison, and how he wishes he could have gotten her off completely. As it is she will be transported as a criminal and may die an early death. He mentions that he had told Hetty in the letter he would help her, and he would give his life to undo the misery. Adam says he has no right to be hard on someone who is repentant, and he offers to shake Arthur's hand. They feel affection for one another as they had when boys. Arthur says the only consolation he has is that Dinah Morris stayed with Hetty, and for that, he wants to give her his watch and chain as a token of thanks. Adam will give it to her. | Commentary on Chapter 48 This is another moving chapter as the men who loved Hetty make up and shake hands. They will both bear the mark of the tragedy all their lives, but both have been changed and softened into better men. Adam says he will stay "to do my work well and make the world a bit better place" . In the end, Adam realizes this is a better ending than revenge: "sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone" . Hetty's fate, however, is not so pretty. Transportation to Australia or some other English colony for hard labor was a sentence to a short and miserable life. Hetty, as we know, is not used to hardship, but on the other hand, she has longer to live, to make use of the time for repentance, if she can continue to seek forgiveness. Eliot demonstrates two principles in this reconciliation. First, the theme is repeated that things cannot be undone. Even Arthur's pardon was only partial, and Hetty's life is shattered. On the other hand, Bartle had announced the idea that good can come out of evil. He is shown to be right in the sense that if all the parties, as in this case, come together to make the best emerge out of the wreck, then some growth and progress are possible. Eliot believed in the hallowing of the human heart through sorrow. Bearing some suffering could make one understand the common kinship of all people and bring humility and unselfishness. Even Lisbeth Bede loses her peevishness and surrenders to the greatness of the trouble and to Adam's wishes. The Bedes, the Poysers, the Irwines, Bartle, Dinah, and even Arthur have all done what they could to ensure the smoothest continuance of life for all. This chapter ends the fifth book and the tragic story of Hetty, but the next book brings news of what happened afterwards. | 487 | 318 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/49.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_49_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 49 | chapter 49 | null | {"name": "Chapter 49", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter49", "summary": "At the Hall Farm Eighteen months later, Mrs. Poyser is trying to talk Dinah out of leaving for Snowfield. She has been staying with the Poysers to help them through the tragedy. Mrs. Poyser tries to convince her she can minister to the poor in Hayslope; there are many people who depend on her. Dinah says she must avoid the temptation of luxury and go back to the mill where she is needed more. Dinah reminds her aunt that she has stayed to see them all back on their feet, and they are well and prosperous. It is mentioned that old Mr. Poyser died the previous year, the reason for Mrs. Poyser wearing black. When Adam Bede comes to the farm, Dinah blushes. Adam has come to fetch her for his mother, who is ailing. He explains his mother is working too hard but will not let him hire a girl to help her. Mrs. Poyser announces to the family at tea that Dinah is leaving, and she looks disturbed and rushes from the room crying. Everyone had counted on Dinah staying, even Mr. Irwine who treats her like a lady. Adam speaks of his great success with the woods and new building. Mr. Poyser mentions that Burge will no doubt want Adam to take more part in the business, and Adam says he would like to buy the business for himself so he can do as he likes. He gets along with the new Donnithorne steward and Mr. Irwine's management but prefers to be on his own.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 49 The argument between Dinah and her aunt fill the reader in with what has happened since the trial. Dinah has been a peacemaker, helping the Poysers re-integrate with the community. Dinah mentions their friends and neighbors being supportive, something that the Poysers had feared would never happen. They are not the outcasts they had imagined themselves but once more installed in their old position. Dinah seems a bit mysterious about why she has to leave. She is blushing and crying. Adam has never seen her look upset before, but he cannot read her behavior. She seems to be running away to Snowfield and covering up something. All this is highly uncharacteristic of Dinah. If readers remember how she blushed in Adam's presence before, they may surmise she is in love with him."} |
THE first autumnal afternoon sunshine of 1801--more than eighteen months
after that parting of Adam and Arthur in the Hermitage--was on the
yard at the Hall Farm; and the bull-dog was in one of his most excited
moments, for it was that hour of the day when the cows were being driven
into the yard for their afternoon milking. No wonder the patient beasts
ran confusedly into the wrong places, for the alarming din of the
bull-dog was mingled with more distant sounds which the timid feminine
creatures, with pardonable superstition, imagined also to have some
relation to their own movements--with the tremendous crack of the
waggoner's whip, the roar of his voice, and the booming thunder of the
waggon, as it left the rick-yard empty of its golden load.
The milking of the cows was a sight Mrs. Poyser loved, and at this
hour on mild days she was usually standing at the house door, with her
knitting in her hands, in quiet contemplation, only heightened to a
keener interest when the vicious yellow cow, who had once kicked over a
pailful of precious milk, was about to undergo the preventive punishment
of having her hinder-legs strapped.
To-day, however, Mrs. Poyser gave but a divided attention to the
arrival of the cows, for she was in eager discussion with Dinah, who was
stitching Mr. Poyser's shirt-collars, and had borne patiently to have
her thread broken three times by Totty pulling at her arm with a sudden
insistence that she should look at "Baby," that is, at a large wooden
doll with no legs and a long skirt, whose bald head Totty, seated in her
small chair at Dinah's side, was caressing and pressing to her fat cheek
with much fervour. Totty is larger by more than two years' growth than
when you first saw her, and she has on a black frock under her pinafore.
Mrs. Poyser too has on a black gown, which seems to heighten the family
likeness between her and Dinah. In other respects there is little
outward change now discernible in our old friends, or in the pleasant
house-place, bright with polished oak and pewter.
"I never saw the like to you, Dinah," Mrs. Poyser was saying, "when
you've once took anything into your head: there's no more moving you
than the rooted tree. You may say what you like, but I don't believe
that's religion; for what's the Sermon on the Mount about, as you're so
fond o' reading to the boys, but doing what other folks 'ud have you do?
But if it was anything unreasonable they wanted you to do, like taking
your cloak off and giving it to 'em, or letting 'em slap you i' the
face, I daresay you'd be ready enough. It's only when one 'ud have you
do what's plain common sense and good for yourself, as you're obstinate
th' other way."
"Nay, dear Aunt," said Dinah, smiling slightly as she went on with her
work, "I'm sure your wish 'ud be a reason for me to do anything that I
didn't feel it was wrong to do."
"Wrong! You drive me past bearing. What is there wrong, I should like
to know, i' staying along wi' your own friends, as are th' happier for
having you with 'em an' are willing to provide for you, even if your
work didn't more nor pay 'em for the bit o' sparrow's victual y' eat
and the bit o' rag you put on? An' who is it, I should like to know, as
you're bound t' help and comfort i' the world more nor your own flesh
and blood--an' me th' only aunt you've got above-ground, an' am brought
to the brink o' the grave welly every winter as comes, an' there's the
child as sits beside you 'ull break her little heart when you go, an'
the grandfather not been dead a twelvemonth, an' your uncle 'ull miss
you so as never was--a-lighting his pipe an' waiting on him, an' now I
can trust you wi' the butter, an' have had all the trouble o' teaching
you, and there's all the sewing to be done, an' I must have a strange
gell out o' Treddles'on to do it--an' all because you must go back to
that bare heap o' stones as the very crows fly over an' won't stop at."
"Dear Aunt Rachel," said Dinah, looking up in Mrs. Poyser's face, "it's
your kindness makes you say I'm useful to you. You don't really want me
now, for Nancy and Molly are clever at their work, and you're in good
health now, by the blessing of God, and my uncle is of a cheerful
countenance again, and you have neighbours and friends not a few--some
of them come to sit with my uncle almost daily. Indeed, you will not
miss me; and at Snowfield there are brethren and sisters in great need,
who have none of those comforts you have around you. I feel that I am
called back to those amongst whom my lot was first cast. I feel drawn
again towards the hills where I used to be blessed in carrying the word
of life to the sinful and desolate."
"You feel! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, returning from a parenthetic glance
at the cows, "that's allays the reason I'm to sit down wi', when you've
a mind to do anything contrairy. What do you want to be preaching for
more than you're preaching now? Don't you go off, the Lord knows where,
every Sunday a-preaching and praying? An' haven't you got Methodists
enow at Treddles'on to go and look at, if church-folks's faces are too
handsome to please you? An' isn't there them i' this parish as you've
got under hand, and they're like enough to make friends wi' Old Harry
again as soon as your back's turned? There's that Bessy Cranage--she'll
be flaunting i' new finery three weeks after you're gone, I'll be bound.
She'll no more go on in her new ways without you than a dog 'ull stand
on its hind-legs when there's nobody looking. But I suppose it doesna
matter so much about folks's souls i' this country, else you'd be for
staying with your own aunt, for she's none so good but what you might
help her to be better."
There was a certain something in Mrs. Poyser's voice just then, which
she did not wish to be noticed, so she turned round hastily to look at
the clock, and said: "See there! It's tea-time; an' if Martin's i' the
rick-yard, he'll like a cup. Here, Totty, my chicken, let mother put
your bonnet on, and then you go out into the rick-yard and see if
Father's there, and tell him he mustn't go away again without coming t'
have a cup o' tea; and tell your brothers to come in too."
Totty trotted off in her flapping bonnet, while Mrs. Poyser set out the
bright oak table and reached down the tea-cups.
"You talk o' them gells Nancy and Molly being clever i' their work,"
she began again; "it's fine talking. They're all the same, clever or
stupid--one can't trust 'em out o' one's sight a minute. They want
somebody's eye on 'em constant if they're to be kept to their work.
An' suppose I'm ill again this winter, as I was the winter before last?
Who's to look after 'em then, if you're gone? An' there's that blessed
child--something's sure t' happen to her--they'll let her tumble into
the fire, or get at the kettle wi' the boiling lard in't, or some
mischief as 'ull lame her for life; an' it'll be all your fault, Dinah."
"Aunt," said Dinah, "I promise to come back to you in the winter if
you're ill. Don't think I will ever stay away from you if you're in real
want of me. But, indeed, it is needful for my own soul that I should go
away from this life of ease and luxury in which I have all things too
richly to enjoy--at least that I should go away for a short space. No
one can know but myself what are my inward needs, and the besetments I
am most in danger from. Your wish for me to stay is not a call of duty
which I refuse to hearken to because it is against my own desires; it
is a temptation that I must resist, lest the love of the creature should
become like a mist in my soul shutting out the heavenly light."
"It passes my cunning to know what you mean by ease and luxury," said
Mrs. Poyser, as she cut the bread and butter. "It's true there's good
victual enough about you, as nobody shall ever say I don't provide
enough and to spare, but if there's ever a bit o' odds an' ends as
nobody else 'ud eat, you're sure to pick it out...but look there!
There's Adam Bede a-carrying the little un in. I wonder how it is he's
come so early."
Mrs. Poyser hastened to the door for the pleasure of looking at her
darling in a new position, with love in her eyes but reproof on her
tongue.
"Oh for shame, Totty! Little gells o' five year old should be ashamed to
be carried. Why, Adam, she'll break your arm, such a big gell as that;
set her down--for shame!"
"Nay, nay," said Adam, "I can lift her with my hand--I've no need to
take my arm to it."
Totty, looking as serenely unconscious of remark as a fat white puppy,
was set down at the door-place, and the mother enforced her reproof with
a shower of kisses.
"You're surprised to see me at this hour o' the day," said Adam.
"Yes, but come in," said Mrs. Poyser, making way for him; "there's no
bad news, I hope?"
"No, nothing bad," Adam answered, as he went up to Dinah and put out his
hand to her. She had laid down her work and stood up, instinctively, as
he approached her. A faint blush died away from her pale cheek as she
put her hand in his and looked up at him timidly.
"It's an errand to you brought me, Dinah," said Adam, apparently
unconscious that he was holding her hand all the while; "mother's a bit
ailing, and she's set her heart on your coming to stay the night with
her, if you'll be so kind. I told her I'd call and ask you as I came
from the village. She overworks herself, and I can't persuade her to
have a little girl t' help her. I don't know what's to be done."
Adam released Dinah's hand as he ceased speaking, and was expecting an
answer, but before she had opened her lips Mrs. Poyser said, "Look there
now! I told you there was folks enow t' help i' this parish, wi'out
going further off. There's Mrs. Bede getting as old and cas'alty as can
be, and she won't let anybody but you go a-nigh her hardly. The folks at
Snowfield have learnt by this time to do better wi'out you nor she can."
"I'll put my bonnet on and set off directly, if you don't want anything
done first, Aunt," said Dinah, folding up her work.
"Yes, I do want something done. I want you t' have your tea, child; it's
all ready--and you'll have a cup, Adam, if y' arena in too big a hurry."
"Yes, I'll have a cup, please; and then I'll walk with Dinah. I'm going
straight home, for I've got a lot o' timber valuations to write out."
"Why, Adam, lad, are you here?" said Mr. Poyser, entering warm and
coatless, with the two black-eyed boys behind him, still looking as much
like him as two small elephants are like a large one. "How is it we've
got sight o' you so long before foddering-time?"
"I came on an errand for Mother," said Adam. "She's got a touch of her
old complaint, and she wants Dinah to go and stay with her a bit."
"Well, we'll spare her for your mother a little while," said Mr. Poyser.
"But we wonna spare her for anybody else, on'y her husband."
"Husband!" said Marty, who was at the most prosaic and literal period of
the boyish mind. "Why, Dinah hasn't got a husband."
"Spare her?" said Mrs. Poyser, placing a seed-cake on the table and then
seating herself to pour out the tea. "But we must spare her, it seems,
and not for a husband neither, but for her own megrims. Tommy, what are
you doing to your little sister's doll? Making the child naughty, when
she'd be good if you'd let her. You shanna have a morsel o' cake if you
behave so."
Tommy, with true brotherly sympathy, was amusing himself by turning
Dolly's skirt over her bald head and exhibiting her truncated body to
the general scorn--an indignity which cut Totty to the heart.
"What do you think Dinah's been a-telling me since dinner-time?" Mrs.
Poyser continued, looking at her husband.
"Eh! I'm a poor un at guessing," said Mr. Poyser.
"Why, she means to go back to Snowfield again, and work i' the mill,
and starve herself, as she used to do, like a creatur as has got no
friends."
Mr. Poyser did not readily find words to express his unpleasant
astonishment; he only looked from his wife to Dinah, who had now seated
herself beside Totty, as a bulwark against brotherly playfulness, and
was busying herself with the children's tea. If he had been given to
making general reflections, it would have occurred to him that there was
certainly a change come over Dinah, for she never used to change colour;
but, as it was, he merely observed that her face was flushed at that
moment. Mr. Poyser thought she looked the prettier for it: it was
a flush no deeper than the petal of a monthly rose. Perhaps it came
because her uncle was looking at her so fixedly; but there is no
knowing, for just then Adam was saying, with quiet surprise, "Why, I
hoped Dinah was settled among us for life. I thought she'd given up the
notion o' going back to her old country."
"Thought! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, "and so would anybody else ha'
thought, as had got their right end up'ards. But I suppose you must be
a Methodist to know what a Methodist 'ull do. It's ill guessing what the
bats are flying after."
"Why, what have we done to you. Dinah, as you must go away from us?"
said Mr. Poyser, still pausing over his tea-cup. "It's like breaking
your word, welly, for your aunt never had no thought but you'd make this
your home."
"Nay, Uncle," said Dinah, trying to be quite calm. "When I first came, I
said it was only for a time, as long as I could be of any comfort to my
aunt."
"Well, an' who said you'd ever left off being a comfort to me?" said
Mrs. Poyser. "If you didna mean to stay wi' me, you'd better never ha'
come. Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it."
"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who objected to exaggerated views. "Thee
mustna say so; we should ha' been ill off wi'out her, Lady day was a
twelvemont'. We mun be thankful for that, whether she stays or no. But
I canna think what she mun leave a good home for, to go back int' a
country where the land, most on't, isna worth ten shillings an acre,
rent and profits."
"Why, that's just the reason she wants to go, as fur as she can give a
reason," said Mrs. Poyser. "She says this country's too comfortable,
an' there's too much t' eat, an' folks arena miserable enough. And she's
going next week. I canna turn her, say what I will. It's allays the way
wi' them meek-faced people; you may's well pelt a bag o' feathers as
talk to 'em. But I say it isna religion, to be so obstinate--is it now,
Adam?"
Adam saw that Dinah was more disturbed than he had ever seen her by any
matter relating to herself, and, anxious to relieve her, if possible,
he said, looking at her affectionately, "Nay, I can't find fault with
anything Dinah does. I believe her thoughts are better than our guesses,
let 'em be what they may. I should ha' been thankful for her to stay
among us, but if she thinks well to go, I wouldn't cross her, or make it
hard to her by objecting. We owe her something different to that."
As it often happens, the words intended to relieve her were just too
much for Dinah's susceptible feelings at this moment. The tears came
into the grey eyes too fast to be hidden and she got up hurriedly,
meaning it to be understood that she was going to put on her bonnet.
"Mother, what's Dinah crying for?" said Totty. "She isn't a naughty
dell."
"Thee'st gone a bit too fur," said Mr. Poyser. "We've no right t'
interfere with her doing as she likes. An' thee'dst be as angry as could
be wi' me, if I said a word against anything she did."
"Because you'd very like be finding fault wi'out reason," said Mrs.
Poyser. "But there's reason i' what I say, else I shouldna say it. It's
easy talking for them as can't love her so well as her own aunt does.
An' me got so used to her! I shall feel as uneasy as a new sheared sheep
when she's gone from me. An' to think of her leaving a parish where
she's so looked on. There's Mr. Irwine makes as much of her as if
she was a lady, for all her being a Methodist, an' wi' that maggot o'
preaching in her head--God forgi'e me if I'm i' the wrong to call it
so."
"Aye," said Mr. Poyser, looking jocose; "but thee dostna tell Adam what
he said to thee about it one day. The missis was saying, Adam, as the
preaching was the only fault to be found wi' Dinah, and Mr. Irwine says,
'But you mustn't find fault with her for that, Mrs. Poyser; you forget
she's got no husband to preach to. I'll answer for it, you give Poyser
many a good sermon.' The parson had thee there," Mr. Poyser added,
laughing unctuously. "I told Bartle Massey on it, an' he laughed too."
"Yes, it's a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at
one another with a pipe i' their mouths," said Mrs. Poyser. "Give
Bartle Massey his way and he'd have all the sharpness to himself. If
the chaff-cutter had the making of us, we should all be straw, I reckon.
Totty, my chicken, go upstairs to cousin Dinah, and see what she's
doing, and give her a pretty kiss."
This errand was devised for Totty as a means of checking certain
threatening symptoms about the corners of the mouth; for Tommy,
no longer expectant of cake, was lifting up his eyelids with his
forefingers and turning his eyeballs towards Totty in a way that she
felt to be disagreeably personal.
"You're rare and busy now--eh, Adam?" said Mr. Poyser. "Burge's getting
so bad wi' his asthmy, it's well if he'll ever do much riding about
again."
"Yes, we've got a pretty bit o' building on hand now," said Adam, "what
with the repairs on th' estate, and the new houses at Treddles'on."
"I'll bet a penny that new house Burge is building on his own bit o'
land is for him and Mary to go to," said Mr. Poyser. "He'll be for
laying by business soon, I'll warrant, and be wanting you to take to it
all and pay him so much by th' 'ear. We shall see you living on th' hill
before another twelvemont's over."
"Well," said Adam, "I should like t' have the business in my own hands.
It isn't as I mind much about getting any more money. We've enough and
to spare now, with only our two selves and mother; but I should like
t' have my own way about things--I could try plans then, as I can't do
now."
"You get on pretty well wi' the new steward, I reckon?" said Mr. Poyser.
"Yes, yes; he's a sensible man enough; understands farming--he's
carrying on the draining, and all that, capital. You must go some day
towards the Stonyshire side and see what alterations they're making. But
he's got no notion about buildings. You can so seldom get hold of a man
as can turn his brains to more nor one thing; it's just as if they wore
blinkers like th' horses and could see nothing o' one side of 'em. Now,
there's Mr. Irwine has got notions o' building more nor most architects;
for as for th' architects, they set up to be fine fellows, but the most
of 'em don't know where to set a chimney so as it shan't be quarrelling
with a door. My notion is, a practical builder that's got a bit o'
taste makes the best architect for common things; and I've ten times the
pleasure i' seeing after the work when I've made the plan myself."
Mr. Poyser listened with an admiring interest to Adam's discourse on
building, but perhaps it suggested to him that the building of his
corn-rick had been proceeding a little too long without the control of
the master's eye, for when Adam had done speaking, he got up and said,
"Well, lad, I'll bid you good-bye now, for I'm off to the rick-yard
again."
Adam rose too, for he saw Dinah entering, with her bonnet on and a
little basket in her hand, preceded by Totty.
"You're ready, I see, Dinah," Adam said; "so we'll set off, for the
sooner I'm at home the better."
"Mother," said Totty, with her treble pipe, "Dinah was saying her
prayers and crying ever so."
"Hush, hush," said the mother, "little gells mustn't chatter."
Whereupon the father, shaking with silent laughter, set Totty on the
white deal table and desired her to kiss him. Mr. and Mrs. Poyser, you
perceive, had no correct principles of education.
"Come back to-morrow if Mrs. Bede doesn't want you, Dinah," said Mrs.
Poyser: "but you can stay, you know, if she's ill."
So, when the good-byes had been said, Dinah and Adam left the Hall Farm
together.
| 5,992 | Chapter 49 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter49 | At the Hall Farm Eighteen months later, Mrs. Poyser is trying to talk Dinah out of leaving for Snowfield. She has been staying with the Poysers to help them through the tragedy. Mrs. Poyser tries to convince her she can minister to the poor in Hayslope; there are many people who depend on her. Dinah says she must avoid the temptation of luxury and go back to the mill where she is needed more. Dinah reminds her aunt that she has stayed to see them all back on their feet, and they are well and prosperous. It is mentioned that old Mr. Poyser died the previous year, the reason for Mrs. Poyser wearing black. When Adam Bede comes to the farm, Dinah blushes. Adam has come to fetch her for his mother, who is ailing. He explains his mother is working too hard but will not let him hire a girl to help her. Mrs. Poyser announces to the family at tea that Dinah is leaving, and she looks disturbed and rushes from the room crying. Everyone had counted on Dinah staying, even Mr. Irwine who treats her like a lady. Adam speaks of his great success with the woods and new building. Mr. Poyser mentions that Burge will no doubt want Adam to take more part in the business, and Adam says he would like to buy the business for himself so he can do as he likes. He gets along with the new Donnithorne steward and Mr. Irwine's management but prefers to be on his own. | Commentary on Chapter 49 The argument between Dinah and her aunt fill the reader in with what has happened since the trial. Dinah has been a peacemaker, helping the Poysers re-integrate with the community. Dinah mentions their friends and neighbors being supportive, something that the Poysers had feared would never happen. They are not the outcasts they had imagined themselves but once more installed in their old position. Dinah seems a bit mysterious about why she has to leave. She is blushing and crying. Adam has never seen her look upset before, but he cannot read her behavior. She seems to be running away to Snowfield and covering up something. All this is highly uncharacteristic of Dinah. If readers remember how she blushed in Adam's presence before, they may surmise she is in love with him. | 359 | 136 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/50.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_50_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 50 | chapter 50 | null | {"name": "Chapter 50", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter50", "summary": "In the Cottage Dinah and Adam walk together to the Bede cottage, and Adam tells her the Poysers will miss her. She answers that the Poysers' sorrow is healed, and she is called back to her old work. Adam says he puts her above all his other friends and regards her as a sister. He does not understand her agitation at his words. They change topics and speak of Arthur, \"the poor young man,\" as Dinah calls him . Arthur is off fighting Napoleon and the French. The war will soon be over, but Arthur does not feel ready to come home. Dinah mentions his warm-hearted nature, and how our trial is to see good in the midst of evil. At the cottage, Seth sees Dinah's tears that Adam does not see. Lisbeth also sees Dinah's upset and asks her what is wrong. The two women spend the evening together, and Dinah tells her she is leaving. The narrator switches to Adam, mentioning that his great sorrow was still with him but it was quietly transforming him to a greater love and sympathy for others. He is more tolerant of Seth and his mother. His work has also been part of his religion, his way of doing good in the world. His work is his life now, and he does not see that romance will ever touch him again. He is surprised Dinah does not love Seth, who seems cut out for her. Dinah is up early and cleaning the house. Adam surprises her and tries to joke with her, but she is embarrassed. Adam asks her if she is displeased with him and says he doesn't like parting with her. The narrator breaks in to tell us that this is courting, the way two souls gently approach one another by degrees.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 50 The narrator is quite joyful in describing the growing love between Adam and Dinah in the closing chapters, waxing rhapsodic in places. The relationship has been foreshadowed in earlier chapters. Adam is the only man that has made Dinah feel like a woman rather than a saint. Some critics feel that Dinah's attraction to Adam seems out of character, but she has always seen him as noble and unlike other men. He is not a Methodist, but he is sincerely religious and lives his religion. He is generous and not restrictive to Dinah's wishes. She is the only woman he has ever looked up to or thought better than himself. Like Mr. Irwine, he respects her and shows it in regarding her as an equal. In this part of the novel, Eliot wants to show how someone could rebound from tragedy, how the mind knits itself back together in the mystery of love. It is not always possible to predict where love will put people together, as Adam has said before. Neither he nor Arthur could resist Hetty, and Dinah prefers Adam to Seth, the one who seems made for her. Adam's and Dinah's is not a violent love, but a gentle, healing love that grows out of the tragedy they both witnessed. They have found strength in each other. Adam is taking some time to get over his sorrow and so cannot ever imagine being in love again, though he admits Dinah is his best friend. She already knows that she feels love, but as will become apparent, she is afraid the earthly love conflicts with her divine duty. Both have to grow from the events they have been through in order to be together. Adam himself will realize that he was not ready for Dinah until he went through the agony with Hetty and purified himself. Eliot mentions that it is natural for lovers to delicately approach one another for a while. Love is subtle like music. Readers might see the last book as a bit sentimental compared to the rest of the story, but for Eliot, it is as important to see the principles of healing as it is to observe the principles of suffering. She thus wraps up the story in stages, with little mini-essays on love and healing. This part of the novel contrasts with the tragedy of the main action. Once again, we get idyllic pastoral scenes as in the beginning of the story, along with humor, and local color. Each character finds his or her own place, so that society can begin anew in Hayslope."} |
ADAM did not ask Dinah to take his arm when they got out into the lane.
He had never yet done so, often as they had walked together, for he had
observed that she never walked arm-in-arm with Seth, and he thought,
perhaps, that kind of support was not agreeable to her. So they walked
apart, though side by side, and the close poke of her little black
bonnet hid her face from him.
"You can't be happy, then, to make the Hall Farm your home, Dinah?"
Adam said, with the quiet interest of a brother, who has no anxiety for
himself in the matter. "It's a pity, seeing they're so fond of you."
"You know, Adam, my heart is as their heart, so far as love for them
and care for their welfare goes, but they are in no present need. Their
sorrows are healed, and I feel that I am called back to my old work, in
which I found a blessing that I have missed of late in the midst of too
abundant worldly good. I know it is a vain thought to flee from the work
that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to our
own souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find the
fulness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone it
is to be found, in loving obedience. But now, I believe, I have a clear
showing that my work lies elsewhere--at least for a time. In the years
to come, if my aunt's health should fail, or she should otherwise need
me, I shall return."
"You know best, Dinah," said Adam. "I don't believe you'd go against the
wishes of them that love you, and are akin to you, without a good and
sufficient reason in your own conscience. I've no right to say anything
about my being sorry: you know well enough what cause I have to put you
above every other friend I've got; and if it had been ordered so that
you could ha' been my sister, and lived with us all our lives, I should
ha' counted it the greatest blessing as could happen to us now. But
Seth tells me there's no hope o' that: your feelings are different, and
perhaps I'm taking too much upon me to speak about it."
Dinah made no answer, and they walked on in silence for some yards, till
they came to the stone stile, where, as Adam had passed through first
and turned round to give her his hand while she mounted the unusually
high step, she could not prevent him from seeing her face. It struck
him with surprise, for the grey eyes, usually so mild and grave, had
the bright uneasy glance which accompanies suppressed agitation, and
the slight flush in her cheeks, with which she had come downstairs, was
heightened to a deep rose-colour. She looked as if she were only sister
to Dinah. Adam was silent with surprise and conjecture for some moments,
and then he said, "I hope I've not hurt or displeased you by what I've
said, Dinah. Perhaps I was making too free. I've no wish different from
what you see to be best, and I'm satisfied for you to live thirty mile
off, if you think it right. I shall think of you just as much as I do
now, for you're bound up with what I can no more help remembering than I
can help my heart beating."
Poor Adam! Thus do men blunder. Dinah made no answer, but she presently
said, "Have you heard any news from that poor young man, since we last
spoke of him?"
Dinah always called Arthur so; she had never lost the image of him as
she had seen him in the prison.
"Yes," said Adam. "Mr. Irwine read me part of a letter from him
yesterday. It's pretty certain, they say, that there'll be a peace soon,
though nobody believes it'll last long; but he says he doesn't mean to
come home. He's no heart for it yet, and it's better for others that he
should keep away. Mr. Irwine thinks he's in the right not to come. It's
a sorrowful letter. He asks about you and the Poysers, as he always
does. There's one thing in the letter cut me a good deal: 'You can't
think what an old fellow I feel,' he says; 'I make no schemes now. I'm
the best when I've a good day's march or fighting before me.'"
"He's of a rash, warm-hearted nature, like Esau, for whom I have always
felt great pity," said Dinah. "That meeting between the brothers, where
Esau is so loving and generous, and Jacob so timid and distrustful,
notwithstanding his sense of the Divine favour, has always touched me
greatly. Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say that Jacob was of a
mean spirit. But that is our trial: we must learn to see the good in the
midst of much that is unlovely."
"Ah," said Adam, "I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament.
He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were
going to reap the fruits. A man must have courage to look at his life
so, and think what'll come of it after he's dead and gone. A good solid
bit o' work lasts: if it's only laying a floor down, somebody's the
better for it being done well, besides the man as does it."
They were both glad to talk of subjects that were not personal, and
in this way they went on till they passed the bridge across the Willow
Brook, when Adam turned round and said, "Ah, here's Seth. I thought he'd
be home soon. Does he know of you're going, Dinah?"
"Yes, I told him last Sabbath."
Adam remembered now that Seth had come home much depressed on Sunday
evening, a circumstance which had been very unusual with him of late,
for the happiness he had in seeing Dinah every week seemed long to have
outweighed the pain of knowing she would never marry him. This evening
he had his habitual air of dreamy benignant contentment, until he came
quite close to Dinah and saw the traces of tears on her delicate eyelids
and eyelashes. He gave one rapid glance at his brother, but Adam was
evidently quite outside the current of emotion that had shaken Dinah: he
wore his everyday look of unexpectant calm. Seth tried not to let Dinah
see that he had noticed her face, and only said, "I'm thankful you're
come, Dinah, for Mother's been hungering after the sight of you all day.
She began to talk of you the first thing in the morning."
When they entered the cottage, Lisbeth was seated in her arm-chair, too
tired with setting out the evening meal, a task she always performed a
long time beforehand, to go and meet them at the door as usual, when she
heard the approaching footsteps.
"Coom, child, thee't coom at last," she said, when Dinah went towards
her. "What dost mane by lavin' me a week an' ne'er coomin' a-nigh me?"
"Dear friend," said Dinah, taking her hand, "you're not well. If I'd
known it sooner, I'd have come."
"An' how's thee t' know if thee dostna coom? Th' lads on'y know what
I tell 'em. As long as ye can stir hand and foot the men think ye're
hearty. But I'm none so bad, on'y a bit of a cold sets me achin'. An'
th' lads tease me so t' ha' somebody wi' me t' do the work--they make me
ache worse wi' talkin'. If thee'dst come and stay wi' me, they'd let me
alone. The Poysers canna want thee so bad as I do. But take thy bonnet
off, an' let me look at thee."
Dinah was moving away, but Lisbeth held her fast, while she was taking
off her bonnet, and looked at her face as one looks into a newly
gathered snowdrop, to renew the old impressions of purity and
gentleness.
"What's the matter wi' thee?" said Lisbeth, in astonishment; "thee'st
been a-cryin'."
"It's only a grief that'll pass away," said Dinah, who did not wish just
now to call forth Lisbeth's remonstrances by disclosing her intention
to leave Hayslope. "You shall know about it shortly--we'll talk of it
to-night. I shall stay with you to-night."
Lisbeth was pacified by this prospect. And she had the whole evening
to talk with Dinah alone; for there was a new room in the cottage,
you remember, built nearly two years ago, in the expectation of a new
inmate; and here Adam always sat when he had writing to do or plans to
make. Seth sat there too this evening, for he knew his mother would like
to have Dinah all to herself.
There were two pretty pictures on the two sides of the wall in the
cottage. On one side there was the broad-shouldered, large-featured,
hardy old woman, in her blue jacket and buff kerchief, with her dim-eyed
anxious looks turned continually on the lily face and the slight form
in the black dress that were either moving lightly about in helpful
activity, or seated close by the old woman's arm-chair, holding her
withered hand, with eyes lifted up towards her to speak a language which
Lisbeth understood far better than the Bible or the hymn-book. She would
scarcely listen to reading at all to-night. "Nay, nay, shut the book,"
she said. "We mun talk. I want t' know what thee was cryin' about. Hast
got troubles o' thy own, like other folks?"
On the other side of the wall there were the two brothers so like each
other in the midst of their unlikeness: Adam with knit brows, shaggy
hair, and dark vigorous colour, absorbed in his "figuring"; Seth, with
large rugged features, the close copy of his brother's, but with thin,
wavy, brown hair and blue dreamy eyes, as often as not looking vaguely
out of the window instead of at his book, although it was a newly bought
book--Wesley's abridgment of Madame Guyon's life, which was full of
wonder and interest for him. Seth had said to Adam, "Can I help thee
with anything in here to-night? I don't want to make a noise in the
shop."
"No, lad," Adam answered, "there's nothing but what I must do myself.
Thee'st got thy new book to read."
And often, when Seth was quite unconscious, Adam, as he paused after
drawing a line with his ruler, looked at his brother with a kind smile
dawning in his eyes. He knew "th' lad liked to sit full o' thoughts he
could give no account of; they'd never come t' anything, but they made
him happy," and in the last year or so, Adam had been getting more and
more indulgent to Seth. It was part of that growing tenderness which
came from the sorrow at work within him.
For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard and
delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had not
outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a temporary
burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. It
would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won
nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could return to the
same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts
of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives,
the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth
irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that
our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its
form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy--the one poor
word which includes all our best insight and our best love. Not that
this transformation of pain into sympathy had completely taken place
in Adam yet. There was still a great remnant of pain, and this he felt
would subsist as long as her pain was not a memory, but an existing
thing, which he must think of as renewed with the light of every
new morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain,
without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It becomes a habit
of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease
as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we are
contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in
silence and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periods
that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations,
beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the
centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert.
That was Adam's state of mind in this second autumn of his sorrow. His
work, as you know, had always been part of his religion, and from very
early days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God's will--was that
form of God's will that most immediately concerned him. But now there
was no margin of dreams for him beyond this daylight reality, no
holiday-time in the working-day world, no moment in the distance when
duty would take off her iron glove and breast-plate and clasp him gently
into rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one made up of
hard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment and
intensity of interest, every fresh week. Love, he thought, could never
be anything to him but a living memory--a limb lopped off, but not gone
from consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was all the
while gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities bought by
a deep experience were so many new fibres by which it was possible, nay,
necessary to him, that his nature should intertwine with another. Yet he
was aware that common affection and friendship were more precious to him
than they used to be--that he clung more to his mother and Seth, and
had an unspeakable satisfaction in the sight or imagination of any small
addition to their happiness. The Poysers, too--hardly three or four days
passed but he felt the need of seeing them and interchanging words and
looks of friendliness with them. He would have felt this, probably, even
if Dinah had not been with them, but he had only said the simplest truth
in telling Dinah that he put her above all other friends in the world.
Could anything be more natural? For in the darkest moments of memory the
thought of her always came as the first ray of returning comfort. The
early days of gloom at the Hall Farm had been gradually turned into soft
moonlight by her presence; and in the cottage, too, for she had come
at every spare moment to soothe and cheer poor Lisbeth, who had been
stricken with a fear that subdued even her querulousness at the sight of
her darling Adam's grief-worn face. He had become used to watching her
light quiet movements, her pretty loving ways to the children, when he
went to the Hall Farm; to listen for her voice as for a recurrent music;
to think everything she said and did was just right, and could not have
been better. In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with her
for her overindulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Dinah
the preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled a
little, into a convenient household slave--though Dinah herself was
rather ashamed of this weakness, and had some inward conflict as to her
departure from the precepts of Solomon. Yes, there was one thing that
might have been better; she might have loved Seth and consented to marry
him. He felt a little vexed, for his brother's sake, and he could not
help thinking regretfully how Dinah, as Seth's wife, would have made
their home as happy as it could be for them all--how she was the one
being that would have soothed their mother's last days into peacefulness
and rest.
"It's wonderful she doesn't love th' lad," Adam had said sometimes to
himself, "for anybody 'ud think he was just cut out for her. But her
heart's so taken up with other things. She's one o' those women that
feel no drawing towards having a husband and children o' their own. She
thinks she should be filled up with her own life then, and she's been
used so to living in other folks's cares, she can't bear the thought of
her heart being shut up from 'em. I see how it is, well enough. She's
cut out o' different stuff from most women: I saw that long ago. She's
never easy but when she's helping somebody, and marriage 'ud interfere
with her ways--that's true. I've no right to be contriving and thinking
it 'ud be better if she'd have Seth, as if I was wiser than she is--or
than God either, for He made her what she is, and that's one o' the
greatest blessings I've ever had from His hands, and others besides me."
This self-reproof had recurred strongly to Adam's mind when he gathered
from Dinah's face that he had wounded her by referring to his wish
that she had accepted Seth, and so he had endeavoured to put into the
strongest words his confidence in her decision as right--his resignation
even to her going away from them and ceasing to make part of their life
otherwise than by living in their thoughts, if that separation were
chosen by herself. He felt sure she knew quite well enough how much
he cared to see her continually--to talk to her with the silent
consciousness of a mutual great remembrance. It was not possible she
should hear anything but self-renouncing affection and respect in
his assurance that he was contented for her to go away; and yet there
remained an uneasy feeling in his mind that he had not said quite the
right thing--that, somehow, Dinah had not understood him.
Dinah must have risen a little before the sun the next morning, for she
was downstairs about five o'clock. So was Seth, for, through Lisbeth's
obstinate refusal to have any woman-helper in the house, he had learned
to make himself, as Adam said, "very handy in the housework," that he
might save his mother from too great weariness; on which ground I hope
you will not think him unmanly, any more than you can have thought the
gallant Colonel Bath unmanly when he made the gruel for his invalid
sister. Adam, who had sat up late at his writing, was still asleep,
and was not likely, Seth said, to be down till breakfast-time. Often as
Dinah had visited Lisbeth during the last eighteen months, she had never
slept in the cottage since that night after Thias's death, when, you
remember, Lisbeth praised her deft movements and even gave a modified
approval to her porridge. But in that long interval Dinah had made great
advances in household cleverness, and this morning, since Seth was there
to help, she was bent on bringing everything to a pitch of cleanliness
and order that would have satisfied her Aunt Poyser. The cottage was far
from that standard at present, for Lisbeth's rheumatism had forced her
to give up her old habits of dilettante scouring and polishing. When the
kitchen was to her mind, Dinah went into the new room, where Adam had
been writing the night before, to see what sweeping and dusting were
needed there. She opened the window and let in the fresh morning air,
and the smell of the sweet-brier, and the bright low-slanting rays of
the early sun, which made a glory about her pale face and pale auburn
hair as she held the long brush, and swept, singing to herself in a very
low tone--like a sweet summer murmur that you have to listen for very
closely--one of Charles Wesley's hymns:
Eternal Beam of Light Divine,
Fountain of unexhausted love,
In whom the Father's glories shine,
Through earth beneath and heaven above;
Jesus! the weary wanderer's rest,
Give me thy easy yoke to bear;
With steadfast patience arm my breast,
With spotless love and holy fear.
Speak to my warring passions, "Peace!"
Say to my trembling heart, "Be still!"
Thy power my strength and fortress is,
For all things serve thy sovereign will.
She laid by the brush and took up the duster; and if you had ever lived
in Mrs. Poyser's household, you would know how the duster behaved in
Dinah's hand--how it went into every small corner, and on every ledge
in and out of sight--how it went again and again round every bar of the
chairs, and every leg, and under and over everything that lay on the
table, till it came to Adam's papers and rulers and the open desk near
them. Dinah dusted up to the very edge of these and then hesitated,
looking at them with a longing but timid eye. It was painful to see
how much dust there was among them. As she was looking in this way, she
heard Seth's step just outside the open door, towards which her back
was turned, and said, raising her clear treble, "Seth, is your brother
wrathful when his papers are stirred?"
"Yes, very, when they are not put back in the right places," said a deep
strong voice, not Seth's.
It was as if Dinah had put her hands unawares on a vibrating chord.
She was shaken with an intense thrill, and for the instant felt nothing
else; then she knew her cheeks were glowing, and dared not look round,
but stood still, distressed because she could not say good-morning in a
friendly way. Adam, finding that she did not look round so as to see
the smile on his face, was afraid she had thought him serious about his
wrathfulness, and went up to her, so that she was obliged to look at
him.
"What! You think I'm a cross fellow at home, Dinah?" he said, smilingly.
"Nay," said Dinah, looking up with timid eyes, "not so. But you might
be put about by finding things meddled with; and even the man Moses, the
meekest of men, was wrathful sometimes."
"Come, then," said Adam, looking at her affectionately, "I'll help you
move the things, and put 'em back again, and then they can't get wrong.
You're getting to be your aunt's own niece, I see, for particularness."
They began their little task together, but Dinah had not recovered
herself sufficiently to think of any remark, and Adam looked at her
uneasily. Dinah, he thought, had seemed to disapprove him somehow
lately; she had not been so kind and open to him as she used to be.
He wanted her to look at him, and be as pleased as he was himself with
doing this bit of playful work. But Dinah did not look at him--it was
easy for her to avoid looking at the tall man--and when at last there
was no more dusting to be done and no further excuse for him to linger
near her, he could bear it no longer, and said, in rather a pleading
tone, "Dinah, you're not displeased with me for anything, are you? I've
not said or done anything to make you think ill of me?"
The question surprised her, and relieved her by giving a new course to
her feeling. She looked up at him now, quite earnestly, almost with the
tears coming, and said, "Oh, no, Adam! how could you think so?"
"I couldn't bear you not to feel as much a friend to me as I do to you,"
said Adam. "And you don't know the value I set on the very thought of
you, Dinah. That was what I meant yesterday, when I said I'd be content
for you to go, if you thought right. I meant, the thought of you was
worth so much to me, I should feel I ought to be thankful, and not
grumble, if you see right to go away. You know I do mind parting with
you, Dinah?"
"Yes, dear friend," said Dinah, trembling, but trying to speak calmly,
"I know you have a brother's heart towards me, and we shall often be
with one another in spirit; but at this season I am in heaviness through
manifold temptations. You must not mark me. I feel called to leave my
kindred for a while; but it is a trial--the flesh is weak."
Adam saw that it pained her to be obliged to answer.
"I hurt you by talking about it, Dinah," he said. "I'll say no more.
Let's see if Seth's ready with breakfast now."
That is a simple scene, reader. But it is almost certain that you, too,
have been in love--perhaps, even, more than once, though you may not
choose to say so to all your feminine friends. If so, you will no more
think the slight words, the timid looks, the tremulous touches, by which
two human souls approach each other gradually, like two little quivering
rain-streams, before they mingle into one--you will no more think these
things trivial than you will think the first-detected signs of coming
spring trivial, though they be but a faint indescribable something
in the air and in the song of the birds, and the tiniest perceptible
budding on the hedge-row branches. Those slight words and looks and
touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language,
I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as "light,"
"sound," "stars," "music"--words really not worth looking at, or
hearing, in themselves, any more than "chips" or "sawdust." It is only
that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and
beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too,
and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be chips and
sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, "light" and
"music," stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enriching
your present with your most precious past.
| 6,345 | Chapter 50 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter50 | In the Cottage Dinah and Adam walk together to the Bede cottage, and Adam tells her the Poysers will miss her. She answers that the Poysers' sorrow is healed, and she is called back to her old work. Adam says he puts her above all his other friends and regards her as a sister. He does not understand her agitation at his words. They change topics and speak of Arthur, "the poor young man," as Dinah calls him . Arthur is off fighting Napoleon and the French. The war will soon be over, but Arthur does not feel ready to come home. Dinah mentions his warm-hearted nature, and how our trial is to see good in the midst of evil. At the cottage, Seth sees Dinah's tears that Adam does not see. Lisbeth also sees Dinah's upset and asks her what is wrong. The two women spend the evening together, and Dinah tells her she is leaving. The narrator switches to Adam, mentioning that his great sorrow was still with him but it was quietly transforming him to a greater love and sympathy for others. He is more tolerant of Seth and his mother. His work has also been part of his religion, his way of doing good in the world. His work is his life now, and he does not see that romance will ever touch him again. He is surprised Dinah does not love Seth, who seems cut out for her. Dinah is up early and cleaning the house. Adam surprises her and tries to joke with her, but she is embarrassed. Adam asks her if she is displeased with him and says he doesn't like parting with her. The narrator breaks in to tell us that this is courting, the way two souls gently approach one another by degrees. | Commentary on Chapter 50 The narrator is quite joyful in describing the growing love between Adam and Dinah in the closing chapters, waxing rhapsodic in places. The relationship has been foreshadowed in earlier chapters. Adam is the only man that has made Dinah feel like a woman rather than a saint. Some critics feel that Dinah's attraction to Adam seems out of character, but she has always seen him as noble and unlike other men. He is not a Methodist, but he is sincerely religious and lives his religion. He is generous and not restrictive to Dinah's wishes. She is the only woman he has ever looked up to or thought better than himself. Like Mr. Irwine, he respects her and shows it in regarding her as an equal. In this part of the novel, Eliot wants to show how someone could rebound from tragedy, how the mind knits itself back together in the mystery of love. It is not always possible to predict where love will put people together, as Adam has said before. Neither he nor Arthur could resist Hetty, and Dinah prefers Adam to Seth, the one who seems made for her. Adam's and Dinah's is not a violent love, but a gentle, healing love that grows out of the tragedy they both witnessed. They have found strength in each other. Adam is taking some time to get over his sorrow and so cannot ever imagine being in love again, though he admits Dinah is his best friend. She already knows that she feels love, but as will become apparent, she is afraid the earthly love conflicts with her divine duty. Both have to grow from the events they have been through in order to be together. Adam himself will realize that he was not ready for Dinah until he went through the agony with Hetty and purified himself. Eliot mentions that it is natural for lovers to delicately approach one another for a while. Love is subtle like music. Readers might see the last book as a bit sentimental compared to the rest of the story, but for Eliot, it is as important to see the principles of healing as it is to observe the principles of suffering. She thus wraps up the story in stages, with little mini-essays on love and healing. This part of the novel contrasts with the tragedy of the main action. Once again, we get idyllic pastoral scenes as in the beginning of the story, along with humor, and local color. Each character finds his or her own place, so that society can begin anew in Hayslope. | 401 | 436 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/51.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_51_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 51 | chapter 51 | null | {"name": "Chapter 51", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter51", "summary": "Sunday Morning Dinah is questioned by Lisbeth about her leaving. Lisbeth complains that she hasn't long to live and will never see Dinah again. Then she launches into a topic embarrassing to Dinah: a husband. Lisbeth admits Seth is not the right husband, but asks her what she thinks of Adam? He would be a proper husband. Dinah escapes as soon as she can for the Hall Farm. When Seth comes in, Lisbeth says to him that Dinah would stay if Adam would marry her. Seth is surprised and asks Lisbeth if Dinah has said so. Lisbeth says it is written all over her. Sunday mornings are the happiest for Lisbeth, because Adam stays home and reads his Bible in the same room with her. She makes up her mind to speak to Adam about Dinah, but doesn't know how to begin. When she sees in Adam's Bible the picture of the angel on Christ's tomb, she blurts out, \"That's her--that's Dinah\" . Lisbeth uses this to start the conversation where she tells Adam he should marry Dinah; they were meant for each other, and Dinah loves him. He is struck by this idea and feels \"a resurrection of his dead joy\" . He decides to talk to Seth about it since he was the one who wanted to marry Dinah. Seth is unselfish and says he will not stand in the way, but he is sure Dinah doesn't want to marry because of her calling.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 51 Lisbeth has been a secondary character, but here she takes a part in shaping the outcome of the story. Though she is afraid of displeasing Adam, she sees right through Dinah's feelings, and she decides to take a chance to tell Adam about it. She, like Mrs. Poyser, does not want to part with Dinah, and has always dreamed of having her for a daughter-in-law. She is very particular whom she will let in the house, not even allowing a hired servant. Dinah is Lisbeth's own best insurance for a happy old age, but more than that, finally she has grown to the point where she wants happiness for her son. Opposed to her sons' marriage in the beginning, she knows she hasn't long to live, and wants to see Adam settled with a good wife. The narrator mentions that the tragedy had affected her too, that it had quieted down her selfish demands. For once, Adam listens to his mother because she is wise in this matter. His sudden conversion from being blind to love to completely open to the suggestion may strain the belief of some, but it is not uncommon in grief to be unable to imagine loving again. He was so used to Dinah as a sister that the other suggestion never directly entered his mind. Adam is a man of action, however, and does not waste time as soon as he gets the point. Seth may seem too good to be true as the completely unselfish brother without the slightest trace of jealousy, but it is in keeping with his character and religion. He has made it plain he would like to be around Dinah in any way possible."} |
LISBETH'S touch of rheumatism could not be made to appear serious enough
to detain Dinah another night from the Hall Farm, now she had made up
her mind to leave her aunt so soon, and at evening the friends must
part. "For a long while," Dinah had said, for she had told Lisbeth of
her resolve.
"Then it'll be for all my life, an' I shall ne'er see thee again," said
Lisbeth. "Long while! I'n got no long while t' live. An' I shall be
took bad an' die, an' thee canst ne'er come a-nigh me, an' I shall die
a-longing for thee."
That had been the key-note of her wailing talk all day; for Adam was not
in the house, and so she put no restraint on her complaining. She had
tried poor Dinah by returning again and again to the question, why
she must go away; and refusing to accept reasons, which seemed to her
nothing but whim and "contrairiness"; and still more, by regretting that
she "couldna' ha' one o' the lads" and be her daughter.
"Thee couldstna put up wi' Seth," she said. "He isna cliver enough for
thee, happen, but he'd ha' been very good t' thee--he's as handy as can
be at doin' things for me when I'm bad, an' he's as fond o' the Bible
an' chappellin' as thee art thysen. But happen, thee'dst like a husband
better as isna just the cut o' thysen: the runnin' brook isna athirst
for th' rain. Adam 'ud ha' done for thee--I know he would--an' he might
come t' like thee well enough, if thee'dst stop. But he's as stubborn
as th' iron bar--there's no bending him no way but's own. But he'd be
a fine husband for anybody, be they who they will, so looked-on an' so
cliver as he is. And he'd be rare an' lovin': it does me good on'y a
look o' the lad's eye when he means kind tow'rt me."
Dinah tried to escape from Lisbeth's closest looks and questions by
finding little tasks of housework that kept her moving about, and as
soon as Seth came home in the evening she put on her bonnet to go. It
touched Dinah keenly to say the last good-bye, and still more to look
round on her way across the fields and see the old woman still standing
at the door, gazing after her till she must have been the faintest speck
in the dim aged eyes. "The God of love and peace be with them,"
Dinah prayed, as she looked back from the last stile. "Make them glad
according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted them, and the years
wherein they have seen evil. It is thy will that I should part from
them; let me have no will but thine."
Lisbeth turned into the house at last and sat down in the workshop near
Seth, who was busying himself there with fitting some bits of turned
wood he had brought from the village into a small work-box, which he
meant to give to Dinah before she went away.
"Thee't see her again o' Sunday afore she goes," were her first words.
"If thee wast good for anything, thee'dst make her come in again o'
Sunday night wi' thee, and see me once more."
"Nay, Mother," said Seth. "Dinah 'ud be sure to come again if she saw
right to come. I should have no need to persuade her. She only thinks it
'ud be troubling thee for nought, just to come in to say good-bye over
again."
"She'd ne'er go away, I know, if Adam 'ud be fond on her an' marry her,
but everything's so contrairy," said Lisbeth, with a burst of vexation.
Seth paused a moment and looked up, with a slight blush, at his mother's
face. "What! Has she said anything o' that sort to thee, Mother?" he
said, in a lower tone.
"Said? Nay, she'll say nothin'. It's on'y the men as have to wait till
folks say things afore they find 'em out."
"Well, but what makes thee think so, Mother? What's put it into thy
head?"
"It's no matter what's put it into my head. My head's none so hollow as
it must get in, an' nought to put it there. I know she's fond on him, as
I know th' wind's comin' in at the door, an' that's anoof. An' he might
be willin' to marry her if he know'd she's fond on him, but he'll ne'er
think on't if somebody doesna put it into's head."
His mother's suggestion about Dinah's feeling towards Adam was not quite
a new thought to Seth, but her last words alarmed him, lest she should
herself undertake to open Adam's eyes. He was not sure about Dinah's
feeling, and he thought he was sure about Adam's.
"Nay, Mother, nay," he said, earnestly, "thee mustna think o' speaking
o' such things to Adam. Thee'st no right to say what Dinah's feelings
are if she hasna told thee, and it 'ud do nothing but mischief to say
such things to Adam. He feels very grateful and affectionate toward
Dinah, but he's no thoughts towards her that 'ud incline him to make her
his wife, and I don't believe Dinah 'ud marry him either. I don't think
she'll marry at all."
"Eh," said Lisbeth, impatiently. "Thee think'st so 'cause she wouldna
ha' thee. She'll ne'er marry thee; thee mightst as well like her t' ha'
thy brother."
Seth was hurt. "Mother," he said, in a remonstrating tone, "don't think
that of me. I should be as thankful t' have her for a sister as thee
wouldst t' have her for a daughter. I've no more thoughts about myself
in that thing, and I shall take it hard if ever thee say'st it again."
"Well, well, then thee shouldstna cross me wi' sayin' things arena as I
say they are."
"But, Mother," said Seth, "thee'dst be doing Dinah a wrong by telling
Adam what thee think'st about her. It 'ud do nothing but mischief,
for it 'ud make Adam uneasy if he doesna feel the same to her. And I'm
pretty sure he feels nothing o' the sort."
"Eh, donna tell me what thee't sure on; thee know'st nought about it.
What's he allays goin' to the Poysers' for, if he didna want t' see her?
He goes twice where he used t' go once. Happen he knowsna as he wants
t' see her; he knowsna as I put salt in's broth, but he'd miss it pretty
quick if it warna there. He'll ne'er think o' marrying if it isna put
into's head, an' if thee'dst any love for thy mother, thee'dst put him
up to't an' not let her go away out o' my sight, when I might ha' her to
make a bit o' comfort for me afore I go to bed to my old man under the
white thorn."
"Nay, Mother," said Seth, "thee mustna think me unkind, but I should
be going against my conscience if I took upon me to say what Dinah's
feelings are. And besides that, I think I should give offence to Adam by
speaking to him at all about marrying; and I counsel thee not to do't.
Thee may'st be quite deceived about Dinah. Nay, I'm pretty sure, by
words she said to me last Sabbath, as she's no mind to marry."
"Eh, thee't as contrairy as the rest on 'em. If it war summat I didna
want, it 'ud be done fast enough."
Lisbeth rose from the bench at this, and went out of the workshop,
leaving Seth in much anxiety lest she should disturb Adam's mind about
Dinah. He consoled himself after a time with reflecting that, since
Adam's trouble, Lisbeth had been very timid about speaking to him on
matters of feeling, and that she would hardly dare to approach this
tenderest of all subjects. Even if she did, he hoped Adam would not take
much notice of what she said.
Seth was right in believing that Lisbeth would be held in restraint by
timidity, and during the next three days, the intervals in which she had
an opportunity of speaking to Adam were too rare and short to cause her
any strong temptation. But in her long solitary hours she brooded over
her regretful thoughts about Dinah, till they had grown very near that
point of unmanageable strength when thoughts are apt to take wing out
of their secret nest in a startling manner. And on Sunday morning, when
Seth went away to chapel at Treddleston, the dangerous opportunity came.
Sunday morning was the happiest time in all the week to Lisbeth, for
as there was no service at Hayslope church till the afternoon, Adam was
always at home, doing nothing but reading, an occupation in which she
could venture to interrupt him. Moreover, she had always a better dinner
than usual to prepare for her sons--very frequently for Adam and herself
alone, Seth being often away the entire day--and the smell of the roast
meat before the clear fire in the clean kitchen, the clock ticking in
a peaceful Sunday manner, her darling Adam seated near her in his best
clothes, doing nothing very important, so that she could go and stroke
her hand across his hair if she liked, and see him look up at her and
smile, while Gyp, rather jealous, poked his muzzle up between them--all
these things made poor Lisbeth's earthly paradise.
The book Adam most often read on a Sunday morning was his large pictured
Bible, and this morning it lay open before him on the round white deal
table in the kitchen; for he sat there in spite of the fire, because he
knew his mother liked to have him with her, and it was the only day in
the week when he could indulge her in that way. You would have liked to
see Adam reading his Bible. He never opened it on a weekday, and so he
came to it as a holiday book, serving him for history, biography, and
poetry. He held one hand thrust between his waistcoat buttons, and the
other ready to turn the pages, and in the course of the morning you
would have seen many changes in his face. Sometimes his lips moved in
semi-articulation--it was when he came to a speech that he could fancy
himself uttering, such as Samuel's dying speech to the people; then his
eyebrows would be raised, and the corners of his mouth would quiver a
little with sad sympathy--something, perhaps old Isaac's meeting with
his son, touched him closely; at other times, over the New Testament,
a very solemn look would come upon his face, and he would every now and
then shake his head in serious assent, or just lift up his hand and let
it fall again. And on some mornings, when he read in the Apocrypha, of
which he was very fond, the son of Sirach's keen-edged words would bring
a delighted smile, though he also enjoyed the freedom of occasionally
differing from an Apocryphal writer. For Adam knew the Articles quite
well, as became a good churchman.
Lisbeth, in the pauses of attending to her dinner, always sat opposite
to him and watched him, till she could rest no longer without going
up to him and giving him a caress, to call his attention to her. This
morning he was reading the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and Lisbeth
had been standing close by him for some minutes, stroking his hair,
which was smoother than usual this morning, and looking down at the
large page with silent wonderment at the mystery of letters. She was
encouraged to continue this caress, because when she first went up
to him, he had thrown himself back in his chair to look at her
affectionately and say, "Why, Mother, thee look'st rare and hearty this
morning. Eh, Gyp wants me t' look at him. He can't abide to think I love
thee the best." Lisbeth said nothing, because she wanted to say so many
things. And now there was a new leaf to be turned over, and it was
a picture--that of the angel seated on the great stone that has been
rolled away from the sepulchre. This picture had one strong association
in Lisbeth's memory, for she had been reminded of it when she first
saw Dinah, and Adam had no sooner turned the page, and lifted the book
sideways that they might look at the angel, than she said, "That's
her--that's Dinah."
Adam smiled, and, looking more intently at the angel's face, said, "It
is a bit like her; but Dinah's prettier, I think."
"Well, then, if thee think'st her so pretty, why arn't fond on her?"
Adam looked up in surprise. "Why, Mother, dost think I don't set store
by Dinah?"
"Nay," said Lisbeth, frightened at her own courage, yet feeling that
she had broken the ice, and the waters must flow, whatever mischief they
might do. "What's th' use o' settin' store by things as are thirty mile
off? If thee wast fond enough on her, thee wouldstna let her go away."
"But I've no right t' hinder her, if she thinks well," said Adam,
looking at his book as if he wanted to go on reading. He foresaw a
series of complaints tending to nothing. Lisbeth sat down again in the
chair opposite to him, as she said:
"But she wouldna think well if thee wastna so contrairy." Lisbeth dared
not venture beyond a vague phrase yet.
"Contrairy, mother?" Adam said, looking up again in some anxiety. "What
have I done? What dost mean?"
"Why, thee't never look at nothin', nor think o' nothin', but thy
figurin, an' thy work," said Lisbeth, half-crying. "An' dost think thee
canst go on so all thy life, as if thee wast a man cut out o' timber?
An' what wut do when thy mother's gone, an' nobody to take care on thee
as thee gett'st a bit o' victual comfortable i' the mornin'?"
"What hast got i' thy mind, Mother?" said Adam, vexed at this
whimpering. "I canna see what thee't driving at. Is there anything I
could do for thee as I don't do?"
"Aye, an' that there is. Thee might'st do as I should ha' somebody wi'
me to comfort me a bit, an' wait on me when I'm bad, an' be good to me."
"Well, Mother, whose fault is it there isna some tidy body i' th' house
t' help thee? It isna by my wish as thee hast a stroke o' work to do. We
can afford it--I've told thee often enough. It 'ud be a deal better for
us."
"Eh, what's the use o' talking o' tidy bodies, when thee mean'st one o'
th' wenches out o' th' village, or somebody from Treddles'on as I ne'er
set eyes on i' my life? I'd sooner make a shift an' get into my own
coffin afore I die, nor ha' them folks to put me in."
Adam was silent, and tried to go on reading. That was the utmost
severity he could show towards his mother on a Sunday morning. But
Lisbeth had gone too far now to check herself, and after scarcely a
minute's quietness she began again.
"Thee mightst know well enough who 'tis I'd like t' ha' wi' me. It isna
many folks I send for t' come an' see me. I reckon. An' thee'st had the
fetchin' on her times enow."
"Thee mean'st Dinah, Mother, I know," said Adam. "But it's no use
setting thy mind on what can't be. If Dinah 'ud be willing to stay at
Hayslope, it isn't likely she can come away from her aunt's house, where
they hold her like a daughter, and where she's more bound than she is to
us. If it had been so that she could ha' married Seth, that 'ud ha' been
a great blessing to us, but we can't have things just as we like in this
life. Thee must try and make up thy mind to do without her."
"Nay, but I canna ma' up my mind, when she's just cut out for thee; an'
nought shall ma' me believe as God didna make her an' send her there o'
purpose for thee. What's it sinnify about her bein' a Methody! It 'ud
happen wear out on her wi' marryin'."
Adam threw himself back in his chair and looked at his mother. He
understood now what she had been aiming at from the beginning of the
conversation. It was as unreasonable, impracticable a wish as she had
ever urged, but he could not help being moved by so entirely new an
idea. The chief point, however, was to chase away the notion from his
mother's mind as quickly as possible.
"Mother," he said, gravely, "thee't talking wild. Don't let me hear
thee say such things again. It's no good talking o' what can never be.
Dinah's not for marrying; she's fixed her heart on a different sort o'
life."
"Very like," said Lisbeth, impatiently, "very like she's none for
marr'ing, when them as she'd be willin' t' marry wonna ax her. I
shouldna ha' been for marr'ing thy feyther if he'd ne'er axed me; an'
she's as fond o' thee as e'er I war o' Thias, poor fellow."
The blood rushed to Adam's face, and for a few moments he was not quite
conscious where he was. His mother and the kitchen had vanished for him,
and he saw nothing but Dinah's face turned up towards his. It seemed
as if there were a resurrection of his dead joy. But he woke up very
speedily from that dream (the waking was chill and sad), for it would
have been very foolish in him to believe his mother's words--she could
have no ground for them. He was prompted to express his disbelief very
strongly--perhaps that he might call forth the proofs, if there were any
to be offered.
"What dost say such things for, Mother, when thee'st got no foundation
for 'em? Thee know'st nothing as gives thee a right to say that."
"Then I knowna nought as gi'es me a right to say as the year's turned,
for all I feel it fust thing when I get up i' th' morning. She isna fond
o' Seth, I reckon, is she? She doesna want to marry HIM? But I can see
as she doesna behave tow'rt thee as she daes tow'rt Seth. She makes no
more o' Seth's coming a-nigh her nor if he war Gyp, but she's all of a
tremble when thee't a-sittin' down by her at breakfast an' a-looking at
her. Thee think'st thy mother knows nought, but she war alive afore thee
wast born."
"But thee canstna be sure as the trembling means love?" said Adam
anxiously.
"Eh, what else should it mane? It isna hate, I reckon. An' what should
she do but love thee? Thee't made to be loved--for where's there a
straighter cliverer man? An' what's it sinnify her bein' a Methody? It's
on'y the marigold i' th' parridge."
Adam had thrust his hands in his pockets, and was looking down at the
book on the table, without seeing any of the letters. He was trembling
like a gold-seeker who sees the strong promise of gold but sees in the
same moment a sickening vision of disappointment. He could not trust his
mother's insight; she had seen what she wished to see. And yet--and yet,
now the suggestion had been made to him, he remembered so many things,
very slight things, like the stirring of the water by an imperceptible
breeze, which seemed to him some confirmation of his mother's words.
Lisbeth noticed that he was moved. She went on, "An' thee't find out
as thee't poorly aff when she's gone. Thee't fonder on her nor thee
know'st. Thy eyes follow her about, welly as Gyp's follow thee."
Adam could sit still no longer. He rose, took down his hat, and went out
into the fields.
The sunshine was on them: that early autumn sunshine which we should
know was not summer's, even if there were not the touches of yellow
on the lime and chestnut; the Sunday sunshine too, which has more than
autumnal calmness for the working man; the morning sunshine, which still
leaves the dew-crystals on the fine gossamer webs in the shadow of the
bushy hedgerows.
Adam needed the calm influence; he was amazed at the way in which
this new thought of Dinah's love had taken possession of him, with an
overmastering power that made all other feelings give way before the
impetuous desire to know that the thought was true. Strange, that till
that moment the possibility of their ever being lovers had never crossed
his mind, and yet now, all his longing suddenly went out towards that
possibility. He had no more doubt or hesitation as to his own wishes
than the bird that flies towards the opening through which the daylight
gleams and the breath of heaven enters.
The autumnal Sunday sunshine soothed him, but not by preparing him with
resignation to the disappointment if his mother--if he himself--proved
to be mistaken about Dinah. It soothed him by gentle encouragement of
his hopes. Her love was so like that calm sunshine that they seemed to
make one presence to him, and he believed in them both alike. And Dinah
was so bound up with the sad memories of his first passion that he was
not forsaking them, but rather giving them a new sacredness by loving
her. Nay, his love for her had grown out of that past: it was the noon
of that morning.
But Seth? Would the lad be hurt? Hardly; for he had seemed quite
contented of late, and there was no selfish jealousy in him; he had
never been jealous of his mother's fondness for Adam. But had he seen
anything of what their mother talked about? Adam longed to know this,
for he thought he could trust Seth's observation better than his
mother's. He must talk to Seth before he went to see Dinah, and, with
this intention in his mind, he walked back to the cottage and said to
his mother, "Did Seth say anything to thee about when he was coming
home? Will he be back to dinner?"
"Aye, lad, he'll be back for a wonder. He isna gone to Treddles'on. He's
gone somewhere else a-preachin' and a-prayin'."
"Hast any notion which way he's gone?" said Adam.
"Nay, but he aften goes to th' Common. Thee know'st more o's goings nor
I do."
Adam wanted to go and meet Seth, but he must content himself with
walking about the near fields and getting sight of him as soon as
possible. That would not be for more than an hour to come, for Seth
would scarcely be at home much before their dinner-time, which was
twelve o'clock. But Adam could not sit down to his reading again, and he
sauntered along by the brook and stood leaning against the stiles, with
eager intense eyes, which looked as if they saw something very vividly;
but it was not the brook or the willows, not the fields or the sky.
Again and again his vision was interrupted by wonder at the strength of
his own feeling, at the strength and sweetness of this new love--almost
like the wonder a man feels at the added power he finds in himself for
an art which he had laid aside for a space. How is it that the poets
have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our
later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best
which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their
deeper-rooted affections? The boy's flutelike voice has its own spring
charm; but the man should yield a richer deeper music.
At last, there was Seth, visible at the farthest stile, and Adam
hastened to meet him. Seth was surprised, and thought something unusual
must have happened, but when Adam came up, his face said plainly enough
that it was nothing alarming.
"Where hast been?" said Adam, when they were side by side.
"I've been to the Common," said Seth. "Dinah's been speaking the Word
to a little company of hearers at Brimstone's, as they call him. They're
folks as never go to church hardly--them on the Common--but they'll go
and hear Dinah a bit. She's been speaking with power this forenoon
from the words, 'I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance.' And there was a little thing happened as was pretty to see.
The women mostly bring their children with 'em, but to-day there was one
stout curly headed fellow about three or four year old, that I never saw
there before. He was as naughty as could be at the beginning while I was
praying, and while we was singing, but when we all sat down and Dinah
began to speak, th' young un stood stock still all at once, and began to
look at her with's mouth open, and presently he ran away from's mother
and went to Dinah, and pulled at her, like a little dog, for her to take
notice of him. So Dinah lifted him up and held th' lad on her lap, while
she went on speaking; and he was as good as could be till he went to
sleep--and the mother cried to see him."
"It's a pity she shouldna be a mother herself," said Adam, "so fond as
the children are of her. Dost think she's quite fixed against marrying,
Seth? Dost think nothing 'ud turn her?"
There was something peculiar in his brother's tone, which made Seth
steal a glance at his face before he answered.
"It 'ud be wrong of me to say nothing 'ud turn her," he answered. "But
if thee mean'st it about myself, I've given up all thoughts as she can
ever be my wife. She calls me her brother, and that's enough."
"But dost think she might ever get fond enough of anybody else to be
willing to marry 'em?" said Adam rather shyly.
"Well," said Seth, after some hesitation, "it's crossed my mind
sometimes o' late as she might; but Dinah 'ud let no fondness for the
creature draw her out o' the path as she believed God had marked out for
her. If she thought the leading was not from Him, she's not one to
be brought under the power of it. And she's allays seemed clear about
that--as her work was to minister t' others, and make no home for
herself i' this world."
"But suppose," said Adam, earnestly, "suppose there was a man as 'ud
let her do just the same and not interfere with her--she might do a good
deal o' what she does now, just as well when she was married as when
she was single. Other women of her sort have married--that's to say, not
just like her, but women as preached and attended on the sick and needy.
There's Mrs. Fletcher as she talks of."
A new light had broken in on Seth. He turned round, and laying his
hand on Adam's shoulder, said, "Why, wouldst like her to marry THEE,
Brother?"
Adam looked doubtfully at Seth's inquiring eyes and said, "Wouldst be
hurt if she was to be fonder o' me than o' thee?"
"Nay," said Seth warmly, "how canst think it? Have I felt thy trouble so
little that I shouldna feel thy joy?"
There was silence a few moments as they walked on, and then Seth said,
"I'd no notion as thee'dst ever think of her for a wife."
"But is it o' any use to think of her?" said Adam. "What dost say?
Mother's made me as I hardly know where I am, with what she's been
saying to me this forenoon. She says she's sure Dinah feels for me more
than common, and 'ud be willing t' have me. But I'm afraid she speaks
without book. I want to know if thee'st seen anything."
"It's a nice point to speak about," said Seth, "and I'm afraid o' being
wrong; besides, we've no right t' intermeddle with people's feelings
when they wouldn't tell 'em themselves."
Seth paused.
"But thee mightst ask her," he said presently. "She took no offence at
me for asking, and thee'st more right than I had, only thee't not in the
Society. But Dinah doesn't hold wi' them as are for keeping the Society
so strict to themselves. She doesn't mind about making folks enter the
Society, so as they're fit t' enter the kingdom o' God. Some o' the
brethren at Treddles'on are displeased with her for that."
"Where will she be the rest o' the day?" said Adam.
"She said she shouldn't leave the farm again to-day," said Seth,
"because it's her last Sabbath there, and she's going t' read out o' the
big Bible wi' the children."
Adam thought--but did not say--"Then I'll go this afternoon; for if I
go to church, my thoughts 'ull be with her all the while. They must sing
th' anthem without me to-day."
| 7,762 | Chapter 51 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter51 | Sunday Morning Dinah is questioned by Lisbeth about her leaving. Lisbeth complains that she hasn't long to live and will never see Dinah again. Then she launches into a topic embarrassing to Dinah: a husband. Lisbeth admits Seth is not the right husband, but asks her what she thinks of Adam? He would be a proper husband. Dinah escapes as soon as she can for the Hall Farm. When Seth comes in, Lisbeth says to him that Dinah would stay if Adam would marry her. Seth is surprised and asks Lisbeth if Dinah has said so. Lisbeth says it is written all over her. Sunday mornings are the happiest for Lisbeth, because Adam stays home and reads his Bible in the same room with her. She makes up her mind to speak to Adam about Dinah, but doesn't know how to begin. When she sees in Adam's Bible the picture of the angel on Christ's tomb, she blurts out, "That's her--that's Dinah" . Lisbeth uses this to start the conversation where she tells Adam he should marry Dinah; they were meant for each other, and Dinah loves him. He is struck by this idea and feels "a resurrection of his dead joy" . He decides to talk to Seth about it since he was the one who wanted to marry Dinah. Seth is unselfish and says he will not stand in the way, but he is sure Dinah doesn't want to marry because of her calling. | Commentary on Chapter 51 Lisbeth has been a secondary character, but here she takes a part in shaping the outcome of the story. Though she is afraid of displeasing Adam, she sees right through Dinah's feelings, and she decides to take a chance to tell Adam about it. She, like Mrs. Poyser, does not want to part with Dinah, and has always dreamed of having her for a daughter-in-law. She is very particular whom she will let in the house, not even allowing a hired servant. Dinah is Lisbeth's own best insurance for a happy old age, but more than that, finally she has grown to the point where she wants happiness for her son. Opposed to her sons' marriage in the beginning, she knows she hasn't long to live, and wants to see Adam settled with a good wife. The narrator mentions that the tragedy had affected her too, that it had quieted down her selfish demands. For once, Adam listens to his mother because she is wise in this matter. His sudden conversion from being blind to love to completely open to the suggestion may strain the belief of some, but it is not uncommon in grief to be unable to imagine loving again. He was so used to Dinah as a sister that the other suggestion never directly entered his mind. Adam is a man of action, however, and does not waste time as soon as he gets the point. Seth may seem too good to be true as the completely unselfish brother without the slightest trace of jealousy, but it is in keeping with his character and religion. He has made it plain he would like to be around Dinah in any way possible. | 365 | 288 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/52.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_52_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 52 | chapter 52 | null | {"name": "Chapter 52", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter52", "summary": "Adam and Dinah Adam walks to Hall Farm while the family is at church. He does not go to church so he can speak to Dinah alone. Dinah blushes as usual when Adam enters. They are both awkward with each other, but finally Adam blurts out that he loves her. She trembles with joy, crying, and returns his love but explains she has to submit to God's will to do his work. She is going away to resist temptation. She has known the perfect joy of having no personal life of her own, and she is afraid she will lose this blessedness of helping others and living in the divine will. If she has doubts about it, their love will not be a blessing. Adam says he will not urge her against her conscience and will resign himself if he has to. She says she would like to test it out by going to Snowfield for a while to see if it is true she is called back. He agrees to the test. They walk out to meet the Poysers coming back from church. The Poysers are surprised to see the couple walking together and wonder if they are courting. The narrator ends the chapter with a long reminiscent essay on how beautiful and slow country life was in the days of Adam Bede.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 52 This courting scene contrasts with the clandestine and violent nature of Arthur's and Hetty's affair. Adam and Dinah are honest about their feelings for one another. Dinah raises the difficulty for her of her faith and work. For Adam, their love is part of God's doing and will, but for Dinah who has known the happiness of a nun's devotion to God, it is a temptation. She has married God, and now she does not know what to do when she is in love with a man. Adam does not fight her doubt but wisely agrees to the test. He could push, but he respects Dinah too much, and it would be the surest way to lose her. She has to wait for a clear conscience. Eliot shows an ideal relationship where a couple work things out together and meet on the soul level, rather than the level of pride and ego. They both want what is best and most unselfish."} |
IT was about three o'clock when Adam entered the farmyard and roused
Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was
gone to church "but th' young missis"--so he called Dinah--but this
did not disappoint Adam, although the "everybody" was so liberal as
to include Nancy the dairymaid, whose works of necessity were not
unfrequently incompatible with church-going.
There was perfect stillness about the house. The doors were all closed,
and the very stones and tubs seemed quieter than usual. Adam heard the
water gently dripping from the pump--that was the only sound--and
he knocked at the house door rather softly, as was suitable in that
stillness.
The door opened, and Dinah stood before him, colouring deeply with the
great surprise of seeing Adam at this hour, when she knew it was his
regular practice to be at church. Yesterday he would have said to her
without any difficulty, "I came to see you, Dinah: I knew the rest were
not at home." But to-day something prevented him from saying that, and
he put out his hand to her in silence. Neither of them spoke, and yet
both wished they could speak, as Adam entered, and they sat down. Dinah
took the chair she had just left; it was at the corner of the table
near the window, and there was a book lying on the table, but it was not
open. She had been sitting perfectly still, looking at the small bit
of clear fire in the bright grate. Adam sat down opposite her, in Mr.
Poyser's three-cornered chair.
"Your mother is not ill again, I hope, Adam?" Dinah said, recovering
herself. "Seth said she was well this morning."
"No, she's very hearty to-day," said Adam, happy in the signs of Dinah's
feeling at the sight of him, but shy.
"There's nobody at home, you see," Dinah said; "but you'll wait. You've
been hindered from going to church to-day, doubtless."
"Yes," Adam said, and then paused, before he added, "I was thinking
about you: that was the reason."
This confession was very awkward and sudden, Adam felt, for he thought
Dinah must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words
caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his brotherly
regrets that she was going away, and she answered calmly, "Do not be
careful and troubled for me, Adam. I have all things and abound at
Snowfield. And my mind is at rest, for I am not seeking my own will in
going."
"But if things were different, Dinah," said Adam, hesitatingly. "If you
knew things that perhaps you don't know now...."
Dinah looked at him inquiringly, but instead of going on, he reached a
chair and brought it near the corner of the table where she was sitting.
She wondered, and was afraid--and the next moment her thoughts flew to
the past: was it something about those distant unhappy ones that she
didn't know?
Adam looked at her. It was so sweet to look at her eyes, which had now
a self-forgetful questioning in them--for a moment he forgot that he
wanted to say anything, or that it was necessary to tell her what he
meant.
"Dinah," he said suddenly, taking both her hands between his, "I love
you with my whole heart and soul. I love you next to God who made me."
Dinah's lips became pale, like her cheeks, and she trembled violently
under the shock of painful joy. Her hands were cold as death between
Adam's. She could not draw them away, because he held them fast.
"Don't tell me you can't love me, Dinah. Don't tell me we must part and
pass our lives away from one another."
The tears were trembling in Dinah's eyes, and they fell before she could
answer. But she spoke in a quiet low voice.
"Yes, dear Adam, we must submit to another Will. We must part."
"Not if you love me, Dinah--not if you love me," Adam said passionately.
"Tell me--tell me if you can love me better than a brother?"
Dinah was too entirely reliant on the Supreme guidance to attempt to
achieve any end by a deceptive concealment. She was recovering now from
the first shock of emotion, and she looked at Adam with simple sincere
eyes as she said, "Yes, Adam, my heart is drawn strongly towards you;
and of my own will, if I had no clear showing to the contrary, I could
find my happiness in being near you and ministering to you continually.
I fear I should forget to rejoice and weep with others; nay, I fear I
should forget the Divine presence, and seek no love but yours."
Adam did not speak immediately. They sat looking at each other in
delicious silence--for the first sense of mutual love excludes other
feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.
"Then, Dinah," Adam said at last, "how can there be anything contrary
to what's right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives
together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be
holier than that? For we can help one another in everything as is good.
I'd never think o' putting myself between you and God, and saying you
oughtn't to do this and you oughtn't to do that. You'd follow your
conscience as much as you do now."
"Yes, Adam," Dinah said, "I know marriage is a holy state for those who
are truly called to it, and have no other drawing; but from my childhood
upwards I have been led towards another path; all my peace and my joy
have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes for myself,
and living only in God and those of his creatures whose sorrows and joys
he has given me to know. Those have been very blessed years to me, and I
feel that if I was to listen to any voice that would draw me aside from
that path, I should be turning my back on the light that has shone upon
me, and darkness and doubt would take hold of me. We could not bless
each other, Adam, if there were doubts in my soul, and if I yearned,
when it was too late, after that better part which had once been given
me and I had put away from me."
"But if a new feeling has come into your mind, Dinah, and if you love me
so as to be willing to be nearer to me than to other people, isn't that
a sign that it's right for you to change your life? Doesn't the love
make it right when nothing else would?"
"Adam, my mind is full of questionings about that; for now, since you
tell me of your strong love towards me, what was clear to me has become
dark again. I felt before that my heart was too strongly drawn towards
you, and that your heart was not as mine; and the thought of you had
taken hold of me, so that my soul had lost its freedom, and was becoming
enslaved to an earthly affection, which made me anxious and careful
about what should befall myself. For in all other affection I had been
content with any small return, or with none; but my heart was beginning
to hunger after an equal love from you. And I had no doubt that I must
wrestle against that as a great temptation, and the command was clear
that I must go away."
"But now, dear, dear Dinah, now you know I love you better than you love
me...it's all different now. You won't think o' going. You'll stay, and
be my dear wife, and I shall thank God for giving me my life as I never
thanked him before."
"Adam, it's hard to me to turn a deaf ear...you know it's hard; but a
great fear is upon me. It seems to me as if you were stretching out your
arms to me, and beckoning me to come and take my ease and live for my
own delight, and Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was standing looking towards
me, and pointing to the sinful, and suffering, and afflicted. I have
seen that again and again when I have been sitting in stillness and
darkness, and a great terror has come upon me lest I should become hard,
and a lover of self, and no more bear willingly the Redeemer's cross."
Dinah had closed her eyes, and a faint shudder went through her. "Adam,"
she went on, "you wouldn't desire that we should seek a good through
any unfaithfulness to the light that is in us; you wouldn't believe that
could be a good. We are of one mind in that."
"Yes, Dinah," said Adam sadly, "I'll never be the man t' urge you
against your conscience. But I can't give up the hope that you may come
to see different. I don't believe your loving me could shut up your
heart--it's only adding to what you've been before, not taking away from
it. For it seems to me it's the same with love and happiness as with
sorrow--the more we know of it the better we can feel what other
people's lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to
'em, and wishful to help 'em. The more knowledge a man has, the better
he'll do's work; and feeling's a sort o' knowledge."
Dinah was silent; her eyes were fixed in contemplation of something
visible only to herself. Adam went on presently with his pleading, "And
you can do almost as much as you do now. I won't ask you to go to church
with me of a Sunday. You shall go where you like among the people, and
teach 'em; for though I like church best, I don't put my soul above
yours, as if my words was better for you to follow than your own
conscience. And you can help the sick just as much, and you'll have more
means o' making 'em a bit comfortable; and you'll be among all your
own friends as love you, and can help 'em and be a blessing to 'em till
their dying day. Surely, Dinah, you'd be as near to God as if you was
living lonely and away from me."
Dinah made no answer for some time. Adam was still holding her hands and
looking at her with almost trembling anxiety, when she turned her grave
loving eyes on his and said, in rather a sad voice, "Adam there is truth
in what you say, and there's many of the brethren and sisters who have
greater strength than I have, and find their hearts enlarged by the
cares of husband and kindred. But I have not faith that it would be so
with me, for since my affections have been set above measure on you, I
have had less peace and joy in God. I have felt as it were a division
in my heart. And think how it is with me, Adam. That life I have led is
like a land I have trodden in blessedness since my childhood; and if
I long for a moment to follow the voice which calls me to another land
that I know not, I cannot but fear that my soul might hereafter yearn
for that early blessedness which I had forsaken; and where doubt enters
there is not perfect love. I must wait for clearer guidance. I must go
from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Will.
We are sometimes required to lay our natural lawful affections on the
altar."
Adam dared not plead again, for Dinah's was not the voice of caprice or
insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim as he looked
at her.
"But you may come to feel satisfied...to feel that you may come to me
again, and we may never part, Dinah?"
"We must submit ourselves, Adam. With time, our duty will be made clear.
It may be when I have entered on my former life, I shall find all these
new thoughts and wishes vanish, and become as things that were not. Then
I shall know that my calling is not towards marriage. But we must wait."
"Dinah," said Adam mournfully, "you can't love me so well as I love you,
else you'd have no doubts. But it's natural you shouldn't, for I'm not
so good as you. I can't doubt it's right for me to love the best thing
God's ever given me to know."
"Nay, Adam. It seems to me that my love for you is not weak, for my
heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on
the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the thought
of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would be an
idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me--you will not hinder me
in seeking to obey to the uttermost."
"Let us go out into the sunshine, Dinah, and walk together. I'll speak
no word to disturb you."
They went out and walked towards the fields, where they would meet the
family coming from church. Adam said, "Take my arm, Dinah," and she took
it. That was the only change in their manner to each other since they
were last walking together. But no sadness in the prospect of her going
away--in the uncertainty of the issue--could rob the sweetness from
Adam's sense that Dinah loved him. He thought he would stay at the Hall
Farm all that evening. He would be near her as long as he could.
"Hey-day! There's Adam along wi' Dinah," said Mr. Poyser, as he opened
the far gate into the Home Close. "I couldna think how he happened away
from church. Why," added good Martin, after a moment's pause, "what dost
think has just jumped into my head?"
"Summat as hadna far to jump, for it's just under our nose. You mean as
Adam's fond o' Dinah."
"Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?"
"To be sure I have," said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if possible,
to be taken by surprise. "I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the
dairy an' wonder what she's come after."
"Thee never saidst a word to me about it."
"Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the
wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i'
speaking."
"But Dinah 'll ha' none o' him. Dost think she will?"
"Nay," said Mrs. Poyser, not sufficiently on her guard against a
possible surprise, "she'll never marry anybody, if he isn't a Methodist
and a cripple."
"It 'ud ha' been a pretty thing though for 'em t' marry," said Martin,
turning his head on one side, as if in pleased contemplation of his new
idea. "Thee'dst ha' liked it too, wouldstna?"
"Ah! I should. I should ha' been sure of her then, as she wouldn't
go away from me to Snowfield, welly thirty mile off, and me not got a
creatur to look to, only neighbours, as are no kin to me, an' most of
'em women as I'd be ashamed to show my face, if my dairy things war like
their'n. There may well be streaky butter i' the market. An' I should be
glad to see the poor thing settled like a Christian woman, with a
house of her own over her head; and we'd stock her well wi' linen and
feathers, for I love her next to my own children. An' she makes one feel
safer when she's i' the house, for she's like the driven snow: anybody
might sin for two as had her at their elbow."
"Dinah," said Tommy, running forward to meet her, "mother says you'll
never marry anybody but a Methodist cripple. What a silly you must be!"
a comment which Tommy followed up by seizing Dinah with both arms, and
dancing along by her side with incommodious fondness.
"Why, Adam, we missed you i' the singing to-day," said Mr. Poyser. "How
was it?"
"I wanted to see Dinah--she's going away so soon," said Adam.
"Ah, lad! Can you persuade her to stop somehow? Find her a good husband
somewhere i' the parish. If you'll do that, we'll forgive you for
missing church. But, anyway, she isna going before the harvest supper
o' Wednesday, and you must come then. There's Bartle Massey comin', an'
happen Craig. You'll be sure an' come, now, at seven? The missis wunna
have it a bit later."
"Aye," said Adam, "I'll come if I can. But I can't often say what I'll
do beforehand, for the work often holds me longer than I expect. You'll
stay till the end o' the week, Dinah?"
"Yes, yes!" said Mr. Poyser. "We'll have no nay."
"She's no call to be in a hurry," observed Mrs. Poyser. "Scarceness
o' victual 'ull keep: there's no need to be hasty wi' the cooking. An'
scarceness is what there's the biggest stock of i' that country."
Dinah smiled, but gave no promise to stay, and they talked of other
things through the rest of the walk, lingering in the sunshine to look
at the great flock of geese grazing, at the new corn-ricks, and at the
surprising abundance of fruit on the old pear-tree; Nancy and Molly
having already hastened home, side by side, each holding, carefully
wrapped in her pocket-handkerchief, a prayer-book, in which she could
read little beyond the large letters and the Amens.
Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the
fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those old
leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was
the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old
brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one
place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the
pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars, who brought bargains
to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you,
perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure
for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager
thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement;
prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and
exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps
through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He
only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from
that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a
contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet
perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know
the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly
in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of
sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they
were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under
the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew
nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday
sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking
the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest,
and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience,
broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or
port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty
aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the
guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the
irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church
on the Sunday afternoons?
Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our modern
standard. He never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or
read Tracts for the Times or Sartor Resartus.
| 4,873 | Chapter 52 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter52 | Adam and Dinah Adam walks to Hall Farm while the family is at church. He does not go to church so he can speak to Dinah alone. Dinah blushes as usual when Adam enters. They are both awkward with each other, but finally Adam blurts out that he loves her. She trembles with joy, crying, and returns his love but explains she has to submit to God's will to do his work. She is going away to resist temptation. She has known the perfect joy of having no personal life of her own, and she is afraid she will lose this blessedness of helping others and living in the divine will. If she has doubts about it, their love will not be a blessing. Adam says he will not urge her against her conscience and will resign himself if he has to. She says she would like to test it out by going to Snowfield for a while to see if it is true she is called back. He agrees to the test. They walk out to meet the Poysers coming back from church. The Poysers are surprised to see the couple walking together and wonder if they are courting. The narrator ends the chapter with a long reminiscent essay on how beautiful and slow country life was in the days of Adam Bede. | Commentary on Chapter 52 This courting scene contrasts with the clandestine and violent nature of Arthur's and Hetty's affair. Adam and Dinah are honest about their feelings for one another. Dinah raises the difficulty for her of her faith and work. For Adam, their love is part of God's doing and will, but for Dinah who has known the happiness of a nun's devotion to God, it is a temptation. She has married God, and now she does not know what to do when she is in love with a man. Adam does not fight her doubt but wisely agrees to the test. He could push, but he respects Dinah too much, and it would be the surest way to lose her. She has to wait for a clear conscience. Eliot shows an ideal relationship where a couple work things out together and meet on the soul level, rather than the level of pride and ego. They both want what is best and most unselfish. | 288 | 165 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/53.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_53_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 53 | chapter 53 | null | {"name": "Chapter 53", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter53", "summary": "The Harvest Supper It is the time of country harvest, with the barley rolling by on the loaded wagons. The beauty of the country strikes Adam \"like a funeral-bell\" for \"there's a parting at the root of all our joys\" . It is the time of thanksgiving, though, and he realizes that out of the sorrow of Hetty came the joy of Dinah, an even greater love. He goes to the harvest supper at the Hall Farm, hoping Dinah has not yet left. He does not see her there but does not learn until later that she is already gone to Snowfield. Meanwhile, the ritual of the feast is presided over by Martin Poyser, who is proud to serve the beer and roast beef to family, friends, and farm hands. There is singing and toasting, as the reader is introduced to various colorful farm workers. A comic political discussion about Bonaparte and the French illustrates the ignorance of the country folk about the greater world affairs. The comic highlight, however, is an exchange of wit between Bartle Massey and Mrs. Poyser on the difference between men and women, Bartle denouncing women, and Mrs. Poyser denouncing men. Finally Adam and Bartle Massey walk home together, and Adam says that even though Mrs. Poyser has a sharp tongue, she is a woman better than her word, who is there in time of need and trouble.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 53 This is a bit of comedy and local color to round out the novel, serving to bring us back to the pastoral mood of the setting. It was spring in the country in the beginning of the story, a kind of golden world of innocence where there was as yet no hint of tragedy. The bulk of the novel tells the disruption of that ideal life by one event that touches everyone. The novel ends in the autumn, a reaping of fruits, both good and bad. There has been sorrow, but new beginnings as well. The peace and harmony are being re-established, even though there has been a cost, and Adam is now reminded of the funeral bell underneath all joy. For the admirable characters, however, all life is transmuted by experience and suffering into something better, and these are the fruits they now enjoy together. The political talk of the Napoleonic war, a major event in English history, is felt as the faintest echo in Hayslope. The ignorant opinions bandied about over beer show how untouched this remote district is from larger world disturbances. The tragedy of Hetty has been the local event of importance and \"Bony\" is as real to the farmers as Old Harry that Mrs. Poyser keeps referring to . Arthur Donnithorne is the only character in their world to take part in events on both the local level and the national level, for he leaves Hayslope for the war. Eliot's tone towards the Hayslope community is elegiac, looking back to a landscape and a time that is gone forever. It contains her own childhood memories of country life and characters."} |
As Adam was going homeward, on Wednesday evening, in the six o'clock
sunlight, he saw in the distance the last load of barley winding its way
towards the yard-gate of the Hall Farm, and heard the chant of "Harvest
Home!" rising and sinking like a wave. Fainter and fainter, and more
musical through the growing distance, the falling dying sound still
reached him, as he neared the Willow Brook. The low westering sun shone
right on the shoulders of the old Binton Hills, turning the unconscious
sheep into bright spots of light; shone on the windows of the cottage
too, and made them a-flame with a glory beyond that of amber or
amethyst. It was enough to make Adam feel that he was in a great temple,
and that the distant chant was a sacred song.
"It's wonderful," he thought, "how that sound goes to one's heart almost
like a funeral bell, for all it tells one o' the joyfullest time o' the
year, and the time when men are mostly the thankfullest. I suppose it's
a bit hard to us to think anything's over and gone in our lives; and
there's a parting at the root of all our joys. It's like what I feel
about Dinah. I should never ha' come to know that her love 'ud be the
greatest o' blessings to me, if what I counted a blessing hadn't been
wrenched and torn away from me, and left me with a greater need, so as I
could crave and hunger for a greater and a better comfort."
He expected to see Dinah again this evening, and get leave to accompany
her as far as Oakbourne; and then he would ask her to fix some time when
he might go to Snowfield, and learn whether the last best hope that had
been born to him must be resigned like the rest. The work he had to do
at home, besides putting on his best clothes, made it seven before he
was on his way again to the Hall Farm, and it was questionable whether,
with his longest and quickest strides, he should be there in time even
for the roast beef, which came after the plum pudding, for Mrs. Poyser's
supper would be punctual.
Great was the clatter of knives and pewter plates and tin cans when Adam
entered the house, but there was no hum of voices to this accompaniment:
the eating of excellent roast beef, provided free of expense, was too
serious a business to those good farm-labourers to be performed with
a divided attention, even if they had had anything to say to each
other--which they had not. And Mr. Poyser, at the head of the table, was
too busy with his carving to listen to Bartle Massey's or Mr. Craig's
ready talk.
"Here, Adam," said Mrs. Poyser, who was standing and looking on to see
that Molly and Nancy did their duty as waiters, "here's a place kept for
you between Mr. Massey and the boys. It's a poor tale you couldn't come
to see the pudding when it was whole."
Adam looked anxiously round for a fourth woman's figure, but Dinah
was not there. He was almost afraid of asking about her; besides, his
attention was claimed by greetings, and there remained the hope that
Dinah was in the house, though perhaps disinclined to festivities on the
eve of her departure.
It was a goodly sight--that table, with Martin Poyser's round
good-humoured face and large person at the head of it helping his
servants to the fragrant roast beef and pleased when the empty plates
came again. Martin, though usually blest with a good appetite, really
forgot to finish his own beef to-night--it was so pleasant to him to
look on in the intervals of carving and see how the others enjoyed their
supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year except
Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a makeshift manner,
under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden bottles--with
relish certainly, but with their mouths towards the zenith, after a
fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds. Martin Poyser had
some faint conception of the flavour such men must find in hot roast
beef and fresh-drawn ale. He held his head on one side and screwed
up his mouth, as he nudged Bartle Massey, and watched half-witted Tom
Tholer, otherwise known as "Tom Saft," receiving his second plateful of
beef. A grin of delight broke over Tom's face as the plate was set down
before him, between his knife and fork, which he held erect, as if
they had been sacred tapers. But the delight was too strong to continue
smouldering in a grin--it burst out the next instant in a long-drawn
"haw, haw!" followed by a sudden collapse into utter gravity, as the
knife and fork darted down on the prey. Martin Poyser's large person
shook with his silent unctuous laugh. He turned towards Mrs. Poyser to
see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes of husband and
wife met in a glance of good-natured amusement.
"Tom Saft" was a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part
of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his
success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which
falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then.
They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I
refrain from recording them here, lest Tom's wit should prove to be
like that of many other bygone jesters eminent in their day--rather of a
temporary nature, not dealing with the deeper and more lasting relations
of things.
Tom excepted, Martin Poyser had some pride in his servants and
labourers, thinking with satisfaction that they were the best worth
their pay of any set on the estate. There was Kester Bale, for example
(Beale, probably, if the truth were known, but he was called Bale, and
was not conscious of any claim to a fifth letter), the old man with the
close leather cap and the network of wrinkles on his sun-browned face.
Was there any man in Loamshire who knew better the "natur" of all
farming work? He was one of those invaluable labourers who can not only
turn their hand to everything, but excel in everything they turn their
hand to. It is true Kester's knees were much bent outward by this time,
and he walked with a perpetual curtsy, as if he were among the most
reverent of men. And so he was; but I am obliged to admit that the
object of his reverence was his own skill, towards which he performed
some rather affecting acts of worship. He always thatched the ricks--for
if anything were his forte more than another, it was thatching--and when
the last touch had been put to the last beehive rick, Kester, whose home
lay at some distance from the farm, would take a walk to the rick-yard
in his best clothes on a Sunday morning and stand in the lane, at a due
distance, to contemplate his own thatching, walking about to get each
rick from the proper point of view. As he curtsied along, with his eyes
upturned to the straw knobs imitative of golden globes at the summits
of the beehive ricks, which indeed were gold of the best sort, you might
have imagined him to be engaged in some pagan act of adoration.
Kester was an old bachelor and reputed to have stockings full of coin,
concerning which his master cracked a joke with him every pay-night:
not a new unseasoned joke, but a good old one, that had been tried
many times before and had worn well. "Th' young measter's a merry mon,"
Kester frequently remarked; for having begun his career by frightening
away the crows under the last Martin Poyser but one, he could never
cease to account the reigning Martin a young master. I am not ashamed
of commemorating old Kester. You and I are indebted to the hard hands of
such men--hands that have long ago mingled with the soil they tilled so
faithfully, thriftily making the best they could of the earth's fruits,
and receiving the smallest share as their own wages.
Then, at the end of the table, opposite his master, there was Alick, the
shepherd and head-man, with the ruddy face and broad shoulders, not on
the best terms with old Kester; indeed, their intercourse was confined
to an occasional snarl, for though they probably differed little
concerning hedging and ditching and the treatment of ewes, there was a
profound difference of opinion between them as to their own respective
merits. When Tityrus and Meliboeus happen to be on the same farm, they
are not sentimentally polite to each other. Alick, indeed, was not by
any means a honeyed man. His speech had usually something of a snarl
in it, and his broad-shouldered aspect something of the bull-dog
expression--"Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you." But
he was honest even to the splitting of an oat-grain rather than he
would take beyond his acknowledged share, and as "close-fisted" with
his master's property as if it had been his own--throwing very small
handfuls of damaged barley to the chickens, because a large handful
affected his imagination painfully with a sense of profusion.
Good-tempered Tim, the waggoner, who loved his horses, had his grudge
against Alick in the matter of corn. They rarely spoke to each other,
and never looked at each other, even over their dish of cold potatoes;
but then, as this was their usual mode of behaviour towards all mankind,
it would be an unsafe conclusion that they had more than transient fits
of unfriendliness. The bucolic character at Hayslope, you perceive,
was not of that entirely genial, merry, broad-grinning sort, apparently
observed in most districts visited by artists. The mild radiance of a
smile was a rare sight on a field-labourer's face, and there was seldom
any gradation between bovine gravity and a laugh. Nor was every labourer
so honest as our friend Alick. At this very table, among Mr. Poyser's
men, there is that big Ben Tholoway, a very powerful thresher, but
detected more than once in carrying away his master's corn in his
pockets--an action which, as Ben was not a philosopher, could hardly be
ascribed to absence of mind. However, his master had forgiven him, and
continued to employ him, for the Tholoways had lived on the Common time
out of mind, and had always worked for the Poysers. And on the whole, I
daresay, society was not much the worse because Ben had not six months
of it at the treadmill, for his views of depredation were narrow, and
the House of Correction might have enlarged them. As it was, Ben ate his
roast beef to-night with a serene sense of having stolen nothing more
than a few peas and beans as seed for his garden since the last harvest
supper, and felt warranted in thinking that Alick's suspicious eye, for
ever upon him, was an injury to his innocence.
But NOW the roast beef was finished and the cloth was drawn, leaving
a fair large deal table for the bright drinking-cans, and the foaming
brown jugs, and the bright brass candlesticks, pleasant to behold. NOW,
the great ceremony of the evening was to begin--the harvest-song,
in which every man must join. He might be in tune, if he liked to be
singular, but he must not sit with closed lips. The movement was obliged
to be in triple time; the rest was ad libitum.
As to the origin of this song--whether it came in its actual state from
the brain of a single rhapsodist, or was gradually perfected by a school
or succession of rhapsodists, I am ignorant. There is a stamp of
unity, of individual genius upon it, which inclines me to the former
hypothesis, though I am not blind to the consideration that this unity
may rather have arisen from that consensus of many minds which was a
condition of primitive thought, foreign to our modern consciousness.
Some will perhaps think that they detect in the first quatrain
an indication of a lost line, which later rhapsodists, failing in
imaginative vigour, have supplied by the feeble device of iteration.
Others, however, may rather maintain that this very iteration is an
original felicity, to which none but the most prosaic minds can be
insensible.
The ceremony connected with the song was a drinking ceremony. (That
is perhaps a painful fact, but then, you know, we cannot reform our
forefathers.) During the first and second quatrain, sung decidedly
forte, no can was filled.
Here's a health unto our master,
The founder of the feast;
Here's a health unto our master
And to our mistress!
And may his doings prosper,
Whate'er he takes in hand,
For we are all his servants,
And are at his command.
But now, immediately before the third quatrain or chorus, sung
fortissimo, with emphatic raps of the table, which gave the effect of
cymbals and drum together, Alick's can was filled, and he was bound to
empty it before the chorus ceased.
Then drink, boys, drink!
And see ye do not spill,
For if ye do, ye shall drink two,
For 'tis our master's will.
When Alick had gone successfully through this test of steady-handed
manliness, it was the turn of old Kester, at his right hand--and so on,
till every man had drunk his initiatory pint under the stimulus of the
chorus. Tom Saft--the rogue--took care to spill a little by accident;
but Mrs. Poyser (too officiously, Tom thought) interfered to prevent the
exaction of the penalty.
To any listener outside the door it would have been the reverse of
obvious why the "Drink, boys, drink!" should have such an immediate and
often-repeated encore; but once entered, he would have seen that all
faces were at present sober, and most of them serious--it was the
regular and respectable thing for those excellent farm-labourers to do,
as much as for elegant ladies and gentlemen to smirk and bow over their
wine-glasses. Bartle Massey, whose ears were rather sensitive, had
gone out to see what sort of evening it was at an early stage in the
ceremony, and had not finished his contemplation until a silence of
five minutes declared that "Drink, boys, drink!" was not likely to
begin again for the next twelvemonth. Much to the regret of the boys
and Totty: on them the stillness fell rather flat, after that glorious
thumping of the table, towards which Totty, seated on her father's knee,
contributed with her small might and small fist.
When Bartle re-entered, however, there appeared to be a general desire
for solo music after the choral. Nancy declared that Tim the waggoner
knew a song and was "allays singing like a lark i' the stable,"
whereupon Mr. Poyser said encouragingly, "Come, Tim, lad, let's hear
it." Tim looked sheepish, tucked down his head, and said he couldn't
sing, but this encouraging invitation of the master's was echoed all
round the table. It was a conversational opportunity: everybody could
say, "Come, Tim," except Alick, who never relaxed into the frivolity of
unnecessary speech. At last, Tim's next neighbour, Ben Tholoway, began
to give emphasis to his speech by nudges, at which Tim, growing rather
savage, said, "Let me alooan, will ye? Else I'll ma' ye sing a toon ye
wonna like." A good-tempered waggoner's patience has limits, and Tim was
not to be urged further.
"Well, then, David, ye're the lad to sing," said Ben, willing to show
that he was not discomfited by this check. "Sing 'My loove's a roos
wi'out a thorn.'"
The amatory David was a young man of an unconscious abstracted
expression, which was due probably to a squint of superior intensity
rather than to any mental characteristic; for he was not indifferent to
Ben's invitation, but blushed and laughed and rubbed his sleeve over his
mouth in a way that was regarded as a symptom of yielding. And for some
time the company appeared to be much in earnest about the desire to hear
David's song. But in vain. The lyricism of the evening was in the cellar
at present, and was not to be drawn from that retreat just yet.
Meanwhile the conversation at the head of the table had taken a
political turn. Mr. Craig was not above talking politics occasionally,
though he piqued himself rather on a wise insight than on specific
information. He saw so far beyond the mere facts of a case that really
it was superfluous to know them.
"I'm no reader o' the paper myself," he observed to-night, as he filled
his pipe, "though I might read it fast enough if I liked, for there's
Miss Lyddy has 'em and 's done with 'em i' no time. But there's Mills,
now, sits i' the chimney-corner and reads the paper pretty nigh
from morning to night, and when he's got to th' end on't he's more
addle-headed than he was at the beginning. He's full o' this peace now,
as they talk on; he's been reading and reading, and thinks he's got to
the bottom on't. 'Why, Lor' bless you, Mills,' says I, 'you see no more
into this thing nor you can see into the middle of a potato. I'll tell
you what it is: you think it'll be a fine thing for the country. And I'm
not again' it--mark my words--I'm not again' it. But it's my opinion as
there's them at the head o' this country as are worse enemies to us
nor Bony and all the mounseers he's got at 's back; for as for the
mounseers, you may skewer half-a-dozen of 'em at once as if they war
frogs.'"
"Aye, aye," said Martin Poyser, listening with an air of much
intelligence and edification, "they ne'er ate a bit o' beef i' their
lives. Mostly sallet, I reckon."
"And says I to Mills," continued Mr. Craig, "'Will you try to make me
believe as furriners like them can do us half th' harm them ministers
do with their bad government? If King George 'ud turn 'em all away and
govern by himself, he'd see everything righted. He might take on Billy
Pitt again if he liked; but I don't see myself what we want wi' anybody
besides King and Parliament. It's that nest o' ministers does the
mischief, I tell you.'"
"Ah, it's fine talking," observed Mrs. Poyser, who was now seated near
her husband, with Totty on her lap--"it's fine talking. It's hard work
to tell which is Old Harry when everybody's got boots on."
"As for this peace," said Mr. Poyser, turning his head on one side in
a dubitative manner and giving a precautionary puff to his pipe between
each sentence, "I don't know. Th' war's a fine thing for the country,
an' how'll you keep up prices wi'out it? An' them French are a wicked
sort o' folks, by what I can make out. What can you do better nor fight
'em?"
"Ye're partly right there, Poyser," said Mr. Craig, "but I'm not again'
the peace--to make a holiday for a bit. We can break it when we like,
an' I'm in no fear o' Bony, for all they talk so much o' his cliverness.
That's what I says to Mills this morning. Lor' bless you, he sees no
more through Bony!...why, I put him up to more in three minutes than he
gets from's paper all the year round. Says I, 'Am I a gardener as knows
his business, or arn't I, Mills? Answer me that.' 'To be sure y' are,
Craig,' says he--he's not a bad fellow, Mills isn't, for a butler, but
weak i' the head. 'Well,' says I, 'you talk o' Bony's cliverness; would
it be any use my being a first-rate gardener if I'd got nought but a
quagmire to work on?' 'No,' says he. 'Well,' I says, 'that's just
what it is wi' Bony. I'll not deny but he may be a bit cliver--he's
no Frenchman born, as I understand--but what's he got at's back but
mounseers?'"
Mr. Craig paused a moment with an emphatic stare after this triumphant
specimen of Socratic argument, and then added, thumping the table rather
fiercely, "Why, it's a sure thing--and there's them 'ull bear witness
to't--as i' one regiment where there was one man a-missing, they put
the regimentals on a big monkey, and they fit him as the shell fits the
walnut, and you couldn't tell the monkey from the mounseers!"
"Ah! Think o' that, now!" said Mr. Poyser, impressed at once with the
political bearings of the fact and with its striking interest as an
anecdote in natural history.
"Come, Craig," said Adam, "that's a little too strong. You don't believe
that. It's all nonsense about the French being such poor sticks. Mr.
Irwine's seen 'em in their own country, and he says they've plenty o'
fine fellows among 'em. And as for knowledge, and contrivances, and
manufactures, there's a many things as we're a fine sight behind 'em in.
It's poor foolishness to run down your enemies. Why, Nelson and the
rest of 'em 'ud have no merit i' beating 'em, if they were such offal as
folks pretend."
Mr. Poyser looked doubtfully at Mr. Craig, puzzled by this opposition of
authorities. Mr. Irwine's testimony was not to be disputed; but, on the
other hand, Craig was a knowing fellow, and his view was less startling.
Martin had never "heard tell" of the French being good for much. Mr.
Craig had found no answer but such as was implied in taking a long
draught of ale and then looking down fixedly at the proportions of his
own leg, which he turned a little outward for that purpose, when Bartle
Massey returned from the fireplace, where he had been smoking his
first pipe in quiet, and broke the silence by saying, as he thrust his
forefinger into the canister, "Why, Adam, how happened you not to be at
church on Sunday? Answer me that, you rascal. The anthem went limping
without you. Are you going to disgrace your schoolmaster in his old
age?"
"No, Mr. Massey," said Adam. "Mr. and Mrs. Poyser can tell you where I
was. I was in no bad company."
"She's gone, Adam--gone to Snowfield," said Mr. Poyser, reminded of
Dinah for the first time this evening. "I thought you'd ha' persuaded
her better. Nought 'ud hold her, but she must go yesterday forenoon. The
missis has hardly got over it. I thought she'd ha' no sperrit for th'
harvest supper."
Mrs. Poyser had thought of Dinah several times since Adam had come in,
but she had had "no heart" to mention the bad news.
"What!" said Bartle, with an air of disgust. "Was there a woman
concerned? Then I give you up, Adam."
"But it's a woman you'n spoke well on, Bartle," said Mr. Poyser. "Come
now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha' been a bad
invention if they'd all been like Dinah."
"I meant her voice, man--I meant her voice, that was all," said Bartle.
"I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears. As
for other things, I daresay she's like the rest o' the women--thinks
two and two 'll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about
it."
"Aye, aye!" said Mrs. Poyser; "one 'ud think, an' hear some folks talk,
as the men war 'cute enough to count the corns in a bag o' wheat wi'
only smelling at it. They can see through a barn-door, they can. Perhaps
that's the reason THEY can see so little o' this side on't."
Martin Poyser shook with delighted laughter and winked at Adam, as much
as to say the schoolmaster was in for it now.
"Ah!" said Bartle sneeringly, "the women are quick enough--they're quick
enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can
tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself."
"Like enough," said Mrs. Poyser, "for the men are mostly so slow, their
thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can
count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready an' when he
outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's
your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. Howiver, I'm not denyin' the
women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men."
"Match!" said Bartle. "Aye, as vinegar matches one's teeth. If a man
says a word, his wife 'll match it with a contradiction; if he's a
mind for hot meat, his wife 'll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs,
she'll match him with whimpering. She's such a match as the horse-fly
is to th' horse: she's got the right venom to sting him with--the right
venom to sting him with."
"Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, "I know what the men like--a poor soft, as 'ud
simper at 'em like the picture o' the sun, whether they did right or
wrong, an' say thank you for a kick, an' pretend she didna know which
end she stood uppermost, till her husband told her. That's what a man
wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure o' one fool as 'ull tell
him he's wise. But there's some men can do wi'out that--they think so
much o' themselves a'ready. An' that's how it is there's old bachelors."
"Come, Craig," said Mr. Poyser jocosely, "you mun get married pretty
quick, else you'll be set down for an old bachelor; an' you see what the
women 'ull think on you."
"Well," said Mr. Craig, willing to conciliate Mrs. Poyser and setting a
high value on his own compliments, "I like a cleverish woman--a woman o'
sperrit--a managing woman."
"You're out there, Craig," said Bartle, dryly; "you're out there. You
judge o' your garden-stuff on a better plan than that. You pick the
things for what they can excel in--for what they can excel in. You don't
value your peas for their roots, or your carrots for their flowers. Now,
that's the way you should choose women. Their cleverness 'll never come
to much--never come to much--but they make excellent simpletons, ripe
and strong-flavoured."
"What dost say to that?" said Mr. Poyser, throwing himself back and
looking merrily at his wife.
"Say!" answered Mrs. Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling in her
eye. "Why, I say as some folks' tongues are like the clocks as run
on strikin', not to tell you the time o' the day, but because there's
summat wrong i' their own inside..."
Mrs. Poyser would probably have brought her rejoinder to a further
climax, if every one's attention had not at this moment been called to
the other end of the table, where the lyricism, which had at first only
manifested itself by David's sotto voce performance of "My love's a rose
without a thorn," had gradually assumed a rather deafening and complex
character. Tim, thinking slightly of David's vocalization, was impelled
to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of "Three Merry
Mowers," but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself
capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether
the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when old Kester, with
an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set up a quavering
treble--as if he had been an alarum, and the time was come for him to go
off.
The company at Alick's end of the table took this form of vocal
entertainment very much as a matter of course, being free from musical
prejudices; but Bartle Massey laid down his pipe and put his fingers in
his ears; and Adam, who had been longing to go ever since he had heard
Dinah was not in the house, rose and said he must bid good-night.
"I'll go with you, lad," said Bartle; "I'll go with you before my ears
are split."
"I'll go round by the Common and see you home, if you like, Mr. Massey,"
said Adam.
"Aye, aye!" said Bartle; "then we can have a bit o' talk together. I
never get hold of you now."
"Eh! It's a pity but you'd sit it out," said Martin Poyser. "They'll all
go soon, for th' missis niver lets 'em stay past ten."
But Adam was resolute, so the good-nights were said, and the two friends
turned out on their starlight walk together.
"There's that poor fool, Vixen, whimpering for me at home," said Bartle.
"I can never bring her here with me for fear she should be struck with
Mrs. Poyser's eye, and the poor bitch might go limping for ever after."
"I've never any need to drive Gyp back," said Adam, laughing. "He always
turns back of his own head when he finds out I'm coming here."
"Aye, aye," said Bartle. "A terrible woman!--made of needles, made of
needles. But I stick to Martin--I shall always stick to Martin. And
he likes the needles, God help him! He's a cushion made on purpose for
'em."
"But she's a downright good-natur'd woman, for all that," said Adam,
"and as true as the daylight. She's a bit cross wi' the dogs when they
offer to come in th' house, but if they depended on her, she'd take care
and have 'em well fed. If her tongue's keen, her heart's tender: I've
seen that in times o' trouble. She's one o' those women as are better
than their word."
"Well, well," said Bartle, "I don't say th' apple isn't sound at the
core; but it sets my teeth on edge--it sets my teeth on edge."
| 7,985 | Chapter 53 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter53 | The Harvest Supper It is the time of country harvest, with the barley rolling by on the loaded wagons. The beauty of the country strikes Adam "like a funeral-bell" for "there's a parting at the root of all our joys" . It is the time of thanksgiving, though, and he realizes that out of the sorrow of Hetty came the joy of Dinah, an even greater love. He goes to the harvest supper at the Hall Farm, hoping Dinah has not yet left. He does not see her there but does not learn until later that she is already gone to Snowfield. Meanwhile, the ritual of the feast is presided over by Martin Poyser, who is proud to serve the beer and roast beef to family, friends, and farm hands. There is singing and toasting, as the reader is introduced to various colorful farm workers. A comic political discussion about Bonaparte and the French illustrates the ignorance of the country folk about the greater world affairs. The comic highlight, however, is an exchange of wit between Bartle Massey and Mrs. Poyser on the difference between men and women, Bartle denouncing women, and Mrs. Poyser denouncing men. Finally Adam and Bartle Massey walk home together, and Adam says that even though Mrs. Poyser has a sharp tongue, she is a woman better than her word, who is there in time of need and trouble. | Commentary on Chapter 53 This is a bit of comedy and local color to round out the novel, serving to bring us back to the pastoral mood of the setting. It was spring in the country in the beginning of the story, a kind of golden world of innocence where there was as yet no hint of tragedy. The bulk of the novel tells the disruption of that ideal life by one event that touches everyone. The novel ends in the autumn, a reaping of fruits, both good and bad. There has been sorrow, but new beginnings as well. The peace and harmony are being re-established, even though there has been a cost, and Adam is now reminded of the funeral bell underneath all joy. For the admirable characters, however, all life is transmuted by experience and suffering into something better, and these are the fruits they now enjoy together. The political talk of the Napoleonic war, a major event in English history, is felt as the faintest echo in Hayslope. The ignorant opinions bandied about over beer show how untouched this remote district is from larger world disturbances. The tragedy of Hetty has been the local event of importance and "Bony" is as real to the farmers as Old Harry that Mrs. Poyser keeps referring to . Arthur Donnithorne is the only character in their world to take part in events on both the local level and the national level, for he leaves Hayslope for the war. Eliot's tone towards the Hayslope community is elegiac, looking back to a landscape and a time that is gone forever. It contains her own childhood memories of country life and characters. | 323 | 279 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/54.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_54_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 54 | chapter 54 | null | {"name": "Chapter 54", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter54", "summary": "The Meeting on the Hill Adam is patient with Dinah's absence and silence for six weeks; after that, he feels he must go to Snowfield to get her answer. He borrows Jonathan Burge's horse so he can get there faster. As he travels there, he remembers the sad journey in search of Hetty, but his sorrow and experience have enlarged his perspective and make him appreciate in all humility the love for Dinah. He finds that Dinah is preaching in a small village a few miles off and goes there to wait for her. He chooses a spot on top of a nearby hill where she will pass on the way home so that he may speak to her in private. He waits an hour and then sees her figure winding up the hill. As Adam rises up to greet her, she turns to look at the village she has just left. He calls her name from behind. She does not answer at first, feeling it could be an inward voice, for she believes she is alone. He repeats her name, and she turns around. They move into each other's arms. She cries as they walk in silence. Finally, she tells Adam that she is living a divided life without him. She believes God wants her to be with him, and he says they will never part.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 54 This is an idyllic scene, set in nature, with the lovers harmonizing with the countryside as they declare their love. Earthly love and heavenly love are integrated, and it is done very naturally and peacefully. Their union completes the main action of the story by carrying out the healing of the individuals and their community. The narrator shows that both characters have grown spiritually and thus, deserve this happiness. Sorrow can bring \"enlarged being\" . Adam's love for Dinah springs out of the love for Hetty but is greater and more precious. He feels that Dinah is \"better than I am\" and will look up to her for her wisdom . With such a love he will be more fearlessly free to be himself, because there is someone else to trust. If Adam looks up to Dinah as a heavenly being, Dinah has to learn to come down to earth. She knows with Adam's love and strength she will be able to follow God's will more easily. There is no divided love, only the same love in both hearts."} |
ADAM understood Dinah's haste to go away, and drew hope rather than
discouragement from it. She was fearful lest the strength of her feeling
towards him should hinder her from waiting and listening faithfully for
the ultimate guiding voice from within.
"I wish I'd asked her to write to me, though," he thought. "And yet even
that might disturb her a bit, perhaps. She wants to be quite quiet
in her old way for a while. And I've no right to be impatient and
interrupting her with my wishes. She's told me what her mind is,
and she's not a woman to say one thing and mean another. I'll wait
patiently."
That was Adam's wise resolution, and it throve excellently for the first
two or three weeks on the nourishment it got from the remembrance of
Dinah's confession that Sunday afternoon. There is a wonderful amount
of sustenance in the first few words of love. But towards the middle
of October the resolution began to dwindle perceptibly, and showed
dangerous symptoms of exhaustion. The weeks were unusually long: Dinah
must surely have had more than enough time to make up her mind. Let a
woman say what she will after she has once told a man that she loves
him, he is a little too flushed and exalted with that first draught she
offers him to care much about the taste of the second. He treads the
earth with a very elastic step as he walks away from her, and makes
light of all difficulties. But that sort of glow dies out: memory gets
sadly diluted with time, and is not strong enough to revive us. Adam
was no longer so confident as he had been. He began to fear that perhaps
Dinah's old life would have too strong a grasp upon her for any new
feeling to triumph. If she had not felt this, she would surely have
written to him to give him some comfort; but it appeared that she held
it right to discourage him. As Adam's confidence waned, his patience
waned with it, and he thought he must write himself. He must ask Dinah
not to leave him in painful doubt longer than was needful. He sat up
late one night to write her a letter, but the next morning he burnt it,
afraid of its effect. It would be worse to have a discouraging answer
by letter than from her own lips, for her presence reconciled him to her
will.
You perceive how it was: Adam was hungering for the sight of Dinah, and
when that sort of hunger reaches a certain stage, a lover is likely to
still it though he may have to put his future in pawn.
But what harm could he do by going to Snowfield? Dinah could not be
displeased with him for it. She had not forbidden him to go. She must
surely expect that he would go before long. By the second Sunday in
October this view of the case had become so clear to Adam that he was
already on his way to Snowfield, on horseback this time, for his hours
were precious now, and he had borrowed Jonathan Burge's good nag for the
journey.
What keen memories went along the road with him! He had often been to
Oakbourne and back since that first journey to Snowfield, but beyond
Oakbourne the greystone walls, the broken country, the meagre trees,
seemed to be telling him afresh the story of that painful past which he
knew so well by heart. But no story is the same to us after a lapse of
time--or rather, we who read it are no longer the same interpreters--and
Adam this morning brought with him new thoughts through that grey
country, thoughts which gave an altered significance to its story of the
past.
That is a base and selfish, even a blasphemous, spirit which rejoices
and is thankful over the past evil that has blighted or crushed another,
because it has been made a source of unforeseen good to ourselves. Adam
could never cease to mourn over that mystery of human sorrow which had
been brought so close to him; he could never thank God for another's
misery. And if I were capable of that narrow-sighted joy in Adam's
behalf, I should still know he was not the man to feel it for himself.
He would have shaken his head at such a sentiment and said, "Evil's
evil, and sorrow's sorrow, and you can't alter it's natur by wrapping
it up in other words. Other folks were not created for my sake, that I
should think all square when things turn out well for me."
But it is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad
experience has brought us is worth our own personal share of pain.
Surely it is not possible to feel otherwise, any more than it would be
possible for a man with cataract to regret the painful process by which
his dim blurred sight of men as trees walking had been exchanged for
clear outline and effulgent day. The growth of higher feeling within
us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added
strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than
a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a
philosopher to his less complete formula.
Something like this sense of enlarged being was in Adam's mind this
Sunday morning, as he rode along in vivid recollection of the past. His
feeling towards Dinah, the hope of passing his life with her, had been
the distant unseen point towards which that hard journey from Snowfield
eighteen months ago had been leading him. Tender and deep as his love
for Hetty had been--so deep that the roots of it would never be torn
away--his love for Dinah was better and more precious to him, for it
was the outgrowth of that fuller life which had come to him from his
acquaintance with deep sorrow. "It's like as if it was a new strength to
me," he said to himself, "to love her and know as she loves me. I shall
look t' her to help me to see things right. For she's better than I
am--there's less o' self in her, and pride. And it's a feeling as gives
you a sort o' liberty, as if you could walk more fearless, when you've
more trust in another than y' have in yourself. I've always been
thinking I knew better than them as belonged to me, and that's a poor
sort o' life, when you can't look to them nearest to you t' help you
with a bit better thought than what you've got inside you a'ready."
It was more than two o'clock in the afternoon when Adam came in sight of
the grey town on the hill-side and looked searchingly towards the green
valley below, for the first glimpse of the old thatched roof near the
ugly red mill. The scene looked less harsh in the soft October sunshine
than it had in the eager time of early spring, and the one grand charm
it possessed in common with all wide-stretching woodless regions--that
it filled you with a new consciousness of the overarching sky--had a
milder, more soothing influence than usual, on this almost cloudless
day. Adam's doubts and fears melted under this influence as the delicate
weblike clouds had gradually melted away into the clear blue above him.
He seemed to see Dinah's gentle face assuring him, with its looks alone,
of all he longed to know.
He did not expect Dinah to be at home at this hour, but he got down from
his horse and tied it at the little gate, that he might ask where she
was gone to-day. He had set his mind on following her and bringing her
home. She was gone to Sloman's End, a hamlet about three miles off, over
the hill, the old woman told him--had set off directly after morning
chapel, to preach in a cottage there, as her habit was. Anybody at the
town would tell him the way to Sloman's End. So Adam got on his horse
again and rode to the town, putting up at the old inn and taking a
hasty dinner there in the company of the too chatty landlord, from whose
friendly questions and reminiscences he was glad to escape as soon as
possible and set out towards Sloman's End. With all his haste it was
nearly four o'clock before he could set off, and he thought that as
Dinah had gone so early, she would perhaps already be near returning.
The little, grey, desolate-looking hamlet, unscreened by sheltering
trees, lay in sight long before he reached it, and as he came near he
could hear the sound of voices singing a hymn. "Perhaps that's the last
hymn before they come away," Adam thought. "I'll walk back a bit and
turn again to meet her, farther off the village." He walked back till he
got nearly to the top of the hill again, and seated himself on a loose
stone, against the low wall, to watch till he should see the little
black figure leaving the hamlet and winding up the hill. He chose
this spot, almost at the top of the hill, because it was away from all
eyes--no house, no cattle, not even a nibbling sheep near--no presence
but the still lights and shadows and the great embracing sky.
She was much longer coming than he expected. He waited an hour at
least watching for her and thinking of her, while the afternoon shadows
lengthened and the light grew softer. At last he saw the little black
figure coming from between the grey houses and gradually approaching the
foot of the hill. Slowly, Adam thought, but Dinah was really walking at
her usual pace, with a light quiet step. Now she was beginning to wind
along the path up the hill, but Adam would not move yet; he would not
meet her too soon; he had set his heart on meeting her in this assured
loneliness. And now he began to fear lest he should startle her too
much. "Yet," he thought, "she's not one to be overstartled; she's always
so calm and quiet, as if she was prepared for anything."
What was she thinking of as she wound up the hill? Perhaps she had found
complete repose without him, and had ceased to feel any need of his
love. On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope pauses with
fluttering wings.
But now at last she was very near, and Adam rose from the stone wall.
It happened that just as he walked forward, Dinah had paused and turned
round to look back at the village--who does not pause and look back in
mounting a hill? Adam was glad, for, with the fine instinct of a lover,
he felt that it would be best for her to hear his voice before she
saw him. He came within three paces of her and then said, "Dinah!" She
started without looking round, as if she connected the sound with no
place. "Dinah!" Adam said again. He knew quite well what was in her
mind. She was so accustomed to think of impressions as purely spiritual
monitions that she looked for no material visible accompaniment of the
voice.
But this second time she looked round. What a look of yearning love it
was that the mild grey eyes turned on the strong dark-eyed man! She did
not start again at the sight of him; she said nothing, but moved towards
him so that his arm could clasp her round.
And they walked on so in silence, while the warm tears fell. Adam was
content, and said nothing. It was Dinah who spoke first.
"Adam," she said, "it is the Divine Will. My soul is so knit to yours
that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this moment, now
you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same
love. I have a fulness of strength to bear and do our heavenly Father's
Will that I had lost before."
Adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes.
"Then we'll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us."
And they kissed each other with a deep joy.
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they
are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on
each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be
one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the
last parting?
| 2,860 | Chapter 54 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter54 | The Meeting on the Hill Adam is patient with Dinah's absence and silence for six weeks; after that, he feels he must go to Snowfield to get her answer. He borrows Jonathan Burge's horse so he can get there faster. As he travels there, he remembers the sad journey in search of Hetty, but his sorrow and experience have enlarged his perspective and make him appreciate in all humility the love for Dinah. He finds that Dinah is preaching in a small village a few miles off and goes there to wait for her. He chooses a spot on top of a nearby hill where she will pass on the way home so that he may speak to her in private. He waits an hour and then sees her figure winding up the hill. As Adam rises up to greet her, she turns to look at the village she has just left. He calls her name from behind. She does not answer at first, feeling it could be an inward voice, for she believes she is alone. He repeats her name, and she turns around. They move into each other's arms. She cries as they walk in silence. Finally, she tells Adam that she is living a divided life without him. She believes God wants her to be with him, and he says they will never part. | Commentary on Chapter 54 This is an idyllic scene, set in nature, with the lovers harmonizing with the countryside as they declare their love. Earthly love and heavenly love are integrated, and it is done very naturally and peacefully. Their union completes the main action of the story by carrying out the healing of the individuals and their community. The narrator shows that both characters have grown spiritually and thus, deserve this happiness. Sorrow can bring "enlarged being" . Adam's love for Dinah springs out of the love for Hetty but is greater and more precious. He feels that Dinah is "better than I am" and will look up to her for her wisdom . With such a love he will be more fearlessly free to be himself, because there is someone else to trust. If Adam looks up to Dinah as a heavenly being, Dinah has to learn to come down to earth. She knows with Adam's love and strength she will be able to follow God's will more easily. There is no divided love, only the same love in both hearts. | 291 | 183 |
507 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/55.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_55_part_0.txt | Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 55 | chapter 55 | null | {"name": "Chapter 55", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter55", "summary": "Marriage Bells One month later, Adam and Dinah are married. Mr. Burge's workers are given a holiday; Mrs. Irwine and her daughters are in a carriage to shake hands with bride and groom after Mr. Irwine marries them. From the Donnithorne household come Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and Mr. Craig. The Poysers are there and Bartle Massey. Mrs. Poyser makes Dinah take off her black dress and gives her a grey Quaker dress. Adam feels a slight sadness underneath his joy, and Dinah understands. In the bridal party are Mary Burge as the bridesmaid, and Seth with Mrs. Poyser; Bartle Massey takes Lisbeth's arm. Mr. Irwine sets off to write the good news to Arthur.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 54 Although some readers do not believe the happy ending makes sense, it is in keeping with what Eliot is trying to show: some good can be harvested from suffering by the wise. It does not mean that Eliot is overly optimistic, for she paints a picture of life as a mixed bag of positive and negative, not always in the control of the individual. Selfless characters, however, do better in the long run by causing as little harm as possible, and by actively turning everything to good account. Adam is a case in point. He does not just ride off into the sunset with another woman, after the catastrophe. The narrator points out that both Adam and Arthur have been scarred for life. Even on Adam's wedding day, he has some sadness, for he won't forget Hetty, and Dinah does not expect him to. Because they shared the time of trouble, Adam feels that Dinah does not rival the first love but completes it. She was the one who stuck by Hetty; she knows how Adam feels and what he suffered. She was the friend who brought him out of his grief. Is Dinah too idealistic a figure to believe in? She was based on Eliot's own fond memories of her preaching Methodist aunt. Dinah also bears many of Eliot's own personality traits, according to contemporary accounts. She is certainly saintly, and perhaps that is why she needs to be brought down to earth as a woman, wife, and mother at the end of the story. Dinah is one of Eliot's many saintly women characters, who strive for a higher life by being selfless in everyday concerns. of Epilogue On a June evening of 1807, Adam Bede's workshop, that used to be Jonathan Burge's, has just closed. It is nine years since the beginning of the story. Dinah appears outside the Bede cottage with her two children. She is more matronly now, and she is waiting for Adam to come home. Uncle Seth has the four year old daughter who looks like Dinah, with pale auburn hair, and the little two year old boy with black hair, who looks like Adam. His greatest happiness is being an uncle. Dinah takes Arthur's watch from her pocket to mark the time."} |
IN little more than a month after that meeting on the hill--on a rimy
morning in departing November--Adam and Dinah were married.
It was an event much thought of in the village. All Mr. Burge's men had
a holiday, and all Mr. Poyser's, and most of those who had a holiday
appeared in their best clothes at the wedding. I think there was hardly
an inhabitant of Hayslope specially mentioned in this history and still
resident in the parish on this November morning who was not either in
church to see Adam and Dinah married, or near the church door to greet
them as they came forth. Mrs. Irwine and her daughters were waiting at
the churchyard gates in their carriage (for they had a carriage now) to
shake hands with the bride and bridegroom and wish them well; and in the
absence of Miss Lydia Donnithorne at Bath, Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and
Mr. Craig had felt it incumbent on them to represent "the family" at the
Chase on the occasion. The churchyard walk was quite lined with familiar
faces, many of them faces that had first looked at Dinah when she
preached on the Green. And no wonder they showed this eager interest on
her marriage morning, for nothing like Dinah and the history which had
brought her and Adam Bede together had been known at Hayslope within the
memory of man.
Bessy Cranage, in her neatest cap and frock, was crying, though she did
not exactly know why; for, as her cousin Wiry Ben, who stood near her,
judiciously suggested, Dinah was not going away, and if Bessy was in low
spirits, the best thing for her to do was to follow Dinah's example and
marry an honest fellow who was ready to have her. Next to Bessy, just
within the church door, there were the Poyser children, peeping round
the corner of the pews to get a sight of the mysterious ceremony;
Totty's face wearing an unusual air of anxiety at the idea of seeing
cousin Dinah come back looking rather old, for in Totty's experience no
married people were young.
I envy them all the sight they had when the marriage was fairly ended
and Adam led Dinah out of church. She was not in black this morning,
for her Aunt Poyser would by no means allow such a risk of incurring bad
luck, and had herself made a present of the wedding dress, made all of
grey, though in the usual Quaker form, for on this point Dinah could not
give way. So the lily face looked out with sweet gravity from under
a grey Quaker bonnet, neither smiling nor blushing, but with lips
trembling a little under the weight of solemn feelings. Adam, as he
pressed her arm to his side, walked with his old erectness and his head
thrown rather backward as if to face all the world better. But it was
not because he was particularly proud this morning, as is the wont of
bridegrooms, for his happiness was of a kind that had little reference
to men's opinion of it. There was a tinge of sadness in his deep joy;
Dinah knew it, and did not feel aggrieved.
There were three other couples, following the bride and bridegroom:
first, Martin Poyser, looking as cheery as a bright fire on this rimy
morning, led quiet Mary Burge, the bridesmaid; then came Seth serenely
happy, with Mrs. Poyser on his arm; and last of all Bartle Massey, with
Lisbeth--Lisbeth in a new gown and bonnet, too busy with her pride in
her son and her delight in possessing the one daughter she had desired
to devise a single pretext for complaint.
Bartle Massey had consented to attend the wedding at Adam's earnest
request, under protest against marriage in general and the marriage of a
sensible man in particular. Nevertheless, Mr. Poyser had a joke against
him after the wedding dinner, to the effect that in the vestry he had
given the bride one more kiss than was necessary.
Behind this last couple came Mr. Irwine, glad at heart over this good
morning's work of joining Adam and Dinah. For he had seen Adam in the
worst moments of his sorrow; and what better harvest from that painful
seed-time could there be than this? The love that had brought hope and
comfort in the hour of despair, the love that had found its way to the
dark prison cell and to poor Hetty's darker soul--this strong gentle
love was to be Adam's companion and helper till death.
There was much shaking of hands mingled with "God bless you's" and other
good wishes to the four couples, at the churchyard gate, Mr. Poyser
answering for the rest with unwonted vivacity of tongue, for he had
all the appropriate wedding-day jokes at his command. And the women, he
observed, could never do anything but put finger in eye at a wedding.
Even Mrs. Poyser could not trust herself to speak as the neighbours
shook hands with her, and Lisbeth began to cry in the face of the very
first person who told her she was getting young again.
Mr. Joshua Rann, having a slight touch of rheumatism, did not join
in the ringing of the bells this morning, and, looking on with some
contempt at these informal greetings which required no official
co-operation from the clerk, began to hum in his musical bass, "Oh what
a joyful thing it is," by way of preluding a little to the effect he
intended to produce in the wedding psalm next Sunday.
"That's a bit of good news to cheer Arthur," said Mr. Irwine to his
mother, as they drove off. "I shall write to him the first thing when we
get home."
| 1,352 | Chapter 55 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter55 | Marriage Bells One month later, Adam and Dinah are married. Mr. Burge's workers are given a holiday; Mrs. Irwine and her daughters are in a carriage to shake hands with bride and groom after Mr. Irwine marries them. From the Donnithorne household come Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and Mr. Craig. The Poysers are there and Bartle Massey. Mrs. Poyser makes Dinah take off her black dress and gives her a grey Quaker dress. Adam feels a slight sadness underneath his joy, and Dinah understands. In the bridal party are Mary Burge as the bridesmaid, and Seth with Mrs. Poyser; Bartle Massey takes Lisbeth's arm. Mr. Irwine sets off to write the good news to Arthur. | Commentary on Chapter 54 Although some readers do not believe the happy ending makes sense, it is in keeping with what Eliot is trying to show: some good can be harvested from suffering by the wise. It does not mean that Eliot is overly optimistic, for she paints a picture of life as a mixed bag of positive and negative, not always in the control of the individual. Selfless characters, however, do better in the long run by causing as little harm as possible, and by actively turning everything to good account. Adam is a case in point. He does not just ride off into the sunset with another woman, after the catastrophe. The narrator points out that both Adam and Arthur have been scarred for life. Even on Adam's wedding day, he has some sadness, for he won't forget Hetty, and Dinah does not expect him to. Because they shared the time of trouble, Adam feels that Dinah does not rival the first love but completes it. She was the one who stuck by Hetty; she knows how Adam feels and what he suffered. She was the friend who brought him out of his grief. Is Dinah too idealistic a figure to believe in? She was based on Eliot's own fond memories of her preaching Methodist aunt. Dinah also bears many of Eliot's own personality traits, according to contemporary accounts. She is certainly saintly, and perhaps that is why she needs to be brought down to earth as a woman, wife, and mother at the end of the story. Dinah is one of Eliot's many saintly women characters, who strive for a higher life by being selfless in everyday concerns. of Epilogue On a June evening of 1807, Adam Bede's workshop, that used to be Jonathan Burge's, has just closed. It is nine years since the beginning of the story. Dinah appears outside the Bede cottage with her two children. She is more matronly now, and she is waiting for Adam to come home. Uncle Seth has the four year old daughter who looks like Dinah, with pale auburn hair, and the little two year old boy with black hair, who looks like Adam. His greatest happiness is being an uncle. Dinah takes Arthur's watch from her pocket to mark the time. | 196 | 383 |
2,852 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/05.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_2_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter v | chapter v | null | {"name": "Chapter V", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-v", "summary": "Three Broken Threads After two hours in a museum - Watson remarks on Holmes's unique ability to divert his attention when necessary - they visit the Northumberland Hotel, where Sir Henry Baskerville is staying. Examining the register, Holmes pretends to know two of the hotel's visitors, and fools the clerk into revealing information about them. As they are walking upstairs, they run into Sir Henry, who is angry because another of his boots is missing. He has no explanation for the disappearance. Later, after lunch in the hotel room, Holmes approves of Sir Henry's decision to inhabit Baskerville Hall, since it will allow Holmes to flush out the culprit more easily than he can in crowded London. From Dr. Mortimer, Holmes and Watson learn that the only moor resident with a black beard is Barrymore, Baskerville Hall's butler. Intrigued, Holmes orders a telegram sent to Devonshire, to determine whether Barrymore is there. Mortimer then discusses the contents of Sir Charles's will, in the hopes of sussing out a murder motive. Barrymore and his wife inherited money from Sir Charles's will, and they were aware of that intention. However, Dr. Mortimer adds that several people - himself included - were bequeathed money by the will. Sir Henry was naturally left the most money, and because he has no direct heir, that fortune and the estate would fall to some distant cousins, the Desmonds, if were to die. Holmes then proposes that Watson accompany Sir Henry to Baskerville Hall, as protection. Holmes will join them that Saturday, after completing some business on another case in London. Before the men leave, Sir Henry finds one of his brown boot under a cabinet, which is confusing since Mortimer had thoroughly searched the room before lunch. They surmise a waiter had found and placed it there, but the waiter knows nothing of it when he is called and questioned. That evening, Watson and Holmes receive two telegrams. The first is a return telegram from Barrymore, suggesting that he is indeed at Baskerville Hall. The second reports that Cartwright has been unable to find the cut sheet of the newspaper. At that moment, the cab driver, whom Holmes had sent for earlier, appears at the door. He tells Holmes that the bearded man had claimed to be a detective, and had told him to say nothing to anyone. Strangest of all, the man had claimed to be named \"Mr. Sherlock Holmes\" . Holmes is surprised and amused. He pays the cab driver for details of the day's journey, and then sends the driver away. Noting that \"our third thread\" has snapped, Holmes admires his adversary as \"worthy of our steel\" . He then wishes Watson luck in Devonshire, noting that this case is proving to be an ugly business.", "analysis": "In this section, three \"threads\" lead to dead-ends. On the one hand, this presents obstacles that challenge our detective. However, it is crucial to realize that even dead-ends provide central questions and clues for one as perceptive as Holmes. For instance: Who would steal a boot, then return it? How did this person get into the hotel unbeknownst to Holmes, Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry? Who could be so clever as to pose as Holmes? Does the mystery man in the cab already know who Sherlock Holmes is? The criminal here proves to be as cunning as the detective, as Holmes himself declares that he has been \"checkmated\" . In other words, the wits of the detective and criminal are matched here. This is important for two reasons. The first is that it keeps the story interesting; the story gains momentum only because the adversary can think like the hero, and hence complicate the latter's pursuit of his objective. However, it is also important in context, considering that this was one of the later Holmes novels. Audiences would have been familiar with Holmes's genius by this point, and hence would themselves grow bored if the mystery were not beyond even the hero. And yet the criminal's genius is important for Holmes as well. Notice his response to having been fooled; he laughs. It is a central part of Holmes's character - one that later writers have capitalized on even more than Doyle did - that Holmes is motivated by the game, and not by empathy. In other words, he does not want to solve the case to help someone - if he did, an easy victory would be preferable. Instead, he wants to be tested so that he can triumph. The criminal's trickery complicates his mission, and hence makes his eventual victory all the more satisfying. Another character insight is provided by the museum visit at the top of this chapter. Though only a short paragraph, the incident touches on the elusive nature of genius. Holmes is able to divert his attention when there is no path to follow, again suggesting that he is not at all affected by the human element of his story. He is not worried about people, but only about the case. When the case is momentarily cold, he chooses to spend his time elsewhere. However, the idea that he would study paintings also provides some insight into Doyle's depiction of the mind, which employs both subconscious and conscious faculties to reach its potential. Certainly, there are times when Holmes confronts a problem through deliberate thought, but there are then others when he does not think explicitly on the case, leaving his mind to work in the background while he focuses on something else. Some insight is given into the nature of Watson and Holmes's relationship in this chapter as well. Watson is surprised to hear that Holmes has volunteered him to accompany Sir Henry. What is implied here - and in the first chapter, when Holmes has Watson attempt to interpret Dr. Mortimer's walking stick - is a level of condescension that Holmes employs towards his friend. Watson is so immediately pleased to be of use that we are led to realize that he is not frequently of much use, at least not in a way that Holmes acknowledges. This inconsideration is made more explicit later, when Watson finds that Holmes is merely using him as a pawn in his greater game."} |
Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching
his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had
been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in
the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing
but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery
until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel.
"Sir Henry Baskerville is upstairs expecting you," said the clerk. "He
asked me to show you up at once when you came."
"Have you any objection to my looking at your register?" said Holmes.
"Not in the least."
The book showed that two names had been added after that of Baskerville.
One was Theophilus Johnson and family, of Newcastle; the other Mrs.
Oldmore and maid, of High Lodge, Alton.
"Surely that must be the same Johnson whom I used to know," said Holmes
to the porter. "A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks with a
limp?"
"No, sir, this is Mr. Johnson, the coal-owner, a very active gentleman,
not older than yourself."
"Surely you are mistaken about his trade?"
"No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well
known to us."
"Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name.
Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds
another."
"She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester.
She always comes to us when she is in town."
"Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance. We have
established a most important fact by these questions, Watson," he
continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together. "We know now that
the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down
in his own hotel. That means that while they are, as we have seen, very
anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see
them. Now, this is a most suggestive fact."
"What does it suggest?"
"It suggests--halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?"
As we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Henry
Baskerville himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old
and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly
articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more
Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning.
"Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel," he cried.
"They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless
they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot
there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but
they've got a bit over the mark this time."
"Still looking for your boot?"
"Yes, sir, and mean to find it."
"But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?"
"So it was, sir. And now it's an old black one."
"What! you don't mean to say--?"
"That's just what I do mean to say. I only had three pairs in the
world--the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am
wearing. Last night they took one of my brown ones, and today they have
sneaked one of the black. Well, have you got it? Speak out, man, and
don't stand staring!"
An agitated German waiter had appeared upon the scene.
"No, sir; I have made inquiry all over the hotel, but I can hear no word
of it."
"Well, either that boot comes back before sundown or I'll see the
manager and tell him that I go right straight out of this hotel."
"It shall be found, sir--I promise you that if you will have a little
patience it will be found."
"Mind it is, for it's the last thing of mine that I'll lose in this den
of thieves. Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you'll excuse my troubling you about
such a trifle--"
"I think it's well worth troubling about."
"Why, you look very serious over it."
"How do you explain it?"
"I just don't attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest
thing that ever happened to me."
"The queerest perhaps--" said Holmes thoughtfully.
"What do you make of it yourself?"
"Well, I don't profess to understand it yet. This case of yours is very
complex, Sir Henry. When taken in conjunction with your uncle's death
I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance
which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold
several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them
guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one,
but sooner or later we must come upon the right."
We had a pleasant luncheon in which little was said of the business
which had brought us together. It was in the private sitting-room to
which we afterwards repaired that Holmes asked Baskerville what were his
intentions.
"To go to Baskerville Hall."
"And when?"
"At the end of the week."
"On the whole," said Holmes, "I think that your decision is a wise one.
I have ample evidence that you are being dogged in London, and amid the
millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people
are or what their object can be. If their intentions are evil they might
do you a mischief, and we should be powerless to prevent it. You did not
know, Dr. Mortimer, that you were followed this morning from my house?"
Dr. Mortimer started violently. "Followed! By whom?"
"That, unfortunately, is what I cannot tell you. Have you among your
neighbours or acquaintances on Dartmoor any man with a black, full
beard?"
"No--or, let me see--why, yes. Barrymore, Sir Charles's butler, is a man
with a full, black beard."
"Ha! Where is Barrymore?"
"He is in charge of the Hall."
"We had best ascertain if he is really there, or if by any possibility
he might be in London."
"How can you do that?"
"Give me a telegraph form. 'Is all ready for Sir Henry?' That will
do. Address to Mr. Barrymore, Baskerville Hall. What is the nearest
telegraph-office? Grimpen. Very good, we will send a second wire to the
postmaster, Grimpen: 'Telegram to Mr. Barrymore to be delivered into
his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Henry Baskerville,
Northumberland Hotel.' That should let us know before evening whether
Barrymore is at his post in Devonshire or not."
"That's so," said Baskerville. "By the way, Dr. Mortimer, who is this
Barrymore, anyhow?"
"He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after
the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife are
as respectable a couple as any in the county."
"At the same time," said Baskerville, "it's clear enough that so long as
there are none of the family at the Hall these people have a mighty fine
home and nothing to do."
"That is true."
"Did Barrymore profit at all by Sir Charles's will?" asked Holmes.
"He and his wife had five hundred pounds each."
"Ha! Did they know that they would receive this?"
"Yes; Sir Charles was very fond of talking about the provisions of his
will."
"That is very interesting."
"I hope," said Dr. Mortimer, "that you do not look with suspicious eyes
upon everyone who received a legacy from Sir Charles, for I also had a
thousand pounds left to me."
"Indeed! And anyone else?"
"There were many insignificant sums to individuals, and a large number
of public charities. The residue all went to Sir Henry."
"And how much was the residue?"
"Seven hundred and forty thousand pounds."
Holmes raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I had no idea that so gigantic
a sum was involved," said he.
"Sir Charles had the reputation of being rich, but we did not know how
very rich he was until we came to examine his securities. The total
value of the estate was close on to a million."
"Dear me! It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate
game. And one more question, Dr. Mortimer. Supposing that anything
happened to our young friend here--you will forgive the unpleasant
hypothesis!--who would inherit the estate?"
"Since Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles's younger brother died unmarried,
the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James
Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland."
"Thank you. These details are all of great interest. Have you met Mr.
James Desmond?"
"Yes; he once came down to visit Sir Charles. He is a man of venerable
appearance and of saintly life. I remember that he refused to accept any
settlement from Sir Charles, though he pressed it upon him."
"And this man of simple tastes would be the heir to Sir Charles's
thousands."
"He would be the heir to the estate because that is entailed. He would
also be the heir to the money unless it were willed otherwise by the
present owner, who can, of course, do what he likes with it."
"And have you made your will, Sir Henry?"
"No, Mr. Holmes, I have not. I've had no time, for it was only yesterday
that I learned how matters stood. But in any case I feel that the money
should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle's idea. How
is the owner going to restore the glories of the Baskervilles if he has
not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must
go together."
"Quite so. Well, Sir Henry, I am of one mind with you as to the
advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is
only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone."
"Dr. Mortimer returns with me."
"But Dr. Mortimer has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles
away from yours. With all the goodwill in the world he may be unable to
help you. No, Sir Henry, you must take with you someone, a trusty man,
who will be always by your side."
"Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Holmes?"
"If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person;
but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice
and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is
impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At
the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being
besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal.
You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor."
"Whom would you recommend, then?"
Holmes laid his hand upon my arm. "If my friend would undertake it there
is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a
tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I."
The proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to
answer, Baskerville seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily.
"Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Watson," said he. "You see how
it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If
you will come down to Baskerville Hall and see me through I'll never
forget it."
The promise of adventure had always a fascination for me, and I was
complimented by the words of Holmes and by the eagerness with which the
baronet hailed me as a companion.
"I will come, with pleasure," said I. "I do not know how I could employ
my time better."
"And you will report very carefully to me," said Holmes. "When a crisis
comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by
Saturday all might be ready?"
"Would that suit Dr. Watson?"
"Perfectly."
"Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the
ten-thirty train from Paddington."
We had risen to depart when Baskerville gave a cry, of triumph, and
diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from
under a cabinet.
"My missing boot!" he cried.
"May all our difficulties vanish as easily!" said Sherlock Holmes.
"But it is a very singular thing," Dr. Mortimer remarked. "I searched
this room carefully before lunch."
"And so did I," said Baskerville. "Every inch of it."
"There was certainly no boot in it then."
"In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were
lunching."
The German was sent for but professed to know nothing of the matter,
nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that
constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had
succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of
Sir Charles's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within
the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed
letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown
boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new
brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker
Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind,
like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which
all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted.
All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and
thought.
Just before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran:
Have just heard that Barrymore is at the Hall. BASKERVILLE.
The second:
Visited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry, to report unable to
trace cut sheet of Times. CARTWRIGHT.
"There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating
than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for
another scent."
"We have still the cabman who drove the spy."
"Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official
Registry. I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my
question."
The ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory
than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow
entered who was evidently the man himself.
"I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address had
been inquiring for No. 2704," said he. "I've driven my cab this seven
years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard
to ask you to your face what you had against me."
"I have nothing in the world against you, my good man," said Holmes.
"On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a
clear answer to my questions."
"Well, I've had a good day and no mistake," said the cabman with a grin.
"What was it you wanted to ask, sir?"
"First of all your name and address, in case I want you again."
"John Clayton, 3 Turpey Street, the Borough. My cab is out of Shipley's
Yard, near Waterloo Station."
Sherlock Holmes made a note of it.
"Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this
house at ten o'clock this morning and afterwards followed the two
gentlemen down Regent Street."
The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. "Why, there's no good
my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already,"
said he. "The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a
detective and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone."
"My good fellow; this is a very serious business, and you may find
yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me.
You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?"
"Yes, he did."
"When did he say this?"
"When he left me."
"Did he say anything more?"
"He mentioned his name."
Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name,
did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?"
"His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the
cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst
into a hearty laugh.
"A touch, Watson--an undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick
and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So
his name was Sherlock Holmes, was it?"
"Yes, sir, that was the gentleman's name."
"Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up and all that occurred."
"He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was
a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he
wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First
we drove down to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there until two
gentlemen came out and took a cab from the rank. We followed their cab
until it pulled up somewhere near here."
"This very door," said Holmes.
"Well, I couldn't be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about
it. We pulled up halfway down the street and waited an hour and a half.
Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker
Street and along--"
"I know," said Holmes.
"Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw
up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo
Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there
under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one,
and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving he turned
round and he said: 'It might interest you to know that you have been
driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.' That's how I come to know the name."
"I see. And you saw no more of him?"
"Not after he went into the station."
"And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"
The cabman scratched his head. "Well, he wasn't altogether such an easy
gentleman to describe. I'd put him at forty years of age, and he was
of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was
dressed like a toff, and he had a black beard, cut square at the end,
and a pale face. I don't know as I could say more than that."
"Colour of his eyes?"
"No, I can't say that."
"Nothing more that you can remember?"
"No, sir; nothing."
"Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There's another one waiting
for you if you can bring any more information. Good-night!"
"Good-night, sir, and thank you!"
John Clayton departed chuckling, and Holmes turned to me with a shrug of
his shoulders and a rueful smile.
"Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began," said he. "The
cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had
consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had
got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so
sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have
got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I've been checkmated in London.
I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I'm not easy in my
mind about it."
"About what?"
"About sending you. It's an ugly business, Watson, an ugly dangerous
business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear
fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad
to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more."
| 4,835 | Chapter V | https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-v | Three Broken Threads After two hours in a museum - Watson remarks on Holmes's unique ability to divert his attention when necessary - they visit the Northumberland Hotel, where Sir Henry Baskerville is staying. Examining the register, Holmes pretends to know two of the hotel's visitors, and fools the clerk into revealing information about them. As they are walking upstairs, they run into Sir Henry, who is angry because another of his boots is missing. He has no explanation for the disappearance. Later, after lunch in the hotel room, Holmes approves of Sir Henry's decision to inhabit Baskerville Hall, since it will allow Holmes to flush out the culprit more easily than he can in crowded London. From Dr. Mortimer, Holmes and Watson learn that the only moor resident with a black beard is Barrymore, Baskerville Hall's butler. Intrigued, Holmes orders a telegram sent to Devonshire, to determine whether Barrymore is there. Mortimer then discusses the contents of Sir Charles's will, in the hopes of sussing out a murder motive. Barrymore and his wife inherited money from Sir Charles's will, and they were aware of that intention. However, Dr. Mortimer adds that several people - himself included - were bequeathed money by the will. Sir Henry was naturally left the most money, and because he has no direct heir, that fortune and the estate would fall to some distant cousins, the Desmonds, if were to die. Holmes then proposes that Watson accompany Sir Henry to Baskerville Hall, as protection. Holmes will join them that Saturday, after completing some business on another case in London. Before the men leave, Sir Henry finds one of his brown boot under a cabinet, which is confusing since Mortimer had thoroughly searched the room before lunch. They surmise a waiter had found and placed it there, but the waiter knows nothing of it when he is called and questioned. That evening, Watson and Holmes receive two telegrams. The first is a return telegram from Barrymore, suggesting that he is indeed at Baskerville Hall. The second reports that Cartwright has been unable to find the cut sheet of the newspaper. At that moment, the cab driver, whom Holmes had sent for earlier, appears at the door. He tells Holmes that the bearded man had claimed to be a detective, and had told him to say nothing to anyone. Strangest of all, the man had claimed to be named "Mr. Sherlock Holmes" . Holmes is surprised and amused. He pays the cab driver for details of the day's journey, and then sends the driver away. Noting that "our third thread" has snapped, Holmes admires his adversary as "worthy of our steel" . He then wishes Watson luck in Devonshire, noting that this case is proving to be an ugly business. | In this section, three "threads" lead to dead-ends. On the one hand, this presents obstacles that challenge our detective. However, it is crucial to realize that even dead-ends provide central questions and clues for one as perceptive as Holmes. For instance: Who would steal a boot, then return it? How did this person get into the hotel unbeknownst to Holmes, Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry? Who could be so clever as to pose as Holmes? Does the mystery man in the cab already know who Sherlock Holmes is? The criminal here proves to be as cunning as the detective, as Holmes himself declares that he has been "checkmated" . In other words, the wits of the detective and criminal are matched here. This is important for two reasons. The first is that it keeps the story interesting; the story gains momentum only because the adversary can think like the hero, and hence complicate the latter's pursuit of his objective. However, it is also important in context, considering that this was one of the later Holmes novels. Audiences would have been familiar with Holmes's genius by this point, and hence would themselves grow bored if the mystery were not beyond even the hero. And yet the criminal's genius is important for Holmes as well. Notice his response to having been fooled; he laughs. It is a central part of Holmes's character - one that later writers have capitalized on even more than Doyle did - that Holmes is motivated by the game, and not by empathy. In other words, he does not want to solve the case to help someone - if he did, an easy victory would be preferable. Instead, he wants to be tested so that he can triumph. The criminal's trickery complicates his mission, and hence makes his eventual victory all the more satisfying. Another character insight is provided by the museum visit at the top of this chapter. Though only a short paragraph, the incident touches on the elusive nature of genius. Holmes is able to divert his attention when there is no path to follow, again suggesting that he is not at all affected by the human element of his story. He is not worried about people, but only about the case. When the case is momentarily cold, he chooses to spend his time elsewhere. However, the idea that he would study paintings also provides some insight into Doyle's depiction of the mind, which employs both subconscious and conscious faculties to reach its potential. Certainly, there are times when Holmes confronts a problem through deliberate thought, but there are then others when he does not think explicitly on the case, leaving his mind to work in the background while he focuses on something else. Some insight is given into the nature of Watson and Holmes's relationship in this chapter as well. Watson is surprised to hear that Holmes has volunteered him to accompany Sir Henry. What is implied here - and in the first chapter, when Holmes has Watson attempt to interpret Dr. Mortimer's walking stick - is a level of condescension that Holmes employs towards his friend. Watson is so immediately pleased to be of use that we are led to realize that he is not frequently of much use, at least not in a way that Holmes acknowledges. This inconsideration is made more explicit later, when Watson finds that Holmes is merely using him as a pawn in his greater game. | 650 | 603 |
2,852 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/06.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_3_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter vi | chapter vi | null | {"name": "Chapter VI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-vi", "summary": "Baskerville Hall On the day of Watson, Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry's departure, Holmes drives Watson to the station. En route, he instructs Watson to report only the facts to him, leaving his theories out of the letters. He also shares his own theories. He does not believes that the Desmond man - who would inherit Sir Henry's estate - is involved, but he believes that Barrymore and his wife are viable suspects. His other suspects include: a groom at the Hall, two farmers on the moor, Dr. Mortimer himself, Mortimer's wife, Stapleton the naturalist, and Mr. Frankland. Watson has brought his gun, in case he needs it. When they arrive in Devonshire, Sir Henry is impressed by the surroundings, never having seen the moor before. Watson imagines what it must be like for him to see the land where the men of his blood have made their mark. On their way to Baskerville Hall, they meet a man guarding part of the moor. Apparently, a convict had escaped three days earlier from the prison at nearby Princetown. This convict's name is Selden, and he is known as the Notting Hill murderer. Watson recalls Sherlock's interest in that case because of the criminal's brutality, and imagines Selden hiding out on the moor. At Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer shows Sir Henry the yew alley where Sir Charles died, and then departs. Barrymore then tours them around the estate, admitting in the process that he and his wife plan to leave once Sir Henry has hired more staff. Having spent their lives there, they would like to travel with the money Sir Charles bequeathed them. Watson describes the bedrooms as seeming newer the rest of the house, and the dining room as having a somber atmosphere. Feeling the same way, Sir Henry comments that he understands why Sir Charles grew so anxious in such a place. That night, Watson does not sleep well. In the dead of night, he hears a woman's sob, and listens carefully for more. However, no more noise comes.", "analysis": "The chapter begins with Holmes's instructions to Watson to \"report the facts\" . Most immediately, Holmes's instructions touch on why he trusts Watson as a good \"conductor of light\" . Watson inspires Holmes's genius not by collaborating on his interpretations, but rather on relating facts that Holmes can then use to deduce hidden truths. As a doctor, Watson is well-acquainted with the importance of detail, an approach Holmes takes to a singular level. However, these instructions also pose a crucial question: what does a bare fact look like? Can we describe facts without already having some explanation as to how that fact came to be? Put another way, can a fact ever be disclosed without containing some trace of interpretation? For example, in Chapter II, Sir Charles's footprints of Sir Charles are described as \"tiptoe\" footprints . The description contained within it an assumption. Whereas most readers would take this interpretation as fact, Holmes took a step back to consider that the indentations might indicate the opposite: running instead of tip-toeing. By describing something, we naturally put an interpretation on it. In other words, so-called \"facts\" already come pre-interpreted . Holmes's instructions then, are most notable for what he instructs Watson not to do: to theorize. What makes Holmes's approach so unique is that he considers a detail from several possible angles at once, eliminating impossible options to determine the most likely option. His instructions are not only to Watson, but to us: to correctly deduce meaning, one must first see the detail in itself, not with any pre-conceived notion. Watson's description of the house both conforms to and works against those instructions. He makes judgments - the rooms seems newer than the rest of the house - and in fact focuses on atmosphere. His failure to simply 'describe' the rooms are entirely forgivable, especially since they help to relate the atmosphere that would have made Sir Charles so anxious. Watson's description also serve Doyle's purpose of crafting an engaging and spooky tale. One of the novel's most intriguing contrasts - between the supernatural and the rational - is at work here. Clearly, Doyle wants us to view this location as haunted and possessed. The moor was often used as an atmospheric locale in the work of British writers, and Doyle takes great advantage of its natural allure. In fact, he furthers the atmosphere through the incident of the woman's screams. Read out of context, the second half of this chapter could work in a Gothic novel, or even in a children's scary story. The contrast with the rational will be most clearly made through Holmes's interference, but is already present through Sir Henry. His first instinct at noting the house's gloominess is to brighten it with electric lamps. He represents the technological mindset of America, from which he has traveled. He is more like Holmes than he is like Dr. Mortimer; instead of considering the house's haunted potential, he considers how the products of man's rationality might counteract such gloominess. Whether he will remain so aloof to its spooky atmosphere now becomes one of the novel's dramatic questions."} |
Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer were ready upon the appointed
day, and we started as arranged for Devonshire. Mr. Sherlock Holmes
drove with me to the station and gave me his last parting injunctions
and advice.
"I will not bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions,
Watson," said he; "I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest
possible manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing."
"What sort of facts?" I asked.
"Anything which may seem to have a bearing however indirect upon the
case, and especially the relations between young Baskerville and his
neighbours or any fresh particulars concerning the death of Sir Charles.
I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days, but the results
have, I fear, been negative. One thing only appears to be certain, and
that is that Mr. James Desmond, who is the next heir, is an elderly
gentleman of a very amiable disposition, so that this persecution does
not arise from him. I really think that we may eliminate him entirely
from our calculations. There remain the people who will actually
surround Sir Henry Baskerville upon the moor."
"Would it not be well in the first place to get rid of this Barrymore
couple?"
"By no means. You could not make a greater mistake. If they are innocent
it would be a cruel injustice, and if they are guilty we should be
giving up all chance of bringing it home to them. No, no, we will
preserve them upon our list of suspects. Then there is a groom at the
Hall, if I remember right. There are two moorland farmers. There is our
friend Dr. Mortimer, whom I believe to be entirely honest, and there is
his wife, of whom we know nothing. There is this naturalist, Stapleton,
and there is his sister, who is said to be a young lady of attractions.
There is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who is also an unknown factor,
and there are one or two other neighbours. These are the folk who must
be your very special study."
"I will do my best."
"You have arms, I suppose?"
"Yes, I thought it as well to take them."
"Most certainly. Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never
relax your precautions."
Our friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting
for us upon the platform.
"No, we have no news of any kind," said Dr. Mortimer in answer to my
friend's questions. "I can swear to one thing, and that is that we
have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone
out without keeping a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our
notice."
"You have always kept together, I presume?"
"Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to pure amusement
when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of
Surgeons."
"And I went to look at the folk in the park," said Baskerville.
"But we had no trouble of any kind."
"It was imprudent, all the same," said Holmes, shaking his head and
looking very grave. "I beg, Sir Henry, that you will not go about alone.
Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other
boot?"
"No, sir, it is gone forever."
"Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye," he added as the
train began to glide down the platform. "Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of
the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us,
and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil
are exalted."
I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind and saw the
tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us.
The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in making the
more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with
Dr. Mortimer's spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had
become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in
well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation
spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Baskerville stared
eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized
the familiar features of the Devon scenery.
"I've been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Watson,"
said he; "but I have never seen a place to compare with it."
"I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county," I
remarked.
"It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county," said
Dr. Mortimer. "A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of
the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power
of attachment. Poor Sir Charles's head was of a very rare type, half
Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young
when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you not?"
"I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father's death and had never
seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast.
Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as
new to me as it is to Dr. Watson, and I'm as keen as possible to see the
moor."
"Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first
sight of the moor," said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage
window.
Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there
rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged
summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in
a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I
read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of
that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long
and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his
American accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as
I looked at his dark and expressive face I felt more than ever how
true a descendant he was of that long line of high-blooded, fiery,
and masterful men. There were pride, valour, and strength in his thick
brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that
forbidding moor a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us,
this was at least a comrade for whom one might venture to take a risk
with the certainty that he would bravely share it.
The train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all descended.
Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs
was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master
and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet,
simple country spot, but I was surprised to observe that by the gate
there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who leaned upon their
short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a
hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in
a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling
pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses
peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful
and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky,
the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister
hills.
The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through
deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy
with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and
mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily
rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy
stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray
boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with
scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of
delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To
his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon
the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year.
Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we
passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of
rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw
before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.
"Halloa!" cried Dr. Mortimer, "what is this?"
A steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in
front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue
upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle
poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road along which we
travelled.
"What is this, Perkins?" asked Dr. Mortimer.
Our driver half turned in his seat. "There's a convict escaped from
Princetown, sir. He's been out three days now, and the warders watch
every road and every station, but they've had no sight of him yet. The
farmers about here don't like it, sir, and that's a fact."
"Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give
information."
"Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared
to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn't like any
ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing."
"Who is he, then?"
"It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer."
I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an
interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the
wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The
commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his
complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped
a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled
with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from
it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was
lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his
heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out.
It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren
waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell
silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him.
We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on
it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of
gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad
tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder
over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now
and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone,
with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into
a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been
twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers
rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip.
"Baskerville Hall," said he.
Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining
eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of
fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either
side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the
Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of
rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first
fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold.
Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were
again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a
sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up
the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the
farther end.
"Was it here?" he asked in a low voice.
"No, no, the yew alley is on the other side."
The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face.
"It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a
place as this," said he. "It's enough to scare any man. I'll have a row
of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it
again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front
of the hall door."
The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before
us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block
of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in
ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat
of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the
twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes. To
right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite.
A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high
chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a
single black column of smoke.
"Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!"
A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of
the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow
light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our
bags.
"You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?" said Dr. Mortimer.
"My wife is expecting me."
"Surely you will stay and have some dinner?"
"No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would
stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide
than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I
can be of service."
The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned
into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine
apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily
raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great
old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled
and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb
from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window
of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats
of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the
central lamp.
"It's just as I imagined it," said Sir Henry. "Is it not the very
picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same
hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me
solemn to think of it."
I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about
him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed
down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had
returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of
us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a
remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and
pale, distinguished features.
"Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?"
"Is it ready?"
"In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My
wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have
made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new
conditions this house will require a considerable staff."
"What new conditions?"
"I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we
were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have
more company, and so you will need changes in your household."
"Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?"
"Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir."
"But your family have been with us for several generations, have they
not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old family
connection."
I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's white face.
"I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth, sir,
we were both very much attached to Sir Charles, and his death gave us
a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we
shall never again be easy in our minds at Baskerville Hall."
"But what do you intend to do?"
"I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves
in some business. Sir Charles's generosity has given us the means to do
so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms."
A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall,
approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors
extended the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms
opened. My own was in the same wing as Baskerville's and almost next
door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern than the
central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous candles
did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left
upon my mind.
But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow
and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where
the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents.
At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across
above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of
flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of
an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two
black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a
shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit subdued. A
dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan
knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by
their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the
meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room
and smoke a cigarette.
"My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose
one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present.
I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone
in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early
tonight, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning."
I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my
window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall
door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A
half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I
saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve
of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last
impression was in keeping with the rest.
And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful,
tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would
not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the
hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then
suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my
ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the
muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow.
I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been
far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with
every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming
clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.
| 4,932 | Chapter VI | https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-vi | Baskerville Hall On the day of Watson, Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry's departure, Holmes drives Watson to the station. En route, he instructs Watson to report only the facts to him, leaving his theories out of the letters. He also shares his own theories. He does not believes that the Desmond man - who would inherit Sir Henry's estate - is involved, but he believes that Barrymore and his wife are viable suspects. His other suspects include: a groom at the Hall, two farmers on the moor, Dr. Mortimer himself, Mortimer's wife, Stapleton the naturalist, and Mr. Frankland. Watson has brought his gun, in case he needs it. When they arrive in Devonshire, Sir Henry is impressed by the surroundings, never having seen the moor before. Watson imagines what it must be like for him to see the land where the men of his blood have made their mark. On their way to Baskerville Hall, they meet a man guarding part of the moor. Apparently, a convict had escaped three days earlier from the prison at nearby Princetown. This convict's name is Selden, and he is known as the Notting Hill murderer. Watson recalls Sherlock's interest in that case because of the criminal's brutality, and imagines Selden hiding out on the moor. At Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer shows Sir Henry the yew alley where Sir Charles died, and then departs. Barrymore then tours them around the estate, admitting in the process that he and his wife plan to leave once Sir Henry has hired more staff. Having spent their lives there, they would like to travel with the money Sir Charles bequeathed them. Watson describes the bedrooms as seeming newer the rest of the house, and the dining room as having a somber atmosphere. Feeling the same way, Sir Henry comments that he understands why Sir Charles grew so anxious in such a place. That night, Watson does not sleep well. In the dead of night, he hears a woman's sob, and listens carefully for more. However, no more noise comes. | The chapter begins with Holmes's instructions to Watson to "report the facts" . Most immediately, Holmes's instructions touch on why he trusts Watson as a good "conductor of light" . Watson inspires Holmes's genius not by collaborating on his interpretations, but rather on relating facts that Holmes can then use to deduce hidden truths. As a doctor, Watson is well-acquainted with the importance of detail, an approach Holmes takes to a singular level. However, these instructions also pose a crucial question: what does a bare fact look like? Can we describe facts without already having some explanation as to how that fact came to be? Put another way, can a fact ever be disclosed without containing some trace of interpretation? For example, in Chapter II, Sir Charles's footprints of Sir Charles are described as "tiptoe" footprints . The description contained within it an assumption. Whereas most readers would take this interpretation as fact, Holmes took a step back to consider that the indentations might indicate the opposite: running instead of tip-toeing. By describing something, we naturally put an interpretation on it. In other words, so-called "facts" already come pre-interpreted . Holmes's instructions then, are most notable for what he instructs Watson not to do: to theorize. What makes Holmes's approach so unique is that he considers a detail from several possible angles at once, eliminating impossible options to determine the most likely option. His instructions are not only to Watson, but to us: to correctly deduce meaning, one must first see the detail in itself, not with any pre-conceived notion. Watson's description of the house both conforms to and works against those instructions. He makes judgments - the rooms seems newer than the rest of the house - and in fact focuses on atmosphere. His failure to simply 'describe' the rooms are entirely forgivable, especially since they help to relate the atmosphere that would have made Sir Charles so anxious. Watson's description also serve Doyle's purpose of crafting an engaging and spooky tale. One of the novel's most intriguing contrasts - between the supernatural and the rational - is at work here. Clearly, Doyle wants us to view this location as haunted and possessed. The moor was often used as an atmospheric locale in the work of British writers, and Doyle takes great advantage of its natural allure. In fact, he furthers the atmosphere through the incident of the woman's screams. Read out of context, the second half of this chapter could work in a Gothic novel, or even in a children's scary story. The contrast with the rational will be most clearly made through Holmes's interference, but is already present through Sir Henry. His first instinct at noting the house's gloominess is to brighten it with electric lamps. He represents the technological mindset of America, from which he has traveled. He is more like Holmes than he is like Dr. Mortimer; instead of considering the house's haunted potential, he considers how the products of man's rationality might counteract such gloominess. Whether he will remain so aloof to its spooky atmosphere now becomes one of the novel's dramatic questions. | 490 | 542 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/01.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_0_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 1 | chapter 1 | null | {"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-1", "summary": "An unknown visitor has come by the house that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson share, but they weren't home to meet him. Watson inspects a walking stick that the visitor mistakenly left behind. Watson notices that it's made of nice wood and it has a band of silver under the handle dedicated \"To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,\" dated 1884 . Watson guesses that the stick belongs to an older country doctor, and that it was a present from the local hunting organization. Holmes breaks the news to Watson: he's mostly wrong. But his dumb ideas have helped Holmes to get the right idea. Yeah, James Mortimer is a doctor , and he does live in the countryside. But the \"H\" in \"C.C.H.\" probably means hospital rather than hunt. Holmes concludes that Mortimer must be a young man who did his medical residency at the Charing Cross Hospital before moving out to the countryside to start his own practice. Also, Holmes guesses from tooth marks on the stick that Dr. Mortimer owns a smallish dog. According to Holmes' records, there is a Dr. James Mortimer living in Dartmoor, in a town called Grimpen. Just then, Dr. Mortimer appears at their door, and it's all as Holmes says. He's young, he has a smallish dog, he left Charing Cross Hospital some time ago to set up his practice in the countryside . Dr. Mortimer is here because he has a most extraordinary problem .", "analysis": ""} |
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save
upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated
at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the
stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a
fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as
a "Penang lawyer." Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly
an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the
C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date "1884." It was just such a
stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry--dignified,
solid, and reassuring.
"Well, Watson, what do you make of it?"
Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of
my occupation.
"How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back
of your head."
"I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of
me," said he. "But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's
stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no
notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance.
Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it."
"I think," said I, following as far as I could the methods of my
companion, "that Dr. Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical man,
well-esteemed since those who know him give him this mark of their
appreciation."
"Good!" said Holmes. "Excellent!"
"I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country
practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot."
"Why so?"
"Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one has been so
knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it.
The thick-iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a
great amount of walking with it."
"Perfectly sound!" said Holmes.
"And then again, there is the 'friends of the C.C.H.' I should guess
that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has
possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small
presentation in return."
"Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his
chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the
accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small
achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may
be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of
light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of
stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your
debt."
He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave
me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my
admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to
his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his
system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took
the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked
eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette,
and carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a
convex lens.
"Interesting, though elementary," said he as he returned to his
favourite corner of the settee. "There are certainly one or two
indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several
deductions."
"Has anything escaped me?" I asked with some self-importance. "I trust
that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?"
"I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were
erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that
in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.
Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a
country practitioner. And he walks a good deal."
"Then I was right."
"To that extent."
"But that was all."
"No, no, my dear Watson, not all--by no means all. I would suggest, for
example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a
hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials 'C.C.' are placed
before that hospital the words 'Charing Cross' very naturally suggest
themselves."
"You may be right."
"The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a
working hypothesis we have a fresh basis from which to start our
construction of this unknown visitor."
"Well, then, supposing that 'C.C.H.' does stand for 'Charing Cross
Hospital,' what further inferences may we draw?"
"Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!"
"I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practised
in town before going to the country."
"I think that we might venture a little farther than this. Look at it
in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable that such a
presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him
a pledge of their good will? Obviously at the moment when Dr. Mortimer
withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start a practice
for himself. We know there has been a presentation. We believe there has
been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then,
stretching our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the
occasion of the change?"
"It certainly seems probable."
"Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the
hospital, since only a man well-established in a London practice could
hold such a position, and such a one would not drift into the country.
What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff he
could only have been a house-surgeon or a house-physician--little more
than a senior student. And he left five years ago--the date is on the
stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into
thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty,
amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite
dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and
smaller than a mastiff."
I laughed incredulously as Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his settee and
blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling.
"As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you," said I, "but
at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars about the
man's age and professional career." From my small medical shelf I took
down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several
Mortimers, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record
aloud.
"Mortimer, James, M.R.C.S., 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon.
House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital.
Winner of the Jackson prize for Comparative Pathology,
with essay entitled 'Is Disease a Reversion?' Corresponding
member of the Swedish Pathological Society. Author of
'Some Freaks of Atavism' (Lancet 1882). 'Do We Progress?'
(Journal of Psychology, March, 1883). Medical Officer
for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, and High Barrow."
"No mention of that local hunt, Watson," said Holmes with a mischievous
smile, "but a country doctor, as you very astutely observed. I think
that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I
said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absent-minded.
It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who
receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London
career for the country, and only an absent-minded one who leaves his
stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room."
"And the dog?"
"Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a
heavy stick the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of
his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog's jaw, as shown in the space
between these marks, is too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not
broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been--yes, by Jove, it is a
curly-haired spaniel."
He had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess
of the window. There was such a ring of conviction in his voice that I
glanced up in surprise.
"My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?"
"For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very
door-step, and there is the ring of its owner. Don't move, I beg you,
Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be
of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when
you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you
know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man
of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!"
The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected
a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a
long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes,
set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of
gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly
fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and his trousers frayed. Though
young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward
thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence. As he
entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes's hand, and he ran
towards it with an exclamation of joy. "I am so very glad," said he.
"I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I
would not lose that stick for the world."
"A presentation, I see," said Holmes.
"Yes, sir."
"From Charing Cross Hospital?"
"From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage."
"Dear, dear, that's bad!" said Holmes, shaking his head.
Dr. Mortimer blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment. "Why was
it bad?"
"Only that you have disarranged our little deductions. Your marriage,
you say?"
"Yes, sir. I married, and so left the hospital, and with it all hopes of
a consulting practice. It was necessary to make a home of my own."
"Come, come, we are not so far wrong, after all," said Holmes. "And now,
Dr. James Mortimer--"
"Mister, sir, Mister--a humble M.R.C.S."
"And a man of precise mind, evidently."
"A dabbler in science, Mr. Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores
of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes
whom I am addressing and not--"
"No, this is my friend Dr. Watson."
"Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection
with that of your friend. You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I
had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked
supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my
finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until
the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological
museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet
your skull."
Sherlock Holmes waved our strange visitor into a chair. "You are an
enthusiast in your line of thought, I perceive, sir, as I am in
mine," said he. "I observe from your forefinger that you make your own
cigarettes. Have no hesitation in lighting one."
The man drew out paper and tobacco and twirled the one up in the other
with surprising dexterity. He had long, quivering fingers as agile and
restless as the antennae of an insect.
Holmes was silent, but his little darting glances showed me the interest
which he took in our curious companion. "I presume, sir," said he at
last, "that it was not merely for the purpose of examining my skull that
you have done me the honour to call here last night and again today?"
"No, sir, no; though I am happy to have had the opportunity of doing
that as well. I came to you, Mr. Holmes, because I recognized that I am
myself an unpractical man and because I am suddenly confronted with a
most serious and extraordinary problem. Recognizing, as I do, that you
are the second highest expert in Europe--"
"Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?" asked
Holmes with some asperity.
"To the man of precisely scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon
must always appeal strongly."
"Then had you not better consult him?"
"I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man
of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I
have not inadvertently--"
"Just a little," said Holmes. "I think, Dr. Mortimer, you would do
wisely if without more ado you would kindly tell me plainly what the
exact nature of the problem is in which you demand my assistance."
| 3,264 | Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-1 | An unknown visitor has come by the house that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson share, but they weren't home to meet him. Watson inspects a walking stick that the visitor mistakenly left behind. Watson notices that it's made of nice wood and it has a band of silver under the handle dedicated "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," dated 1884 . Watson guesses that the stick belongs to an older country doctor, and that it was a present from the local hunting organization. Holmes breaks the news to Watson: he's mostly wrong. But his dumb ideas have helped Holmes to get the right idea. Yeah, James Mortimer is a doctor , and he does live in the countryside. But the "H" in "C.C.H." probably means hospital rather than hunt. Holmes concludes that Mortimer must be a young man who did his medical residency at the Charing Cross Hospital before moving out to the countryside to start his own practice. Also, Holmes guesses from tooth marks on the stick that Dr. Mortimer owns a smallish dog. According to Holmes' records, there is a Dr. James Mortimer living in Dartmoor, in a town called Grimpen. Just then, Dr. Mortimer appears at their door, and it's all as Holmes says. He's young, he has a smallish dog, he left Charing Cross Hospital some time ago to set up his practice in the countryside . Dr. Mortimer is here because he has a most extraordinary problem . | null | 361 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/02.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_1_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 2 | chapter 2 | null | {"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-2", "summary": "Dr. Mortimer hands a manuscript to Holmes. It's old--it dates back to 1742, at least a hundred fifty years before the events of Hound of the Baskervilles. Dr. Mortimer got the manuscript from his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville. And even though the manuscript deals with an old family legend, Dr. Mortimer is here on very contemporary business. The manuscript tells the story of Hugo Baskerville and the family curse This Hugo Baskerville, gets into some bad trouble around the time of the \"Great Rebellion\" . He likes to drink, curse, and rough people up. One night, he kidnaps a neighboring woman with five or six of his friends and locks her up in his mansion while he parties with his buddies. She manages to climb down some ivy to escape his evil clutches. Hugo Baskerville swears that he will sell his soul for the power to catch her. Hugo Baskerville then has the bright idea of riding out after her with his pack of hounds. The drunken partygoers finally realize, hey, if Hugo Baskerville succeeds in catching her, something terrible is going to happen. Really? So they ride out after Hugo Baskerville and his pack of hounds. They find his lifeless body on the ground near the girl's. The girl has died of fear and exhaustion after running from Hugo Baskerville. But Hugo Baskerville's death is much more gruesome: the former partygoers watch a huge, ghostly-looking black hound tear his throat out. Holmes doesn't think much of this whole story--it's just a fairy tale. So Dr. Mortimer continues his story. Sir Charles Baskerville, the descendant of this nasty Hugo, has just died mysteriously. He had heart trouble, so it's not impossible that he died of natural causes. But his body was found lying at the end of his own driveway with such a grotesque expression that Dr. Mortimer had trouble recognizing him. Apparently, Sir Charles had become very afraid of this story of the black dog and Hugo Baskerville. And here's the kicker: near Sir Charles' body, Dr. Mortimer found footprints--the footprints of a giant dog.", "analysis": ""} |
"I have in my pocket a manuscript," said Dr. James Mortimer.
"I observed it as you entered the room," said Holmes.
"It is an old manuscript."
"Early eighteenth century, unless it is a forgery."
"How can you say that, sir?"
"You have presented an inch or two of it to my examination all the time
that you have been talking. It would be a poor expert who could not give
the date of a document within a decade or so. You may possibly have read
my little monograph upon the subject. I put that at 1730."
"The exact date is 1742." Dr. Mortimer drew it from his breast-pocket.
"This family paper was committed to my care by Sir Charles Baskerville,
whose sudden and tragic death some three months ago created so much
excitement in Devonshire. I may say that I was his personal friend as
well as his medical attendant. He was a strong-minded man, sir, shrewd,
practical, and as unimaginative as I am myself. Yet he took this
document very seriously, and his mind was prepared for just such an end
as did eventually overtake him."
Holmes stretched out his hand for the manuscript and flattened it upon
his knee. "You will observe, Watson, the alternative use of the long s
and the short. It is one of several indications which enabled me to fix
the date."
I looked over his shoulder at the yellow paper and the faded script. At
the head was written: "Baskerville Hall," and below in large, scrawling
figures: "1742."
"It appears to be a statement of some sort."
"Yes, it is a statement of a certain legend which runs in the
Baskerville family."
"But I understand that it is something more modern and practical upon
which you wish to consult me?"
"Most modern. A most practical, pressing matter, which must be decided
within twenty-four hours. But the manuscript is short and is intimately
connected with the affair. With your permission I will read it to you."
Holmes leaned back in his chair, placed his finger-tips together, and
closed his eyes, with an air of resignation. Dr. Mortimer turned the
manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following
curious, old-world narrative:
"Of the origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles there
have been many statements, yet as I come in a direct
line from Hugo Baskerville, and as I had the story from
my father, who also had it from his, I have set it down
with all belief that it occurred even as is here set
forth. And I would have you believe, my sons, that the
same Justice which punishes sin may also most graciously
forgive it, and that no ban is so heavy but that by prayer
and repentance it may be removed. Learn then from this
story not to fear the fruits of the past, but rather to
be circumspect in the future, that those foul passions
whereby our family has suffered so grievously may not
again be loosed to our undoing.
"Know then that in the time of the Great Rebellion (the
history of which by the learned Lord Clarendon I most
earnestly commend to your attention) this Manor of
Baskerville was held by Hugo of that name, nor can it be
gainsaid that he was a most wild, profane, and godless
man. This, in truth, his neighbours might have pardoned,
seeing that saints have never flourished in those parts,
but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour
which made his name a by-word through the West. It
chanced that this Hugo came to love (if, indeed, so dark
a passion may be known under so bright a name) the daughter
of a yeoman who held lands near the Baskerville estate.
But the young maiden, being discreet and of good repute,
would ever avoid him, for she feared his evil name. So
it came to pass that one Michaelmas this Hugo, with five
or six of his idle and wicked companions, stole down upon
the farm and carried off the maiden, her father and
brothers being from home, as he well knew. When they had
brought her to the Hall the maiden was placed in an upper
chamber, while Hugo and his friends sat down to a long
carouse, as was their nightly custom. Now, the poor lass
upstairs was like to have her wits turned at the singing
and shouting and terrible oaths which came up to her from
below, for they say that the words used by Hugo Baskerville,
when he was in wine, were such as might blast the man who
said them. At last in the stress of her fear she did that
which might have daunted the bravest or most active man,
for by the aid of the growth of ivy which covered (and
still covers) the south wall she came down from under the
eaves, and so homeward across the moor, there being three
leagues betwixt the Hall and her father's farm.
"It chanced that some little time later Hugo left his
guests to carry food and drink--with other worse things,
perchance--to his captive, and so found the cage empty
and the bird escaped. Then, as it would seem, he became
as one that hath a devil, for, rushing down the stairs
into the dining-hall, he sprang upon the great table,
flagons and trenchers flying before him, and he cried
aloud before all the company that he would that very
night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if
he might but overtake the wench. And while the revellers
stood aghast at the fury of the man, one more wicked or,
it may be, more drunken than the rest, cried out that
they should put the hounds upon her. Whereat Hugo ran
from the house, crying to his grooms that they should
saddle his mare and unkennel the pack, and giving the
hounds a kerchief of the maid's, he swung them to the
line, and so off full cry in the moonlight over the moor.
"Now, for some space the revellers stood agape, unable
to understand all that had been done in such haste. But
anon their bemused wits awoke to the nature of the deed
which was like to be done upon the moorlands. Everything
was now in an uproar, some calling for their pistols,
some for their horses, and some for another flask of
wine. But at length some sense came back to their crazed
minds, and the whole of them, thirteen in number, took
horse and started in pursuit. The moon shone clear above
them, and they rode swiftly abreast, taking that course
which the maid must needs have taken if she were to reach
her own home.
"They had gone a mile or two when they passed one of the
night shepherds upon the moorlands, and they cried to
him to know if he had seen the hunt. And the man, as
the story goes, was so crazed with fear that he could
scarce speak, but at last he said that he had indeed seen
the unhappy maiden, with the hounds upon her track. 'But
I have seen more than that,' said he, 'for Hugo Baskerville
passed me upon his black mare, and there ran mute behind
him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at
my heels.' So the drunken squires cursed the shepherd
and rode onward. But soon their skins turned cold, for
there came a galloping across the moor, and the black
mare, dabbled with white froth, went past with trailing
bridle and empty saddle. Then the revellers rode close
together, for a great fear was on them, but they still
followed over the moor, though each, had he been alone,
would have been right glad to have turned his horse's
head. Riding slowly in this fashion they came at last
upon the hounds. These, though known for their valour
and their breed, were whimpering in a cluster at the
head of a deep dip or goyal, as we call it, upon the
moor, some slinking away and some, with starting hackles
and staring eyes, gazing down the narrow valley before them.
"The company had come to a halt, more sober men, as you
may guess, than when they started. The most of them
would by no means advance, but three of them, the boldest,
or it may be the most drunken, rode forward down the goyal.
Now, it opened into a broad space in which stood two of
those great stones, still to be seen there, which were
set by certain forgotten peoples in the days of old.
The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there
in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen,
dead of fear and of fatigue. But it was not the sight
of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo
Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon
the heads of these three dare-devil roysterers, but it
was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat,
there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped
like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal
eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing
tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it
turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the
three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still
screaming, across the moor. One, it is said, died that
very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were
but broken men for the rest of their days.
"Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound
which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever
since. If I have set it down it is because that which
is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but
hinted at and guessed. Nor can it be denied that many
of the family have been unhappy in their deaths, which
have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious. Yet may we
shelter ourselves in the infinite goodness of Providence,
which would not forever punish the innocent beyond that
third or fourth generation which is threatened in Holy
Writ. To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend
you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from
crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of
evil are exalted.
"[This from Hugo Baskerville to his sons Rodger and John,
with instructions that they say nothing thereof to their
sister Elizabeth.]"
When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed
his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock
Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the
fire.
"Well?" said he.
"Do you not find it interesting?"
"To a collector of fairy tales."
Dr. Mortimer drew a folded newspaper out of his pocket.
"Now, Mr. Holmes, we will give you something a little more recent. This
is the Devon County Chronicle of May 14th of this year. It is a short
account of the facts elicited at the death of Sir Charles Baskerville
which occurred a few days before that date."
My friend leaned a little forward and his expression became intent. Our
visitor readjusted his glasses and began:
"The recent sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville, whose
name has been mentioned as the probable Liberal candidate
for Mid-Devon at the next election, has cast a gloom over
the county. Though Sir Charles had resided at Baskerville
Hall for a comparatively short period his amiability of
character and extreme generosity had won the affection
and respect of all who had been brought into contact with
him. In these days of nouveaux riches it is refreshing
to find a case where the scion of an old county family
which has fallen upon evil days is able to make his own
fortune and to bring it back with him to restore the
fallen grandeur of his line. Sir Charles, as is well known,
made large sums of money in South African speculation.
More wise than those who go on until the wheel turns
against them, he realized his gains and returned to England
with them. It is only two years since he took up his
residence at Baskerville Hall, and it is common talk how
large were those schemes of reconstruction and improvement
which have been interrupted by his death. Being himself
childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the
whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit
by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons
for bewailing his untimely end. His generous donations
to local and county charities have been frequently
chronicled in these columns.
"The circumstances connected with the death of Sir Charles
cannot be said to have been entirely cleared up by the
inquest, but at least enough has been done to dispose of
those rumours to which local superstition has given rise.
There is no reason whatever to suspect foul play, or to
imagine that death could be from any but natural causes.
Sir Charles was a widower, and a man who may be said to
have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind.
In spite of his considerable wealth he was simple in his
personal tastes, and his indoor servants at Baskerville
Hall consisted of a married couple named Barrymore, the
husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper.
Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends,
tends to show that Sir Charles's health has for some time
been impaired, and points especially to some affection
of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour,
breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression.
Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of
the deceased, has given evidence to the same effect.
"The facts of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville
was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking
down the famous yew alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence
of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom.
On the fourth of May Sir Charles had declared his intention
of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore
to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual
for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in
the habit of smoking a cigar. He never returned. At
twelve o'clock Barrymore, finding the hall door still open,
became alarmed, and, lighting a lantern, went in search
of his master. The day had been wet, and Sir Charles's
footmarks were easily traced down the alley. Halfway down
this walk there is a gate which leads out on to the moor.
There were indications that Sir Charles had stood for some
little time here. He then proceeded down the alley, and
it was at the far end of it that his body was discovered.
One fact which has not been explained is the statement
of Barrymore that his master's footprints altered their
character from the time that he passed the moor-gate, and
that he appeared from thence onward to have been walking
upon his toes. One Murphy, a gipsy horse-dealer, was on
the moor at no great distance at the time, but he appears
by his own confession to have been the worse for drink.
He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state
from what direction they came. No signs of violence were
to be discovered upon Sir Charles's person, and though
the doctor's evidence pointed to an almost incredible
facial distortion--so great that Dr. Mortimer refused at
first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient
who lay before him--it was explained that that is a symptom
which is not unusual in cases of dyspnoea and death from
cardiac exhaustion. This explanation was borne out by
the post-mortem examination, which showed long-standing
organic disease, and the coroner's jury returned a
verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. It is
well that this is so, for it is obviously of the utmost
importance that Sir Charles's heir should settle at the
Hall and continue the good work which has been so sadly
interrupted. Had the prosaic finding of the coroner not
finally put an end to the romantic stories which have been
whispered in connection with the affair, it might have been
difficult to find a tenant for Baskerville Hall. It is
understood that the next of kin is Mr. Henry Baskerville,
if he be still alive, the son of Sir Charles Baskerville's
younger brother. The young man when last heard of was
in America, and inquiries are being instituted with a
view to informing him of his good fortune."
Dr. Mortimer refolded his paper and replaced it in his pocket. "Those
are the public facts, Mr. Holmes, in connection with the death of Sir
Charles Baskerville."
"I must thank you," said Sherlock Holmes, "for calling my attention to a
case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed
some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied
by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige
the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases. This
article, you say, contains all the public facts?"
"It does."
"Then let me have the private ones." He leaned back, put his finger-tips
together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression.
"In doing so," said Dr. Mortimer, who had begun to show signs of some
strong emotion, "I am telling that which I have not confided to anyone.
My motive for withholding it from the coroner's inquiry is that a man of
science shrinks from placing himself in the public position of seeming
to indorse a popular superstition. I had the further motive that
Baskerville Hall, as the paper says, would certainly remain untenanted
if anything were done to increase its already rather grim reputation.
For both these reasons I thought that I was justified in telling rather
less than I knew, since no practical good could result from it, but with
you there is no reason why I should not be perfectly frank.
"The moor is very sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other
are thrown very much together. For this reason I saw a good deal of
Sir Charles Baskerville. With the exception of Mr. Frankland, of Lafter
Hall, and Mr. Stapleton, the naturalist, there are no other men of
education within many miles. Sir Charles was a retiring man, but the
chance of his illness brought us together, and a community of interests
in science kept us so. He had brought back much scientific information
from South Africa, and many a charming evening we have spent together
discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot.
"Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that
Sir Charles's nervous system was strained to the breaking point. He had
taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart--so much
so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce
him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to
you, Mr. Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung
his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of
his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence
constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me
whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange
creature or heard the baying of a hound. The latter question he put
to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with
excitement.
"I can well remember driving up to his house in the evening some three
weeks before the fatal event. He chanced to be at his hall door. I had
descended from my gig and was standing in front of him, when I saw
his eyes fix themselves over my shoulder and stare past me with an
expression of the most dreadful horror. I whisked round and had just
time to catch a glimpse of something which I took to be a large black
calf passing at the head of the drive. So excited and alarmed was he
that I was compelled to go down to the spot where the animal had been
and look around for it. It was gone, however, and the incident appeared
to make the worst impression upon his mind. I stayed with him all the
evening, and it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he
had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to
you when first I came. I mention this small episode because it assumes
some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was
convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his
excitement had no justification.
"It was at my advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His
heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived,
however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a
serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the
distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a
mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the
same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe.
"On the night of Sir Charles's death Barrymore the butler, who made
the discovery, sent Perkins the groom on horseback to me, and as I was
sitting up late I was able to reach Baskerville Hall within an hour of
the event. I checked and corroborated all the facts which were mentioned
at the inquest. I followed the footsteps down the yew alley, I saw the
spot at the moor-gate where he seemed to have waited, I remarked the
change in the shape of the prints after that point, I noted that there
were no other footsteps save those of Barrymore on the soft gravel, and
finally I carefully examined the body, which had not been touched until
my arrival. Sir Charles lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug
into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion to
such an extent that I could hardly have sworn to his identity. There was
certainly no physical injury of any kind. But one false statement was
made by Barrymore at the inquest. He said that there were no traces
upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did--some
little distance off, but fresh and clear."
"Footprints?"
"Footprints."
"A man's or a woman's?"
Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank
almost to a whisper as he answered.
"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"
| 5,211 | Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-2 | Dr. Mortimer hands a manuscript to Holmes. It's old--it dates back to 1742, at least a hundred fifty years before the events of Hound of the Baskervilles. Dr. Mortimer got the manuscript from his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville. And even though the manuscript deals with an old family legend, Dr. Mortimer is here on very contemporary business. The manuscript tells the story of Hugo Baskerville and the family curse This Hugo Baskerville, gets into some bad trouble around the time of the "Great Rebellion" . He likes to drink, curse, and rough people up. One night, he kidnaps a neighboring woman with five or six of his friends and locks her up in his mansion while he parties with his buddies. She manages to climb down some ivy to escape his evil clutches. Hugo Baskerville swears that he will sell his soul for the power to catch her. Hugo Baskerville then has the bright idea of riding out after her with his pack of hounds. The drunken partygoers finally realize, hey, if Hugo Baskerville succeeds in catching her, something terrible is going to happen. Really? So they ride out after Hugo Baskerville and his pack of hounds. They find his lifeless body on the ground near the girl's. The girl has died of fear and exhaustion after running from Hugo Baskerville. But Hugo Baskerville's death is much more gruesome: the former partygoers watch a huge, ghostly-looking black hound tear his throat out. Holmes doesn't think much of this whole story--it's just a fairy tale. So Dr. Mortimer continues his story. Sir Charles Baskerville, the descendant of this nasty Hugo, has just died mysteriously. He had heart trouble, so it's not impossible that he died of natural causes. But his body was found lying at the end of his own driveway with such a grotesque expression that Dr. Mortimer had trouble recognizing him. Apparently, Sir Charles had become very afraid of this story of the black dog and Hugo Baskerville. And here's the kicker: near Sir Charles' body, Dr. Mortimer found footprints--the footprints of a giant dog. | null | 526 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/03.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_2_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 3 | chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-3", "summary": "Dr. Mortimer insists that this strange black dog is no wild or local dog. The ash from Sir Charles' cigar shows that he was standing at the end of the driveway for five or ten minutes before tiptoeing out in the direction of the moor. Holmes is annoyed that he hasn't gotten a look at the scene of the death yet--why didn't Dr. Mortimer call him in earlier?! Dr. Mortimer hems and haws a little, but it's clear what he thinks: can a detective really help in what Mortimer is convinced are supernatural matters? After all, the local people have been spotting a giant, glow-in-the-dark dog on the moors. Holmes is justifiably confused. If Dr. Mortimer doesn't think a detective will be able to track down the Hound of Hell who killed Sir Charles, why has he even come to visit Holmes? Dr. Mortimer says he wants advice from Holmes about Sir Henry Baskerville, the new heir to the estate. Sir Henry Baskerville has been living in Canada but has returned to claim has estate. He has no idea about Hugo Baskerville's horrible crimes three centuries before or about the curse of the demon dog that Hugo unleashed on his descendants. Should Dr. Mortimer tell him that there is \"a diabolical agency\" --a.k.a. a devilish force--making Dartmoor unsafe for Baskervilles? Holmes tells Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry Baskerville back to Baskerville Hall. If the devil's after him, it's not like staying in London will keep him safe. But in the meantime, no one should say anything to Sir Henry about the Hound until Holmes says it's okay. Holmes is a bit of a control freak. Holmes asks Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry around at 10AM the following morning. Watson wants to give Holmes space to think over this new puzzle so he stays at his club the entire day while Holmes sits smoking like a chimney and drinking tons of coffee. When Watson gets back, Holmes shows him a detailed map of the area around Baskerville Hall. It does indeed look grim and bare--there's even a prison nearby. Holmes laughs about Dr. Mortimer's explanation that Sir Charles was tiptoeing home before he keeled over. No, sir, Sir Charles was running flat out--running like his life depended on it. Holmes reasons that Sir Charles saw something that frightened him so badly that he began to run away from his house before his heart gave out. But they still need to figure out what he was waiting for outside, especially since he usually avoided the moors.", "analysis": ""} |
I confess at these words a shudder passed through me. There was a thrill
in the doctor's voice which showed that he was himself deeply moved by
that which he told us. Holmes leaned forward in his excitement and his
eyes had the hard, dry glitter which shot from them when he was keenly
interested.
"You saw this?"
"As clearly as I see you."
"And you said nothing?"
"What was the use?"
"How was it that no one else saw it?"
"The marks were some twenty yards from the body and no one gave them
a thought. I don't suppose I should have done so had I not known this
legend."
"There are many sheep-dogs on the moor?"
"No doubt, but this was no sheep-dog."
"You say it was large?"
"Enormous."
"But it had not approached the body?"
"No."
"What sort of night was it?'
"Damp and raw."
"But not actually raining?"
"No."
"What is the alley like?"
"There are two lines of old yew hedge, twelve feet high and
impenetrable. The walk in the centre is about eight feet across."
"Is there anything between the hedges and the walk?"
"Yes, there is a strip of grass about six feet broad on either side."
"I understand that the yew hedge is penetrated at one point by a gate?"
"Yes, the wicket-gate which leads on to the moor."
"Is there any other opening?"
"None."
"So that to reach the yew alley one either has to come down it from the
house or else to enter it by the moor-gate?"
"There is an exit through a summer-house at the far end."
"Had Sir Charles reached this?"
"No; he lay about fifty yards from it."
"Now, tell me, Dr. Mortimer--and this is important--the marks which you
saw were on the path and not on the grass?"
"No marks could show on the grass."
"Were they on the same side of the path as the moor-gate?"
"Yes; they were on the edge of the path on the same side as the
moor-gate."
"You interest me exceedingly. Another point. Was the wicket-gate
closed?"
"Closed and padlocked."
"How high was it?"
"About four feet high."
"Then anyone could have got over it?"
"Yes."
"And what marks did you see by the wicket-gate?"
"None in particular."
"Good heaven! Did no one examine?"
"Yes, I examined, myself."
"And found nothing?"
"It was all very confused. Sir Charles had evidently stood there for
five or ten minutes."
"How do you know that?"
"Because the ash had twice dropped from his cigar."
"Excellent! This is a colleague, Watson, after our own heart. But the
marks?"
"He had left his own marks all over that small patch of gravel. I could
discern no others."
Sherlock Holmes struck his hand against his knee with an impatient
gesture.
"If I had only been there!" he cried. "It is evidently a case of
extraordinary interest, and one which presented immense opportunities to
the scientific expert. That gravel page upon which I might have read so
much has been long ere this smudged by the rain and defaced by the clogs
of curious peasants. Oh, Dr. Mortimer, Dr. Mortimer, to think that you
should not have called me in! You have indeed much to answer for."
"I could not call you in, Mr. Holmes, without disclosing these facts to
the world, and I have already given my reasons for not wishing to do so.
Besides, besides--"
"Why do you hesitate?"
"There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of
detectives is helpless."
"You mean that the thing is supernatural?"
"I did not positively say so."
"No, but you evidently think it."
"Since the tragedy, Mr. Holmes, there have come to my ears several
incidents which are hard to reconcile with the settled order of Nature."
"For example?"
"I find that before the terrible event occurred several people had seen
a creature upon the moor which corresponds with this Baskerville demon,
and which could not possibly be any animal known to science. They all
agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I
have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman,
one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of
this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the
legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district,
and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night."
"And you, a trained man of science, believe it to be supernatural?"
"I do not know what to believe."
Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "I have hitherto confined my
investigations to this world," said he. "In a modest way I have combated
evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too
ambitious a task. Yet you must admit that the footmark is material."
"The original hound was material enough to tug a man's throat out, and
yet he was diabolical as well."
"I see that you have quite gone over to the supernaturalists. But now,
Dr. Mortimer, tell me this. If you hold these views, why have you come
to consult me at all? You tell me in the same breath that it is useless
to investigate Sir Charles's death, and that you desire me to do it."
"I did not say that I desired you to do it."
"Then, how can I assist you?"
"By advising me as to what I should do with Sir Henry Baskerville, who
arrives at Waterloo Station"--Dr. Mortimer looked at his watch--"in
exactly one hour and a quarter."
"He being the heir?"
"Yes. On the death of Sir Charles we inquired for this young gentleman
and found that he had been farming in Canada. From the accounts which
have reached us he is an excellent fellow in every way. I speak now not
as a medical man but as a trustee and executor of Sir Charles's will."
"There is no other claimant, I presume?"
"None. The only other kinsman whom we have been able to trace was Rodger
Baskerville, the youngest of three brothers of whom poor Sir Charles was
the elder. The second brother, who died young, is the father of this lad
Henry. The third, Rodger, was the black sheep of the family. He came of
the old masterful Baskerville strain and was the very image, they tell
me, of the family picture of old Hugo. He made England too hot to hold
him, fled to Central America, and died there in 1876 of yellow fever.
Henry is the last of the Baskervilles. In one hour and five minutes
I meet him at Waterloo Station. I have had a wire that he arrived at
Southampton this morning. Now, Mr. Holmes, what would you advise me to
do with him?"
"Why should he not go to the home of his fathers?"
"It seems natural, does it not? And yet, consider that every Baskerville
who goes there meets with an evil fate. I feel sure that if Sir Charles
could have spoken with me before his death he would have warned me
against bringing this, the last of the old race, and the heir to great
wealth, to that deadly place. And yet it cannot be denied that the
prosperity of the whole poor, bleak countryside depends upon his
presence. All the good work which has been done by Sir Charles will
crash to the ground if there is no tenant of the Hall. I fear lest I
should be swayed too much by my own obvious interest in the matter, and
that is why I bring the case before you and ask for your advice."
Holmes considered for a little time.
"Put into plain words, the matter is this," said he. "In your opinion
there is a diabolical agency which makes Dartmoor an unsafe abode for a
Baskerville--that is your opinion?"
"At least I might go the length of saying that there is some evidence
that this may be so."
"Exactly. But surely, if your supernatural theory be correct, it could
work the young man evil in London as easily as in Devonshire. A devil
with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable
a thing."
"You put the matter more flippantly, Mr. Holmes, than you would probably
do if you were brought into personal contact with these things. Your
advice, then, as I understand it, is that the young man will be as safe
in Devonshire as in London. He comes in fifty minutes. What would you
recommend?"
"I recommend, sir, that you take a cab, call off your spaniel who is
scratching at my front door, and proceed to Waterloo to meet Sir Henry
Baskerville."
"And then?"
"And then you will say nothing to him at all until I have made up my
mind about the matter."
"How long will it take you to make up your mind?"
"Twenty-four hours. At ten o'clock tomorrow, Dr. Mortimer, I will be
much obliged to you if you will call upon me here, and it will be
of help to me in my plans for the future if you will bring Sir Henry
Baskerville with you."
"I will do so, Mr. Holmes." He scribbled the appointment on his
shirt-cuff and hurried off in his strange, peering, absent-minded
fashion. Holmes stopped him at the head of the stair.
"Only one more question, Dr. Mortimer. You say that before Sir Charles
Baskerville's death several people saw this apparition upon the moor?"
"Three people did."
"Did any see it after?"
"I have not heard of any."
"Thank you. Good-morning."
Holmes returned to his seat with that quiet look of inward satisfaction
which meant that he had a congenial task before him.
"Going out, Watson?"
"Unless I can help you."
"No, my dear fellow, it is at the hour of action that I turn to you for
aid. But this is splendid, really unique from some points of view.
When you pass Bradley's, would you ask him to send up a pound of the
strongest shag tobacco? Thank you. It would be as well if you could make
it convenient not to return before evening. Then I should be very glad
to compare impressions as to this most interesting problem which has
been submitted to us this morning."
I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend
in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed
every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced
one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were
essential and which immaterial. I therefore spent the day at my club and
did not return to Baker Street until evening. It was nearly nine o'clock
when I found myself in the sitting-room once more.
My first impression as I opened the door was that a fire had broken out,
for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon
the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at
rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me
by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision
of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black
clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls of paper lay around him.
"Caught cold, Watson?" said he.
"No, it's this poisonous atmosphere."
"I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it."
"Thick! It is intolerable."
"Open the window, then! You have been at your club all day, I perceive."
"My dear Holmes!"
"Am I right?"
"Certainly, but how?"
He laughed at my bewildered expression. "There is a delightful freshness
about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small
powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a
showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the
gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore
all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he
have been? Is it not obvious?"
"Well, it is rather obvious."
"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever
observes. Where do you think that I have been?"
"A fixture also."
"On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire."
"In spirit?"
"Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret
to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an
incredible amount of tobacco. After you left I sent down to Stamford's
for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has
hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way
about."
"A large-scale map, I presume?"
"Very large."
He unrolled one section and held it over his knee. "Here you have the
particular district which concerns us. That is Baskerville Hall in the
middle."
"With a wood round it?"
"Exactly. I fancy the yew alley, though not marked under that name, must
stretch along this line, with the moor, as you perceive, upon the right
of it. This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen,
where our friend Dr. Mortimer has his headquarters. Within a radius of
five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings.
Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is
a house indicated here which may be the residence of the
naturalist--Stapleton, if I remember right, was his name. Here are two
moorland farmhouses, High Tor and Foulmire. Then fourteen miles away the
great convict prison of Princetown. Between and around these scattered
points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage
upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play
it again."
"It must be a wild place."
"Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a
hand in the affairs of men--"
"Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation."
"The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? There are
two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime
has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was
it committed? Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct,
and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature,
there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all
other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we'll shut
that window again, if you don't mind. It is a singular thing, but I find
that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have
not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is
the logical outcome of my convictions. Have you turned the case over in
your mind?"
"Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day."
"What do you make of it?"
"It is very bewildering."
"It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of
distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What
do you make of that?"
"Mortimer said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of
the alley."
"He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a
man walk on tiptoe down the alley?"
"What then?"
"He was running, Watson--running desperately, running for his life,
running until he burst his heart--and fell dead upon his face."
"Running from what?"
"There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed
with fear before ever he began to run."
"How can you say that?"
"I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him across the moor.
If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his
wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. If the
gipsy's evidence may be taken as true, he ran with cries for help in the
direction where help was least likely to be. Then, again, whom was he
waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the yew alley
rather than in his own house?"
"You think that he was waiting for someone?"
"The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking an evening
stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural
that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Dr. Mortimer, with more
practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from
the cigar ash?"
"But he went out every evening."
"I think it unlikely that he waited at the moor-gate every evening. On
the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the moor. That night he
waited there. It was the night before he made his departure for London.
The thing takes shape, Watson. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to
hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this
business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr. Mortimer and Sir
Henry Baskerville in the morning."
| 4,050 | Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-3 | Dr. Mortimer insists that this strange black dog is no wild or local dog. The ash from Sir Charles' cigar shows that he was standing at the end of the driveway for five or ten minutes before tiptoeing out in the direction of the moor. Holmes is annoyed that he hasn't gotten a look at the scene of the death yet--why didn't Dr. Mortimer call him in earlier?! Dr. Mortimer hems and haws a little, but it's clear what he thinks: can a detective really help in what Mortimer is convinced are supernatural matters? After all, the local people have been spotting a giant, glow-in-the-dark dog on the moors. Holmes is justifiably confused. If Dr. Mortimer doesn't think a detective will be able to track down the Hound of Hell who killed Sir Charles, why has he even come to visit Holmes? Dr. Mortimer says he wants advice from Holmes about Sir Henry Baskerville, the new heir to the estate. Sir Henry Baskerville has been living in Canada but has returned to claim has estate. He has no idea about Hugo Baskerville's horrible crimes three centuries before or about the curse of the demon dog that Hugo unleashed on his descendants. Should Dr. Mortimer tell him that there is "a diabolical agency" --a.k.a. a devilish force--making Dartmoor unsafe for Baskervilles? Holmes tells Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry Baskerville back to Baskerville Hall. If the devil's after him, it's not like staying in London will keep him safe. But in the meantime, no one should say anything to Sir Henry about the Hound until Holmes says it's okay. Holmes is a bit of a control freak. Holmes asks Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry around at 10AM the following morning. Watson wants to give Holmes space to think over this new puzzle so he stays at his club the entire day while Holmes sits smoking like a chimney and drinking tons of coffee. When Watson gets back, Holmes shows him a detailed map of the area around Baskerville Hall. It does indeed look grim and bare--there's even a prison nearby. Holmes laughs about Dr. Mortimer's explanation that Sir Charles was tiptoeing home before he keeled over. No, sir, Sir Charles was running flat out--running like his life depended on it. Holmes reasons that Sir Charles saw something that frightened him so badly that he began to run away from his house before his heart gave out. But they still need to figure out what he was waiting for outside, especially since he usually avoided the moors. | null | 633 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/04.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_3_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 4 | chapter 4 | null | {"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-4", "summary": "At exactly ten the next morning, Dr. Mortimer shows up with Sir Henry Baskerville. Sir Henry is a smart-looking guy of around thirty. He's glad to meet Holmes because he's had a weird experience he wants to discuss. Even though it's not public knowledge where he's staying in London, he received an anonymous note at his hotel that morning. The note says, \"As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor\" . Holmes figures out that the words from the note were cut out of the Times . Holmes also deduces that the person who left the note is an educated person who wanted to appear working-class, and who was in a huge hurry. Sir Henry has one other weird incident to report: one of his shoes has gone missing. He bought a pair of new brown boots yesterday, and one of them has disappeared. Holmes can't think why anyone would steal one brown boot, so he assumes the boot will turn up again. Holmes tells Sir Henry all about the Hound and Sir Charles' sudden and mysterious death. Sir Henry's heard the story of the Hound since he was a kid, but he doesn't buy it. He's not going to let some dog keep him away from the property that is rightfully his. Still, Sir Henry wants some time to think over what Holmes has told him. So he invites Holmes and Watson over to his hotel for lunch. Until then, he's going to wander around and think things over with Dr. Mortimer. Holmes watches Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer leave the apartment. Then, he grabs Watson and rushes out the door. As Holmes and Watson follow Sir Henry at a distance, they spot another man tailing him in a cab. The man has a thick beard and piercing eyes. But as soon as Holmes sees the man, the man yells at the cabdriver to drive on. Holmes is impressed at the smarts of their opponent. He's also annoyed with himself for making it so obvious that he was following Sir Henry. So Holmes tries a new Clever Plan: he pays a local messenger boy to visit all the major hotels in London. He wants the kid to go through the trash to try to find copy of yesterday's Times with words cut out of the lead article. Holmes and Watson go off to spend a few hours at art galleries before meeting Sir Henry.", "analysis": ""} |
Our breakfast table was cleared early, and Holmes waited in his
dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to
their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer
was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small,
alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built,
with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a
ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who
has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something
in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing which indicated
the gentleman.
"This is Sir Henry Baskerville," said Dr. Mortimer.
"Why, yes," said he, "and the strange thing is, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,
that if my friend here had not proposed coming round to you this morning
I should have come on my own account. I understand that you think out
little puzzles, and I've had one this morning which wants more thinking
out than I am able to give it."
"Pray take a seat, Sir Henry. Do I understand you to say that you have
yourself had some remarkable experience since you arrived in London?"
"Nothing of much importance, Mr. Holmes. Only a joke, as like as not.
It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this
morning."
He laid an envelope upon the table, and we all bent over it. It was of
common quality, grayish in colour. The address, "Sir Henry Baskerville,
Northumberland Hotel," was printed in rough characters; the post-mark
"Charing Cross," and the date of posting the preceding evening.
"Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?" asked
Holmes, glancing keenly across at our visitor.
"No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr. Mortimer."
"But Dr. Mortimer was no doubt already stopping there?"
"No, I had been staying with a friend," said the doctor.
"There was no possible indication that we intended to go to this hotel."
"Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements." Out
of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four.
This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it
a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed
words upon it. It ran:
As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.
The word "moor" only was printed in ink.
"Now," said Sir Henry Baskerville, "perhaps you will tell me, Mr.
Holmes, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who it is that takes
so much interest in my affairs?"
"What do you make of it, Dr. Mortimer? You must allow that there is
nothing supernatural about this, at any rate?"
"No, sir, but it might very well come from someone who was convinced
that the business is supernatural."
"What business?" asked Sir Henry sharply. "It seems to me that all you
gentlemen know a great deal more than I do about my own affairs."
"You shall share our knowledge before you leave this room, Sir Henry. I
promise you that," said Sherlock Holmes. "We will confine ourselves
for the present with your permission to this very interesting document,
which must have been put together and posted yesterday evening. Have you
yesterday's Times, Watson?"
"It is here in the corner."
"Might I trouble you for it--the inside page, please, with the leading
articles?" He glanced swiftly over it, running his eyes up and down the
columns. "Capital article this on free trade. Permit me to give you an
extract from it.
'You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special
trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a
protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such
legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the
country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the
general conditions of life in this island.'
"What do you think of that, Watson?" cried Holmes in high glee, rubbing
his hands together with satisfaction. "Don't you think that is an
admirable sentiment?"
Dr. Mortimer looked at Holmes with an air of professional interest, and
Sir Henry Baskerville turned a pair of puzzled dark eyes upon me.
"I don't know much about the tariff and things of that kind," said he,
"but it seems to me we've got a bit off the trail so far as that note is
concerned."
"On the contrary, I think we are particularly hot upon the trail, Sir
Henry. Watson here knows more about my methods than you do, but I fear
that even he has not quite grasped the significance of this sentence."
"No, I confess that I see no connection."
"And yet, my dear Watson, there is so very close a connection that
the one is extracted out of the other. 'You,' 'your,' 'your,' 'life,'
'reason,' 'value,' 'keep away,' 'from the.' Don't you see now whence
these words have been taken?"
"By thunder, you're right! Well, if that isn't smart!" cried Sir Henry.
"If any possible doubt remained it is settled by the fact that 'keep
away' and 'from the' are cut out in one piece."
"Well, now--so it is!"
"Really, Mr. Holmes, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined,"
said Dr. Mortimer, gazing at my friend in amazement. "I could understand
anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should
name which, and add that it came from the leading article, is really one
of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do
it?"
"I presume, Doctor, that you could tell the skull of a negro from that
of an Esquimau?"
"Most certainly."
"But how?"
"Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The
supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve, the--"
"But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious.
There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type
of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper
as there could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The detection of
types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special
expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young I
confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times
leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken
from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was
that we should find the words in yesterday's issue."
"So far as I can follow you, then, Mr. Holmes," said Sir Henry
Baskerville, "someone cut out this message with a scissors--"
"Nail-scissors," said Holmes. "You can see that it was a very
short-bladed scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over 'keep
away.'"
"That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of
short-bladed scissors, pasted it with paste--"
"Gum," said Holmes.
"With gum on to the paper. But I want to know why the word 'moor' should
have been written?"
"Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple
and might be found in any issue, but 'moor' would be less common."
"Why, of course, that would explain it. Have you read anything else in
this message, Mr. Holmes?"
"There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been
taken to remove all clues. The address, you observe is printed in rough
characters. But the Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands
but those of the highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that
the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an
uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that
that writing might be known, or come to be known, by you. Again, you
will observe that the words are not gummed on in an accurate line, but
that some are much higher than others. 'Life,' for example is quite out
of its proper place. That may point to carelessness or it may point to
agitation and hurry upon the part of the cutter. On the whole I incline
to the latter view, since the matter was evidently important, and it
is unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he
were in a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be
in a hurry, since any letter posted up to early morning would reach
Sir Henry before he would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an
interruption--and from whom?"
"We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork," said Dr.
Mortimer.
"Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose
the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we
have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. Now,
you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this
address has been written in a hotel."
"How in the world can you say that?"
"If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink
have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single
word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there
was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is
seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two
must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where
it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I have very little hesitation
in saying that could we examine the waste-paper baskets of the hotels
around Charing Cross until we found the remains of the mutilated Times
leader we could lay our hands straight upon the person who sent this
singular message. Halloa! Halloa! What's this?"
He was carefully examining the foolscap, upon which the words were
pasted, holding it only an inch or two from his eyes.
"Well?"
"Nothing," said he, throwing it down. "It is a blank half-sheet of
paper, without even a water-mark upon it. I think we have drawn as much
as we can from this curious letter; and now, Sir Henry, has anything
else of interest happened to you since you have been in London?"
"Why, no, Mr. Holmes. I think not."
"You have not observed anyone follow or watch you?"
"I seem to have walked right into the thick of a dime novel," said our
visitor. "Why in thunder should anyone follow or watch me?"
"We are coming to that. You have nothing else to report to us before we
go into this matter?"
"Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting."
"I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth
reporting."
Sir Henry smiled. "I don't know much of British life yet, for I have
spent nearly all my time in the States and in Canada. But I hope that to
lose one of your boots is not part of the ordinary routine of life over
here."
"You have lost one of your boots?"
"My dear sir," cried Dr. Mortimer, "it is only mislaid. You will find
it when you return to the hotel. What is the use of troubling Mr. Holmes
with trifles of this kind?"
"Well, he asked me for anything outside the ordinary routine."
"Exactly," said Holmes, "however foolish the incident may seem. You have
lost one of your boots, you say?"
"Well, mislaid it, anyhow. I put them both outside my door last night,
and there was only one in the morning. I could get no sense out of the
chap who cleans them. The worst of it is that I only bought the pair
last night in the Strand, and I have never had them on."
"If you have never worn them, why did you put them out to be cleaned?"
"They were tan boots and had never been varnished. That was why I put
them out."
"Then I understand that on your arrival in London yesterday you went out
at once and bought a pair of boots?"
"I did a good deal of shopping. Dr. Mortimer here went round with me.
You see, if I am to be squire down there I must dress the part, and
it may be that I have got a little careless in my ways out West. Among
other things I bought these brown boots--gave six dollars for them--and
had one stolen before ever I had them on my feet."
"It seems a singularly useless thing to steal," said Sherlock Holmes.
"I confess that I share Dr. Mortimer's belief that it will not be long
before the missing boot is found."
"And, now, gentlemen," said the baronet with decision, "it seems to me
that I have spoken quite enough about the little that I know. It is time
that you kept your promise and gave me a full account of what we are all
driving at."
"Your request is a very reasonable one," Holmes answered. "Dr. Mortimer,
I think you could not do better than to tell your story as you told it
to us."
Thus encouraged, our scientific friend drew his papers from his pocket
and presented the whole case as he had done upon the morning before.
Sir Henry Baskerville listened with the deepest attention and with an
occasional exclamation of surprise.
"Well, I seem to have come into an inheritance with a vengeance," said
he when the long narrative was finished. "Of course, I've heard of the
hound ever since I was in the nursery. It's the pet story of the family,
though I never thought of taking it seriously before. But as to my
uncle's death--well, it all seems boiling up in my head, and I can't
get it clear yet. You don't seem quite to have made up your mind whether
it's a case for a policeman or a clergyman."
"Precisely."
"And now there's this affair of the letter to me at the hotel. I suppose
that fits into its place."
"It seems to show that someone knows more than we do about what goes on
upon the moor," said Dr. Mortimer.
"And also," said Holmes, "that someone is not ill-disposed towards you,
since they warn you of danger."
"Or it may be that they wish, for their own purposes, to scare me away."
"Well, of course, that is possible also. I am very much indebted to you,
Dr. Mortimer, for introducing me to a problem which presents several
interesting alternatives. But the practical point which we now have to
decide, Sir Henry, is whether it is or is not advisable for you to go to
Baskerville Hall."
"Why should I not go?"
"There seems to be danger."
"Do you mean danger from this family fiend or do you mean danger from
human beings?"
"Well, that is what we have to find out."
"Whichever it is, my answer is fixed. There is no devil in hell, Mr.
Holmes, and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to
the home of my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer."
His dark brows knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke.
It was evident that the fiery temper of the Baskervilles was not extinct
in this their last representative. "Meanwhile," said he, "I have hardly
had time to think over all that you have told me. It's a big thing for a
man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like
to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. Now, look here, Mr.
Holmes, it's half-past eleven now and I am going back right away to my
hotel. Suppose you and your friend, Dr. Watson, come round and lunch
with us at two. I'll be able to tell you more clearly then how this
thing strikes me."
"Is that convenient to you, Watson?"
"Perfectly."
"Then you may expect us. Shall I have a cab called?"
"I'd prefer to walk, for this affair has flurried me rather."
"I'll join you in a walk, with pleasure," said his companion.
"Then we meet again at two o'clock. Au revoir, and good-morning!"
We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the
front door. In an instant Holmes had changed from the languid dreamer to
the man of action.
"Your hat and boots, Watson, quick! Not a moment to lose!" He rushed
into his room in his dressing-gown and was back again in a few seconds
in a frock-coat. We hurried together down the stairs and into the
street. Dr. Mortimer and Baskerville were still visible about two
hundred yards ahead of us in the direction of Oxford Street.
"Shall I run on and stop them?"
"Not for the world, my dear Watson. I am perfectly satisfied with your
company if you will tolerate mine. Our friends are wise, for it is
certainly a very fine morning for a walk."
He quickened his pace until we had decreased the distance which divided
us by about half. Then, still keeping a hundred yards behind, we
followed into Oxford Street and so down Regent Street. Once our friends
stopped and stared into a shop window, upon which Holmes did the
same. An instant afterwards he gave a little cry of satisfaction, and,
following the direction of his eager eyes, I saw that a hansom cab with
a man inside which had halted on the other side of the street was now
proceeding slowly onward again.
"There's our man, Watson! Come along! We'll have a good look at him, if
we can do no more."
At that instant I was aware of a bushy black beard and a pair of
piercing eyes turned upon us through the side window of the cab.
Instantly the trapdoor at the top flew up, something was screamed to
the driver, and the cab flew madly off down Regent Street. Holmes looked
eagerly round for another, but no empty one was in sight. Then he dashed
in wild pursuit amid the stream of the traffic, but the start was too
great, and already the cab was out of sight.
"There now!" said Holmes bitterly as he emerged panting and white with
vexation from the tide of vehicles. "Was ever such bad luck and such
bad management, too? Watson, Watson, if you are an honest man you will
record this also and set it against my successes!"
"Who was the man?"
"I have not an idea."
"A spy?"
"Well, it was evident from what we have heard that Baskerville has been
very closely shadowed by someone since he has been in town. How else
could it be known so quickly that it was the Northumberland Hotel which
he had chosen? If they had followed him the first day I argued that they
would follow him also the second. You may have observed that I twice
strolled over to the window while Dr. Mortimer was reading his legend."
"Yes, I remember."
"I was looking out for loiterers in the street, but I saw none. We
are dealing with a clever man, Watson. This matter cuts very deep, and
though I have not finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or
a malevolent agency which is in touch with us, I am conscious always of
power and design. When our friends left I at once followed them in the
hopes of marking down their invisible attendant. So wily was he that he
had not trusted himself upon foot, but he had availed himself of a cab
so that he could loiter behind or dash past them and so escape their
notice. His method had the additional advantage that if they were to
take a cab he was all ready to follow them. It has, however, one obvious
disadvantage."
"It puts him in the power of the cabman."
"Exactly."
"What a pity we did not get the number!"
"My dear Watson, clumsy as I have been, you surely do not seriously
imagine that I neglected to get the number? No. 2704 is our man. But
that is no use to us for the moment."
"I fail to see how you could have done more."
"On observing the cab I should have instantly turned and walked in the
other direction. I should then at my leisure have hired a second cab
and followed the first at a respectful distance, or, better still, have
driven to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there. When our unknown
had followed Baskerville home we should have had the opportunity of
playing his own game upon himself and seeing where he made for. As
it is, by an indiscreet eagerness, which was taken advantage of with
extraordinary quickness and energy by our opponent, we have betrayed
ourselves and lost our man."
We had been sauntering slowly down Regent Street during this
conversation, and Dr. Mortimer, with his companion, had long vanished in
front of us.
"There is no object in our following them," said Holmes. "The shadow has
departed and will not return. We must see what further cards we have
in our hands and play them with decision. Could you swear to that man's
face within the cab?"
"I could swear only to the beard."
"And so could I--from which I gather that in all probability it was
a false one. A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a
beard save to conceal his features. Come in here, Watson!"
He turned into one of the district messenger offices, where he was
warmly greeted by the manager.
"Ah, Wilson, I see you have not forgotten the little case in which I had
the good fortune to help you?"
"No, sir, indeed I have not. You saved my good name, and perhaps my
life."
"My dear fellow, you exaggerate. I have some recollection, Wilson, that
you had among your boys a lad named Cartwright, who showed some ability
during the investigation."
"Yes, sir, he is still with us."
"Could you ring him up?--thank you! And I should be glad to have change
of this five-pound note."
A lad of fourteen, with a bright, keen face, had obeyed the summons
of the manager. He stood now gazing with great reverence at the famous
detective.
"Let me have the Hotel Directory," said Holmes. "Thank you! Now,
Cartwright, there are the names of twenty-three hotels here, all in the
immediate neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Do you see?"
"Yes, sir."
"You will visit each of these in turn."
"Yes, sir."
"You will begin in each case by giving the outside porter one shilling.
Here are twenty-three shillings."
"Yes, sir."
"You will tell him that you want to see the waste-paper of yesterday.
You will say that an important telegram has miscarried and that you are
looking for it. You understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"But what you are really looking for is the centre page of the Times
with some holes cut in it with scissors. Here is a copy of the Times. It
is this page. You could easily recognize it, could you not?"
"Yes, sir."
"In each case the outside porter will send for the hall porter, to whom
also you will give a shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings. You will
then learn in possibly twenty cases out of the twenty-three that the
waste of the day before has been burned or removed. In the three other
cases you will be shown a heap of paper and you will look for this page
of the Times among it. The odds are enormously against your finding
it. There are ten shillings over in case of emergencies. Let me have a
report by wire at Baker Street before evening. And now, Watson, it only
remains for us to find out by wire the identity of the cabman, No. 2704,
and then we will drop into one of the Bond Street picture galleries and
fill in the time until we are due at the hotel."
| 5,589 | Chapter 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-4 | At exactly ten the next morning, Dr. Mortimer shows up with Sir Henry Baskerville. Sir Henry is a smart-looking guy of around thirty. He's glad to meet Holmes because he's had a weird experience he wants to discuss. Even though it's not public knowledge where he's staying in London, he received an anonymous note at his hotel that morning. The note says, "As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor" . Holmes figures out that the words from the note were cut out of the Times . Holmes also deduces that the person who left the note is an educated person who wanted to appear working-class, and who was in a huge hurry. Sir Henry has one other weird incident to report: one of his shoes has gone missing. He bought a pair of new brown boots yesterday, and one of them has disappeared. Holmes can't think why anyone would steal one brown boot, so he assumes the boot will turn up again. Holmes tells Sir Henry all about the Hound and Sir Charles' sudden and mysterious death. Sir Henry's heard the story of the Hound since he was a kid, but he doesn't buy it. He's not going to let some dog keep him away from the property that is rightfully his. Still, Sir Henry wants some time to think over what Holmes has told him. So he invites Holmes and Watson over to his hotel for lunch. Until then, he's going to wander around and think things over with Dr. Mortimer. Holmes watches Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer leave the apartment. Then, he grabs Watson and rushes out the door. As Holmes and Watson follow Sir Henry at a distance, they spot another man tailing him in a cab. The man has a thick beard and piercing eyes. But as soon as Holmes sees the man, the man yells at the cabdriver to drive on. Holmes is impressed at the smarts of their opponent. He's also annoyed with himself for making it so obvious that he was following Sir Henry. So Holmes tries a new Clever Plan: he pays a local messenger boy to visit all the major hotels in London. He wants the kid to go through the trash to try to find copy of yesterday's Times with words cut out of the lead article. Holmes and Watson go off to spend a few hours at art galleries before meeting Sir Henry. | null | 547 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/05.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_4_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 5 | chapter 5 | null | {"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-5", "summary": "Holmes and Watson arrive at Sir Henry's hotel. Holmes says that the other people staying at the hotel cannot be connected to the person watching Sir Henry, because that person is keeping his distance. When they arrive at Sir Henry's room, they find out that he is furious. Someone's stolen an old black boot, leaving him a mismatched pair of one brown and one black. Sir Henry apologizes for making such a fuss over such a small thing as two stolen boots. But Holmes looks Very Serious--clearly, this Mystery of the Stolen Boots means a lot more to Holmes than it does to us. Holmes asks if Sir Henry knows anyone with a thick black beard. Yep--apparently Barrymore, the butler at Baskerville Hall, fits that description. It turns out that both Barrymore and his wife received money in Sir Charles' will. Perhaps they could be the culprits! Dr. Mortimer admits that he also received some cash from Sir Charles' will. But the rest of his estate all went to Sir Henry: 740,000 pounds, to be exact. . The real Holmes gives John Clayton some money and then laughs with Watson. He realizes that the spy must have recognized Holmes when he started following Sir Henry.", "analysis": ""} |
Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching
his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had
been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in
the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing
but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery
until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel.
"Sir Henry Baskerville is upstairs expecting you," said the clerk. "He
asked me to show you up at once when you came."
"Have you any objection to my looking at your register?" said Holmes.
"Not in the least."
The book showed that two names had been added after that of Baskerville.
One was Theophilus Johnson and family, of Newcastle; the other Mrs.
Oldmore and maid, of High Lodge, Alton.
"Surely that must be the same Johnson whom I used to know," said Holmes
to the porter. "A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks with a
limp?"
"No, sir, this is Mr. Johnson, the coal-owner, a very active gentleman,
not older than yourself."
"Surely you are mistaken about his trade?"
"No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well
known to us."
"Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name.
Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds
another."
"She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester.
She always comes to us when she is in town."
"Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance. We have
established a most important fact by these questions, Watson," he
continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together. "We know now that
the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down
in his own hotel. That means that while they are, as we have seen, very
anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see
them. Now, this is a most suggestive fact."
"What does it suggest?"
"It suggests--halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?"
As we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Henry
Baskerville himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old
and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly
articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more
Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning.
"Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel," he cried.
"They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless
they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot
there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but
they've got a bit over the mark this time."
"Still looking for your boot?"
"Yes, sir, and mean to find it."
"But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?"
"So it was, sir. And now it's an old black one."
"What! you don't mean to say--?"
"That's just what I do mean to say. I only had three pairs in the
world--the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am
wearing. Last night they took one of my brown ones, and today they have
sneaked one of the black. Well, have you got it? Speak out, man, and
don't stand staring!"
An agitated German waiter had appeared upon the scene.
"No, sir; I have made inquiry all over the hotel, but I can hear no word
of it."
"Well, either that boot comes back before sundown or I'll see the
manager and tell him that I go right straight out of this hotel."
"It shall be found, sir--I promise you that if you will have a little
patience it will be found."
"Mind it is, for it's the last thing of mine that I'll lose in this den
of thieves. Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you'll excuse my troubling you about
such a trifle--"
"I think it's well worth troubling about."
"Why, you look very serious over it."
"How do you explain it?"
"I just don't attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest
thing that ever happened to me."
"The queerest perhaps--" said Holmes thoughtfully.
"What do you make of it yourself?"
"Well, I don't profess to understand it yet. This case of yours is very
complex, Sir Henry. When taken in conjunction with your uncle's death
I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance
which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold
several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them
guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one,
but sooner or later we must come upon the right."
We had a pleasant luncheon in which little was said of the business
which had brought us together. It was in the private sitting-room to
which we afterwards repaired that Holmes asked Baskerville what were his
intentions.
"To go to Baskerville Hall."
"And when?"
"At the end of the week."
"On the whole," said Holmes, "I think that your decision is a wise one.
I have ample evidence that you are being dogged in London, and amid the
millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people
are or what their object can be. If their intentions are evil they might
do you a mischief, and we should be powerless to prevent it. You did not
know, Dr. Mortimer, that you were followed this morning from my house?"
Dr. Mortimer started violently. "Followed! By whom?"
"That, unfortunately, is what I cannot tell you. Have you among your
neighbours or acquaintances on Dartmoor any man with a black, full
beard?"
"No--or, let me see--why, yes. Barrymore, Sir Charles's butler, is a man
with a full, black beard."
"Ha! Where is Barrymore?"
"He is in charge of the Hall."
"We had best ascertain if he is really there, or if by any possibility
he might be in London."
"How can you do that?"
"Give me a telegraph form. 'Is all ready for Sir Henry?' That will
do. Address to Mr. Barrymore, Baskerville Hall. What is the nearest
telegraph-office? Grimpen. Very good, we will send a second wire to the
postmaster, Grimpen: 'Telegram to Mr. Barrymore to be delivered into
his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Henry Baskerville,
Northumberland Hotel.' That should let us know before evening whether
Barrymore is at his post in Devonshire or not."
"That's so," said Baskerville. "By the way, Dr. Mortimer, who is this
Barrymore, anyhow?"
"He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after
the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife are
as respectable a couple as any in the county."
"At the same time," said Baskerville, "it's clear enough that so long as
there are none of the family at the Hall these people have a mighty fine
home and nothing to do."
"That is true."
"Did Barrymore profit at all by Sir Charles's will?" asked Holmes.
"He and his wife had five hundred pounds each."
"Ha! Did they know that they would receive this?"
"Yes; Sir Charles was very fond of talking about the provisions of his
will."
"That is very interesting."
"I hope," said Dr. Mortimer, "that you do not look with suspicious eyes
upon everyone who received a legacy from Sir Charles, for I also had a
thousand pounds left to me."
"Indeed! And anyone else?"
"There were many insignificant sums to individuals, and a large number
of public charities. The residue all went to Sir Henry."
"And how much was the residue?"
"Seven hundred and forty thousand pounds."
Holmes raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I had no idea that so gigantic
a sum was involved," said he.
"Sir Charles had the reputation of being rich, but we did not know how
very rich he was until we came to examine his securities. The total
value of the estate was close on to a million."
"Dear me! It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate
game. And one more question, Dr. Mortimer. Supposing that anything
happened to our young friend here--you will forgive the unpleasant
hypothesis!--who would inherit the estate?"
"Since Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles's younger brother died unmarried,
the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James
Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland."
"Thank you. These details are all of great interest. Have you met Mr.
James Desmond?"
"Yes; he once came down to visit Sir Charles. He is a man of venerable
appearance and of saintly life. I remember that he refused to accept any
settlement from Sir Charles, though he pressed it upon him."
"And this man of simple tastes would be the heir to Sir Charles's
thousands."
"He would be the heir to the estate because that is entailed. He would
also be the heir to the money unless it were willed otherwise by the
present owner, who can, of course, do what he likes with it."
"And have you made your will, Sir Henry?"
"No, Mr. Holmes, I have not. I've had no time, for it was only yesterday
that I learned how matters stood. But in any case I feel that the money
should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle's idea. How
is the owner going to restore the glories of the Baskervilles if he has
not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must
go together."
"Quite so. Well, Sir Henry, I am of one mind with you as to the
advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is
only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone."
"Dr. Mortimer returns with me."
"But Dr. Mortimer has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles
away from yours. With all the goodwill in the world he may be unable to
help you. No, Sir Henry, you must take with you someone, a trusty man,
who will be always by your side."
"Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Holmes?"
"If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person;
but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice
and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is
impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At
the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being
besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal.
You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor."
"Whom would you recommend, then?"
Holmes laid his hand upon my arm. "If my friend would undertake it there
is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a
tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I."
The proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to
answer, Baskerville seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily.
"Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Watson," said he. "You see how
it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If
you will come down to Baskerville Hall and see me through I'll never
forget it."
The promise of adventure had always a fascination for me, and I was
complimented by the words of Holmes and by the eagerness with which the
baronet hailed me as a companion.
"I will come, with pleasure," said I. "I do not know how I could employ
my time better."
"And you will report very carefully to me," said Holmes. "When a crisis
comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by
Saturday all might be ready?"
"Would that suit Dr. Watson?"
"Perfectly."
"Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the
ten-thirty train from Paddington."
We had risen to depart when Baskerville gave a cry, of triumph, and
diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from
under a cabinet.
"My missing boot!" he cried.
"May all our difficulties vanish as easily!" said Sherlock Holmes.
"But it is a very singular thing," Dr. Mortimer remarked. "I searched
this room carefully before lunch."
"And so did I," said Baskerville. "Every inch of it."
"There was certainly no boot in it then."
"In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were
lunching."
The German was sent for but professed to know nothing of the matter,
nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that
constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had
succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of
Sir Charles's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within
the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed
letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown
boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new
brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker
Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind,
like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which
all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted.
All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and
thought.
Just before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran:
Have just heard that Barrymore is at the Hall. BASKERVILLE.
The second:
Visited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry, to report unable to
trace cut sheet of Times. CARTWRIGHT.
"There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating
than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for
another scent."
"We have still the cabman who drove the spy."
"Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official
Registry. I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my
question."
The ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory
than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow
entered who was evidently the man himself.
"I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address had
been inquiring for No. 2704," said he. "I've driven my cab this seven
years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard
to ask you to your face what you had against me."
"I have nothing in the world against you, my good man," said Holmes.
"On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a
clear answer to my questions."
"Well, I've had a good day and no mistake," said the cabman with a grin.
"What was it you wanted to ask, sir?"
"First of all your name and address, in case I want you again."
"John Clayton, 3 Turpey Street, the Borough. My cab is out of Shipley's
Yard, near Waterloo Station."
Sherlock Holmes made a note of it.
"Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this
house at ten o'clock this morning and afterwards followed the two
gentlemen down Regent Street."
The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. "Why, there's no good
my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already,"
said he. "The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a
detective and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone."
"My good fellow; this is a very serious business, and you may find
yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me.
You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?"
"Yes, he did."
"When did he say this?"
"When he left me."
"Did he say anything more?"
"He mentioned his name."
Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name,
did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?"
"His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the
cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst
into a hearty laugh.
"A touch, Watson--an undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick
and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So
his name was Sherlock Holmes, was it?"
"Yes, sir, that was the gentleman's name."
"Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up and all that occurred."
"He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was
a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he
wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First
we drove down to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there until two
gentlemen came out and took a cab from the rank. We followed their cab
until it pulled up somewhere near here."
"This very door," said Holmes.
"Well, I couldn't be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about
it. We pulled up halfway down the street and waited an hour and a half.
Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker
Street and along--"
"I know," said Holmes.
"Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw
up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo
Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there
under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one,
and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving he turned
round and he said: 'It might interest you to know that you have been
driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.' That's how I come to know the name."
"I see. And you saw no more of him?"
"Not after he went into the station."
"And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"
The cabman scratched his head. "Well, he wasn't altogether such an easy
gentleman to describe. I'd put him at forty years of age, and he was
of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was
dressed like a toff, and he had a black beard, cut square at the end,
and a pale face. I don't know as I could say more than that."
"Colour of his eyes?"
"No, I can't say that."
"Nothing more that you can remember?"
"No, sir; nothing."
"Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There's another one waiting
for you if you can bring any more information. Good-night!"
"Good-night, sir, and thank you!"
John Clayton departed chuckling, and Holmes turned to me with a shrug of
his shoulders and a rueful smile.
"Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began," said he. "The
cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had
consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had
got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so
sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have
got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I've been checkmated in London.
I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I'm not easy in my
mind about it."
"About what?"
"About sending you. It's an ugly business, Watson, an ugly dangerous
business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear
fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad
to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more."
| 4,835 | Chapter 5 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-5 | Holmes and Watson arrive at Sir Henry's hotel. Holmes says that the other people staying at the hotel cannot be connected to the person watching Sir Henry, because that person is keeping his distance. When they arrive at Sir Henry's room, they find out that he is furious. Someone's stolen an old black boot, leaving him a mismatched pair of one brown and one black. Sir Henry apologizes for making such a fuss over such a small thing as two stolen boots. But Holmes looks Very Serious--clearly, this Mystery of the Stolen Boots means a lot more to Holmes than it does to us. Holmes asks if Sir Henry knows anyone with a thick black beard. Yep--apparently Barrymore, the butler at Baskerville Hall, fits that description. It turns out that both Barrymore and his wife received money in Sir Charles' will. Perhaps they could be the culprits! Dr. Mortimer admits that he also received some cash from Sir Charles' will. But the rest of his estate all went to Sir Henry: 740,000 pounds, to be exact. . The real Holmes gives John Clayton some money and then laughs with Watson. He realizes that the spy must have recognized Holmes when he started following Sir Henry. | null | 279 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/06.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_5_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 6 | chapter 6 | null | {"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-6", "summary": "That Saturday, Holmes takes Watson to the train station to go to Baskerville Hall. Holmes asks Watson to send him information about Sir Henry's neighbors. Holmes gives Watson a quick list of people in the area:Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ;Dr. Mortimer ;Mrs. Mortimer ;Stapleton ;Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ; Dr. Mortimer ; Mrs. Mortimer ; Stapleton ; Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . When Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry arrive at the train station, Holmes warns Sir Henry that it's not safe for him to go off on his own. Not. Safe. Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry take the train to Devonshire. Watson notices that the landscape is a bleak and a little sad. Plus, there are soldiers watching the road to Sir Henry's property. The driver explains that a prisoner has escaped onto the moors. And he's not just any prisoner--he's an insane murderer named Selden. When they arrive at Baskerville Hall, they see that it's a pretty gloomy place. Barrymore welcomes Sir Henry to his family home. He also suggests that Sir Henry start hiring a full staff of servants to keep the old place up. Sir Henry wonders: is Barrymore planning on quitting? His family has worked for Baskerville Hall for generations. In fact, Barrymore does want to leave: he and his wife were so weirded out by Sir Charles' death that they don't feel comfortable at the Hall any longer. In the middle of the night, Watson hears the sound of a woman sobbing.", "analysis": ""} |
Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer were ready upon the appointed
day, and we started as arranged for Devonshire. Mr. Sherlock Holmes
drove with me to the station and gave me his last parting injunctions
and advice.
"I will not bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions,
Watson," said he; "I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest
possible manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing."
"What sort of facts?" I asked.
"Anything which may seem to have a bearing however indirect upon the
case, and especially the relations between young Baskerville and his
neighbours or any fresh particulars concerning the death of Sir Charles.
I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days, but the results
have, I fear, been negative. One thing only appears to be certain, and
that is that Mr. James Desmond, who is the next heir, is an elderly
gentleman of a very amiable disposition, so that this persecution does
not arise from him. I really think that we may eliminate him entirely
from our calculations. There remain the people who will actually
surround Sir Henry Baskerville upon the moor."
"Would it not be well in the first place to get rid of this Barrymore
couple?"
"By no means. You could not make a greater mistake. If they are innocent
it would be a cruel injustice, and if they are guilty we should be
giving up all chance of bringing it home to them. No, no, we will
preserve them upon our list of suspects. Then there is a groom at the
Hall, if I remember right. There are two moorland farmers. There is our
friend Dr. Mortimer, whom I believe to be entirely honest, and there is
his wife, of whom we know nothing. There is this naturalist, Stapleton,
and there is his sister, who is said to be a young lady of attractions.
There is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who is also an unknown factor,
and there are one or two other neighbours. These are the folk who must
be your very special study."
"I will do my best."
"You have arms, I suppose?"
"Yes, I thought it as well to take them."
"Most certainly. Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never
relax your precautions."
Our friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting
for us upon the platform.
"No, we have no news of any kind," said Dr. Mortimer in answer to my
friend's questions. "I can swear to one thing, and that is that we
have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone
out without keeping a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our
notice."
"You have always kept together, I presume?"
"Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to pure amusement
when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of
Surgeons."
"And I went to look at the folk in the park," said Baskerville.
"But we had no trouble of any kind."
"It was imprudent, all the same," said Holmes, shaking his head and
looking very grave. "I beg, Sir Henry, that you will not go about alone.
Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other
boot?"
"No, sir, it is gone forever."
"Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye," he added as the
train began to glide down the platform. "Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of
the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us,
and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil
are exalted."
I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind and saw the
tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us.
The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in making the
more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with
Dr. Mortimer's spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had
become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in
well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation
spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Baskerville stared
eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized
the familiar features of the Devon scenery.
"I've been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Watson,"
said he; "but I have never seen a place to compare with it."
"I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county," I
remarked.
"It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county," said
Dr. Mortimer. "A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of
the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power
of attachment. Poor Sir Charles's head was of a very rare type, half
Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young
when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you not?"
"I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father's death and had never
seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast.
Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as
new to me as it is to Dr. Watson, and I'm as keen as possible to see the
moor."
"Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first
sight of the moor," said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage
window.
Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there
rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged
summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in
a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I
read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of
that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long
and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his
American accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as
I looked at his dark and expressive face I felt more than ever how
true a descendant he was of that long line of high-blooded, fiery,
and masterful men. There were pride, valour, and strength in his thick
brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that
forbidding moor a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us,
this was at least a comrade for whom one might venture to take a risk
with the certainty that he would bravely share it.
The train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all descended.
Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs
was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master
and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet,
simple country spot, but I was surprised to observe that by the gate
there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who leaned upon their
short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a
hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in
a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling
pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses
peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful
and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky,
the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister
hills.
The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through
deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy
with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and
mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily
rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy
stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray
boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with
scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of
delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To
his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon
the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year.
Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we
passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of
rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw
before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.
"Halloa!" cried Dr. Mortimer, "what is this?"
A steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in
front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue
upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle
poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road along which we
travelled.
"What is this, Perkins?" asked Dr. Mortimer.
Our driver half turned in his seat. "There's a convict escaped from
Princetown, sir. He's been out three days now, and the warders watch
every road and every station, but they've had no sight of him yet. The
farmers about here don't like it, sir, and that's a fact."
"Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give
information."
"Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared
to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn't like any
ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing."
"Who is he, then?"
"It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer."
I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an
interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the
wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The
commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his
complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped
a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled
with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from
it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was
lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his
heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out.
It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren
waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell
silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him.
We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on
it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of
gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad
tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder
over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now
and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone,
with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into
a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been
twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers
rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip.
"Baskerville Hall," said he.
Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining
eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of
fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either
side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the
Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of
rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first
fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold.
Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were
again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a
sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up
the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the
farther end.
"Was it here?" he asked in a low voice.
"No, no, the yew alley is on the other side."
The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face.
"It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a
place as this," said he. "It's enough to scare any man. I'll have a row
of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it
again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front
of the hall door."
The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before
us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block
of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in
ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat
of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the
twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes. To
right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite.
A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high
chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a
single black column of smoke.
"Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!"
A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of
the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow
light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our
bags.
"You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?" said Dr. Mortimer.
"My wife is expecting me."
"Surely you will stay and have some dinner?"
"No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would
stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide
than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I
can be of service."
The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned
into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine
apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily
raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great
old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled
and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb
from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window
of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats
of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the
central lamp.
"It's just as I imagined it," said Sir Henry. "Is it not the very
picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same
hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me
solemn to think of it."
I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about
him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed
down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had
returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of
us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a
remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and
pale, distinguished features.
"Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?"
"Is it ready?"
"In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My
wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have
made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new
conditions this house will require a considerable staff."
"What new conditions?"
"I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we
were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have
more company, and so you will need changes in your household."
"Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?"
"Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir."
"But your family have been with us for several generations, have they
not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old family
connection."
I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's white face.
"I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth, sir,
we were both very much attached to Sir Charles, and his death gave us
a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we
shall never again be easy in our minds at Baskerville Hall."
"But what do you intend to do?"
"I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves
in some business. Sir Charles's generosity has given us the means to do
so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms."
A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall,
approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors
extended the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms
opened. My own was in the same wing as Baskerville's and almost next
door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern than the
central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous candles
did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left
upon my mind.
But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow
and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where
the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents.
At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across
above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of
flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of
an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two
black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a
shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit subdued. A
dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan
knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by
their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the
meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room
and smoke a cigarette.
"My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose
one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present.
I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone
in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early
tonight, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning."
I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my
window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall
door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A
half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I
saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve
of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last
impression was in keeping with the rest.
And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful,
tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would
not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the
hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then
suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my
ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the
muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow.
I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been
far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with
every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming
clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.
| 4,932 | Chapter 6 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-6 | That Saturday, Holmes takes Watson to the train station to go to Baskerville Hall. Holmes asks Watson to send him information about Sir Henry's neighbors. Holmes gives Watson a quick list of people in the area:Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ;Dr. Mortimer ;Mrs. Mortimer ;Stapleton ;Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ; Dr. Mortimer ; Mrs. Mortimer ; Stapleton ; Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . When Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry arrive at the train station, Holmes warns Sir Henry that it's not safe for him to go off on his own. Not. Safe. Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry take the train to Devonshire. Watson notices that the landscape is a bleak and a little sad. Plus, there are soldiers watching the road to Sir Henry's property. The driver explains that a prisoner has escaped onto the moors. And he's not just any prisoner--he's an insane murderer named Selden. When they arrive at Baskerville Hall, they see that it's a pretty gloomy place. Barrymore welcomes Sir Henry to his family home. He also suggests that Sir Henry start hiring a full staff of servants to keep the old place up. Sir Henry wonders: is Barrymore planning on quitting? His family has worked for Baskerville Hall for generations. In fact, Barrymore does want to leave: he and his wife were so weirded out by Sir Charles' death that they don't feel comfortable at the Hall any longer. In the middle of the night, Watson hears the sound of a woman sobbing. | null | 409 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/07.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_6_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 7 | chapter 7 | null | {"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-7", "summary": "The next morning, the sun is shining and the house seems less, well, cursed. Even so, both Watson and Sir Henry agree that they heard a woman crying the night before. Watson suspects that the crying woman is Mrs. Barrymore, and that Barrymore's responsible. Watson's suspicions about Barrymore's character only increase when he walks into town and finds out that it wasn't Barrymore, but Barrymore's wife who received the telegram Holmes sent to check out his alibi while Sir Henry was in town. Could Barrymore have been in London spying on Sir Henry after all? A man runs up to Watson in the village and introduces himself: it's Stapleton, from nearby Merripit House. He's carrying a butterfly net. He announces that he is a \"naturalist\" . Stapleton asks if Sherlock Holmes has any theories behind the Hound of the Baskervilles to explain Sir Charles' death. Watson is like, whuh? Holmes? How did you know--? Stapleton promises him that everyone in the neighborhood knows why Watson is here. Stapleton invites Watson to Merripit House to meet his sister. As they walk through the moors, Stapleton tells Watson that the ground in this area is not stable: there are bogs and marshes all over the place. Stapleton warns that, if Watson went into the Mire on his own, he would probably drown in the swamp. The two men hear a long, low howl over the moor. Apparently, the local people believe that this howl belongs to the Hound of the Baskervilles. Stapleton thinks it's a bittern--a kind of bird that's nearly extinct in England. They walk past the remains of a prehistoric town. Stapleton suddenly spots a butterfly and goes running off into the Mire. Watson watches him anxiously, worried that he'll lose his footing and sink. As Watson stares after Stapleton, a woman suddenly approaches him. Watson assumes that she is Stapleton's sister, even though she doesn't look very much like him. She quickly warns him, \"Go straight back to London, instantly\" . When Stapleton returns to the path, she suddenly changes the subject and starts talking about the flowers on the moor. Stapleton addresses her as \"Beryl\" Beryl mentions that she has already introduced herself to \"Sir Henry.\" Watson is like, ummm, no, I'm just Dr. Watson. Beryl blushes in embarrassment. When Watson walks off in the direction of Baskerville Hall, Beryl rushes over to speak to him. She apologizes for confusing him with Sir Henry but refuses to explain why it's so important for Sir Henry to leave.", "analysis": ""} |
The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from
our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of
us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry and I sat
at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows,
throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered
them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it
was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck
such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before.
"I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!" said
the baronet. "We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive,
so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is
all cheerful once more."
"And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination," I answered.
"Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think, sobbing
in the night?"
"That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard
something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more of
it, so I concluded that it was all a dream."
"I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a
woman."
"We must ask about this right away." He rang the bell and asked
Barrymore whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to me
that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he
listened to his master's question.
"There are only two women in the house, Sir Henry," he answered. "One is
the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my wife,
and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from her."
And yet he lied as he said it, for it chanced that after breakfast I met
Mrs. Barrymore in the long corridor with the sun full upon her face. She
was a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern set expression
of mouth. But her telltale eyes were red and glanced at me from between
swollen lids. It was she, then, who wept in the night, and if she did so
her husband must know it. Yet he had taken the obvious risk of discovery
in declaring that it was not so. Why had he done this? And why did she
weep so bitterly? Already round this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded
man there was gathering an atmosphere of mystery and of gloom. It was he
who had been the first to discover the body of Sir Charles, and we had
only his word for all the circumstances which led up to the old man's
death. Was it possible that it was Barrymore, after all, whom we had
seen in the cab in Regent Street? The beard might well have been the
same. The cabman had described a somewhat shorter man, but such an
impression might easily have been erroneous. How could I settle the
point forever? Obviously the first thing to do was to see the Grimpen
postmaster and find whether the test telegram had really been placed in
Barrymore's own hands. Be the answer what it might, I should at least
have something to report to Sherlock Holmes.
Sir Henry had numerous papers to examine after breakfast, so that the
time was propitious for my excursion. It was a pleasant walk of four
miles along the edge of the moor, leading me at last to a small gray
hamlet, in which two larger buildings, which proved to be the inn and
the house of Dr. Mortimer, stood high above the rest. The postmaster,
who was also the village grocer, had a clear recollection of the
telegram.
"Certainly, sir," said he, "I had the telegram delivered to Mr.
Barrymore exactly as directed."
"Who delivered it?"
"My boy here. James, you delivered that telegram to Mr. Barrymore at the
Hall last week, did you not?"
"Yes, father, I delivered it."
"Into his own hands?" I asked.
"Well, he was up in the loft at the time, so that I could not put it
into his own hands, but I gave it into Mrs. Barrymore's hands, and she
promised to deliver it at once."
"Did you see Mr. Barrymore?"
"No, sir; I tell you he was in the loft."
"If you didn't see him, how do you know he was in the loft?"
"Well, surely his own wife ought to know where he is," said the
postmaster testily. "Didn't he get the telegram? If there is any mistake
it is for Mr. Barrymore himself to complain."
It seemed hopeless to pursue the inquiry any farther, but it was clear
that in spite of Holmes's ruse we had no proof that Barrymore had not
been in London all the time. Suppose that it were so--suppose that the
same man had been the last who had seen Sir Charles alive, and the first
to dog the new heir when he returned to England. What then? Was he the
agent of others or had he some sinister design of his own? What interest
could he have in persecuting the Baskerville family? I thought of the
strange warning clipped out of the leading article of the Times. Was
that his work or was it possibly the doing of someone who was bent upon
counteracting his schemes? The only conceivable motive was that which
had been suggested by Sir Henry, that if the family could be scared away
a comfortable and permanent home would be secured for the Barrymores.
But surely such an explanation as that would be quite inadequate to
account for the deep and subtle scheming which seemed to be weaving an
invisible net round the young baronet. Holmes himself had said that
no more complex case had come to him in all the long series of his
sensational investigations. I prayed, as I walked back along the gray,
lonely road, that my friend might soon be freed from his preoccupations
and able to come down to take this heavy burden of responsibility from
my shoulders.
Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of running feet
behind me and by a voice which called me by name. I turned, expecting to
see Dr. Mortimer, but to my surprise it was a stranger who was pursuing
me. He was a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired
and leanjawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a gray
suit and wearing a straw hat. A tin box for botanical specimens hung
over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly-net in one of his
hands.
"You will, I am sure, excuse my presumption, Dr. Watson," said he as he
came panting up to where I stood. "Here on the moor we are homely folk
and do not wait for formal introductions. You may possibly have heard
my name from our mutual friend, Mortimer. I am Stapleton, of Merripit
House."
"Your net and box would have told me as much," said I, "for I knew that
Mr. Stapleton was a naturalist. But how did you know me?"
"I have been calling on Mortimer, and he pointed you out to me from
the window of his surgery as you passed. As our road lay the same way I
thought that I would overtake you and introduce myself. I trust that Sir
Henry is none the worse for his journey?"
"He is very well, thank you."
"We were all rather afraid that after the sad death of Sir Charles the
new baronet might refuse to live here. It is asking much of a wealthy
man to come down and bury himself in a place of this kind, but I need
not tell you that it means a very great deal to the countryside. Sir
Henry has, I suppose, no superstitious fears in the matter?"
"I do not think that it is likely."
"Of course you know the legend of the fiend dog which haunts the
family?"
"I have heard it."
"It is extraordinary how credulous the peasants are about here! Any
number of them are ready to swear that they have seen such a creature
upon the moor." He spoke with a smile, but I seemed to read in his eyes
that he took the matter more seriously. "The story took a great hold
upon the imagination of Sir Charles, and I have no doubt that it led to
his tragic end."
"But how?"
"His nerves were so worked up that the appearance of any dog might have
had a fatal effect upon his diseased heart. I fancy that he really
did see something of the kind upon that last night in the yew alley. I
feared that some disaster might occur, for I was very fond of the old
man, and I knew that his heart was weak."
"How did you know that?"
"My friend Mortimer told me."
"You think, then, that some dog pursued Sir Charles, and that he died of
fright in consequence?"
"Have you any better explanation?"
"I have not come to any conclusion."
"Has Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"
The words took away my breath for an instant but a glance at the placid
face and steadfast eyes of my companion showed that no surprise was
intended.
"It is useless for us to pretend that we do not know you, Dr. Watson,"
said he. "The records of your detective have reached us here, and you
could not celebrate him without being known yourself. When Mortimer told
me your name he could not deny your identity. If you are here, then it
follows that Mr. Sherlock Holmes is interesting himself in the matter,
and I am naturally curious to know what view he may take."
"I am afraid that I cannot answer that question."
"May I ask if he is going to honour us with a visit himself?"
"He cannot leave town at present. He has other cases which engage his
attention."
"What a pity! He might throw some light on that which is so dark to us.
But as to your own researches, if there is any possible way in which I
can be of service to you I trust that you will command me. If I had
any indication of the nature of your suspicions or how you propose to
investigate the case, I might perhaps even now give you some aid or
advice."
"I assure you that I am simply here upon a visit to my friend, Sir
Henry, and that I need no help of any kind."
"Excellent!" said Stapleton. "You are perfectly right to be wary and
discreet. I am justly reproved for what I feel was an unjustifiable
intrusion, and I promise you that I will not mention the matter again."
We had come to a point where a narrow grassy path struck off from the
road and wound away across the moor. A steep, boulder-sprinkled hill lay
upon the right which had in bygone days been cut into a granite quarry.
The face which was turned towards us formed a dark cliff, with ferns and
brambles growing in its niches. From over a distant rise there floated a
gray plume of smoke.
"A moderate walk along this moor-path brings us to Merripit House,"
said he. "Perhaps you will spare an hour that I may have the pleasure of
introducing you to my sister."
My first thought was that I should be by Sir Henry's side. But then I
remembered the pile of papers and bills with which his study table was
littered. It was certain that I could not help with those. And Holmes
had expressly said that I should study the neighbours upon the moor. I
accepted Stapleton's invitation, and we turned together down the path.
"It is a wonderful place, the moor," said he, looking round over the
undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite
foaming up into fantastic surges. "You never tire of the moor. You
cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and
so barren, and so mysterious."
"You know it well, then?"
"I have only been here two years. The residents would call me a
newcomer. We came shortly after Sir Charles settled. But my tastes led
me to explore every part of the country round, and I should think that
there are few men who know it better than I do."
"Is it hard to know?"
"Very hard. You see, for example, this great plain to the north here
with the queer hills breaking out of it. Do you observe anything
remarkable about that?"
"It would be a rare place for a gallop."
"You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their
lives before now. You notice those bright green spots scattered thickly
over it?"
"Yes, they seem more fertile than the rest."
Stapleton laughed. "That is the great Grimpen Mire," said he. "A false
step yonder means death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the
moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite
a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last.
Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn
rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart
of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable
ponies!"
Something brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a
long, agonized, writhing neck shot upward and a dreadful cry echoed
over the moor. It turned me cold with horror, but my companion's nerves
seemed to be stronger than mine.
"It's gone!" said he. "The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more,
perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather and
never know the difference until the mire has them in its clutches. It's
a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire."
"And you say you can penetrate it?"
"Yes, there are one or two paths which a very active man can take. I
have found them out."
"But why should you wish to go into so horrible a place?"
"Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all
sides by the impassable mire, which has crawled round them in the course
of years. That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you
have the wit to reach them."
"I shall try my luck some day."
He looked at me with a surprised face. "For God's sake put such an idea
out of your mind," said he. "Your blood would be upon my head. I assure
you that there would not be the least chance of your coming back alive.
It is only by remembering certain complex landmarks that I am able to do
it."
"Halloa!" I cried. "What is that?"
A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the
whole air, and yet it was impossible to say whence it came. From a
dull murmur it swelled into a deep roar, and then sank back into a
melancholy, throbbing murmur once again. Stapleton looked at me with a
curious expression in his face.
"Queer place, the moor!" said he.
"But what is it?"
"The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for its
prey. I've heard it once or twice before, but never quite so loud."
I looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling
plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over
the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from a tor
behind us.
"You are an educated man. You don't believe such nonsense as that?" said
I. "What do you think is the cause of so strange a sound?"
"Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It's the mud settling, or the water
rising, or something."
"No, no, that was a living voice."
"Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?"
"No, I never did."
"It's a very rare bird--practically extinct--in England now, but all
things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to
learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns."
"It's the weirdest, strangest thing that ever I heard in my life."
"Yes, it's rather an uncanny place altogether. Look at the hillside
yonder. What do you make of those?"
The whole steep slope was covered with gray circular rings of stone, a
score of them at least.
"What are they? Sheep-pens?"
"No, they are the homes of our worthy ancestors. Prehistoric man lived
thickly on the moor, and as no one in particular has lived there since,
we find all his little arrangements exactly as he left them. These are
his wigwams with the roofs off. You can even see his hearth and his
couch if you have the curiosity to go inside.
"But it is quite a town. When was it inhabited?"
"Neolithic man--no date."
"What did he do?"
"He grazed his cattle on these slopes, and he learned to dig for tin
when the bronze sword began to supersede the stone axe. Look at the
great trench in the opposite hill. That is his mark. Yes, you will find
some very singular points about the moor, Dr. Watson. Oh, excuse me an
instant! It is surely Cyclopides."
A small fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant
Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of
it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my
acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft
behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky,
zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself.
I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his
extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the
treacherous mire, when I heard the sound of steps and, turning round,
found a woman near me upon the path. She had come from the direction in
which the plume of smoke indicated the position of Merripit House, but
the dip of the moor had hid her until she was quite close.
I could not doubt that this was the Miss Stapleton of whom I had
been told, since ladies of any sort must be few upon the moor, and I
remembered that I had heard someone describe her as being a beauty. The
woman who approached me was certainly that, and of a most uncommon type.
There could not have been a greater contrast between brother and sister,
for Stapleton was neutral tinted, with light hair and gray eyes, while
she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England--slim,
elegant, and tall. She had a proud, finely cut face, so regular that it
might have seemed impassive were it not for the sensitive mouth and the
beautiful dark, eager eyes. With her perfect figure and elegant dress
she was, indeed, a strange apparition upon a lonely moorland path. Her
eyes were on her brother as I turned, and then she quickened her pace
towards me. I had raised my hat and was about to make some explanatory
remark when her own words turned all my thoughts into a new channel.
"Go back!" she said. "Go straight back to London, instantly."
I could only stare at her in stupid surprise. Her eyes blazed at me, and
she tapped the ground impatiently with her foot.
"Why should I go back?" I asked.
"I cannot explain." She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp
in her utterance. "But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and
never set foot upon the moor again."
"But I have only just come."
"Man, man!" she cried. "Can you not tell when a warning is for your own
good? Go back to London! Start tonight! Get away from this place at all
costs! Hush, my brother is coming! Not a word of what I have said. Would
you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare's-tails yonder? We
are very rich in orchids on the moor, though, of course, you are rather
late to see the beauties of the place."
Stapleton had abandoned the chase and came back to us breathing hard and
flushed with his exertions.
"Halloa, Beryl!" said he, and it seemed to me that the tone of his
greeting was not altogether a cordial one.
"Well, Jack, you are very hot."
"Yes, I was chasing a Cyclopides. He is very rare and seldom found in
the late autumn. What a pity that I should have missed him!" He spoke
unconcernedly, but his small light eyes glanced incessantly from the
girl to me.
"You have introduced yourselves, I can see."
"Yes. I was telling Sir Henry that it was rather late for him to see the
true beauties of the moor."
"Why, who do you think this is?"
"I imagine that it must be Sir Henry Baskerville."
"No, no," said I. "Only a humble commoner, but his friend. My name is
Dr. Watson."
A flush of vexation passed over her expressive face. "We have been
talking at cross purposes," said she.
"Why, you had not very much time for talk," her brother remarked with
the same questioning eyes.
"I talked as if Dr. Watson were a resident instead of being merely a
visitor," said she. "It cannot much matter to him whether it is early
or late for the orchids. But you will come on, will you not, and see
Merripit House?"
A short walk brought us to it, a bleak moorland house, once the farm
of some grazier in the old prosperous days, but now put into repair and
turned into a modern dwelling. An orchard surrounded it, but the trees,
as is usual upon the moor, were stunted and nipped, and the effect of
the whole place was mean and melancholy. We were admitted by a strange,
wizened, rusty-coated old manservant, who seemed in keeping with
the house. Inside, however, there were large rooms furnished with an
elegance in which I seemed to recognize the taste of the lady. As I
looked from their windows at the interminable granite-flecked moor
rolling unbroken to the farthest horizon I could not but marvel at what
could have brought this highly educated man and this beautiful woman to
live in such a place.
"Queer spot to choose, is it not?" said he as if in answer to my
thought. "And yet we manage to make ourselves fairly happy, do we not,
Beryl?"
"Quite happy," said she, but there was no ring of conviction in her
words.
"I had a school," said Stapleton. "It was in the north country. The work
to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the
privilege of living with youth, of helping to mould those young minds,
and of impressing them with one's own character and ideals was very dear
to me. However, the fates were against us. A serious epidemic broke out
in the school and three of the boys died. It never recovered from the
blow, and much of my capital was irretrievably swallowed up. And yet,
if it were not for the loss of the charming companionship of the boys,
I could rejoice over my own misfortune, for, with my strong tastes
for botany and zoology, I find an unlimited field of work here, and my
sister is as devoted to Nature as I am. All this, Dr. Watson, has been
brought upon your head by your expression as you surveyed the moor out
of our window."
"It certainly did cross my mind that it might be a little dull--less for
you, perhaps, than for your sister."
"No, no, I am never dull," said she quickly.
"We have books, we have our studies, and we have interesting neighbours.
Dr. Mortimer is a most learned man in his own line. Poor Sir Charles was
also an admirable companion. We knew him well and miss him more than
I can tell. Do you think that I should intrude if I were to call this
afternoon and make the acquaintance of Sir Henry?"
"I am sure that he would be delighted."
"Then perhaps you would mention that I propose to do so. We may in
our humble way do something to make things more easy for him until he
becomes accustomed to his new surroundings. Will you come upstairs, Dr.
Watson, and inspect my collection of Lepidoptera? I think it is the most
complete one in the south-west of England. By the time that you have
looked through them lunch will be almost ready."
But I was eager to get back to my charge. The melancholy of the moor,
the death of the unfortunate pony, the weird sound which had been
associated with the grim legend of the Baskervilles, all these things
tinged my thoughts with sadness. Then on the top of these more or less
vague impressions there had come the definite and distinct warning of
Miss Stapleton, delivered with such intense earnestness that I could
not doubt that some grave and deep reason lay behind it. I resisted
all pressure to stay for lunch, and I set off at once upon my return
journey, taking the grass-grown path by which we had come.
It seems, however, that there must have been some short cut for those
who knew it, for before I had reached the road I was astounded to see
Miss Stapleton sitting upon a rock by the side of the track. Her face
was beautifully flushed with her exertions and she held her hand to her
side.
"I have run all the way in order to cut you off, Dr. Watson," said she.
"I had not even time to put on my hat. I must not stop, or my brother
may miss me. I wanted to say to you how sorry I am about the stupid
mistake I made in thinking that you were Sir Henry. Please forget the
words I said, which have no application whatever to you."
"But I can't forget them, Miss Stapleton," said I. "I am Sir Henry's
friend, and his welfare is a very close concern of mine. Tell me why it
was that you were so eager that Sir Henry should return to London."
"A woman's whim, Dr. Watson. When you know me better you will understand
that I cannot always give reasons for what I say or do."
"No, no. I remember the thrill in your voice. I remember the look in
your eyes. Please, please, be frank with me, Miss Stapleton, for ever
since I have been here I have been conscious of shadows all round me.
Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches
everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track.
Tell me then what it was that you meant, and I will promise to convey
your warning to Sir Henry."
An expression of irresolution passed for an instant over her face, but
her eyes had hardened again when she answered me.
"You make too much of it, Dr. Watson," said she. "My brother and I
were very much shocked by the death of Sir Charles. We knew him very
intimately, for his favourite walk was over the moor to our house. He
was deeply impressed with the curse which hung over the family, and when
this tragedy came I naturally felt that there must be some grounds
for the fears which he had expressed. I was distressed therefore when
another member of the family came down to live here, and I felt that he
should be warned of the danger which he will run. That was all which I
intended to convey.
"But what is the danger?"
"You know the story of the hound?"
"I do not believe in such nonsense."
"But I do. If you have any influence with Sir Henry, take him away from
a place which has always been fatal to his family. The world is wide.
Why should he wish to live at the place of danger?"
"Because it is the place of danger. That is Sir Henry's nature. I fear
that unless you can give me some more definite information than this it
would be impossible to get him to move."
"I cannot say anything definite, for I do not know anything definite."
"I would ask you one more question, Miss Stapleton. If you meant no
more than this when you first spoke to me, why should you not wish your
brother to overhear what you said? There is nothing to which he, or
anyone else, could object."
"My brother is very anxious to have the Hall inhabited, for he thinks it
is for the good of the poor folk upon the moor. He would be very angry
if he knew that I have said anything which might induce Sir Henry to
go away. But I have done my duty now and I will say no more. I must go
back, or he will miss me and suspect that I have seen you. Good-bye!"
She turned and had disappeared in a few minutes among the scattered
boulders, while I, with my soul full of vague fears, pursued my way to
Baskerville Hall.
| 6,747 | Chapter 7 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-7 | The next morning, the sun is shining and the house seems less, well, cursed. Even so, both Watson and Sir Henry agree that they heard a woman crying the night before. Watson suspects that the crying woman is Mrs. Barrymore, and that Barrymore's responsible. Watson's suspicions about Barrymore's character only increase when he walks into town and finds out that it wasn't Barrymore, but Barrymore's wife who received the telegram Holmes sent to check out his alibi while Sir Henry was in town. Could Barrymore have been in London spying on Sir Henry after all? A man runs up to Watson in the village and introduces himself: it's Stapleton, from nearby Merripit House. He's carrying a butterfly net. He announces that he is a "naturalist" . Stapleton asks if Sherlock Holmes has any theories behind the Hound of the Baskervilles to explain Sir Charles' death. Watson is like, whuh? Holmes? How did you know--? Stapleton promises him that everyone in the neighborhood knows why Watson is here. Stapleton invites Watson to Merripit House to meet his sister. As they walk through the moors, Stapleton tells Watson that the ground in this area is not stable: there are bogs and marshes all over the place. Stapleton warns that, if Watson went into the Mire on his own, he would probably drown in the swamp. The two men hear a long, low howl over the moor. Apparently, the local people believe that this howl belongs to the Hound of the Baskervilles. Stapleton thinks it's a bittern--a kind of bird that's nearly extinct in England. They walk past the remains of a prehistoric town. Stapleton suddenly spots a butterfly and goes running off into the Mire. Watson watches him anxiously, worried that he'll lose his footing and sink. As Watson stares after Stapleton, a woman suddenly approaches him. Watson assumes that she is Stapleton's sister, even though she doesn't look very much like him. She quickly warns him, "Go straight back to London, instantly" . When Stapleton returns to the path, she suddenly changes the subject and starts talking about the flowers on the moor. Stapleton addresses her as "Beryl" Beryl mentions that she has already introduced herself to "Sir Henry." Watson is like, ummm, no, I'm just Dr. Watson. Beryl blushes in embarrassment. When Watson walks off in the direction of Baskerville Hall, Beryl rushes over to speak to him. She apologizes for confusing him with Sir Henry but refuses to explain why it's so important for Sir Henry to leave. | null | 631 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/08.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_7_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 8 | chapter 8 | null | {"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-8", "summary": "As the narrator of this story, Watson then describes the telegrams he's sent to Holmes so far. The first telegram reports that it looks like Selden has left the area. Anyway, no one's seen him, which is a big relief. Watson has also noticed signs that Sir Henry is totally falling for Beryl Stapleton. Weird, though--you'd think Stapleton would be happy to have his sister marry the local rich guy. But in fact, Stapleton seems to be trying to find ways to keep Beryl and Sir Henry apart. Watson also mentions another neighbor: Mr. Frankland of Lafter Hall. He's a litigious old man interested in astronomy who has a telescope on his roof. These days, Mr. Frankland spends a fair amount of his time scanning the moors with his telescope looking for Selden the murderer. And now, for the last bit of news: weird stuff has been happening with the Barrymores. Watson told Sir Henry that Barrymore may not have received the telegram Holmes sent from London himself. So Sir Henry asks Barrymore if he read the telegram and replied to it himself. He answers that, since he was busy, he let his wife answer. Later on in the day, Barrymore asks if Sir Henry suspects him of something. Sir Henry says no, and offers Barrymore some of his used clothes to prove his faith in him. Sir Henry's lost 75 lbs. on Jenny Craig, and anyway now that he's a baronet, he needs classier clothes. Watson can't forget that first night when he heard Mrs. Barrymore sobbing. He's seen signs of crying on her face several times since then. Watson's suspicions of Barrymore have only gotten worse since a strange incident the night before. At around two in the morning, Watson heard someone sneaking around outside his room. He woke up and looked out to see Barrymore creeping along the hallway to an empty room. Watson watched Barrymore standing in front of a window with a lamp in his hand. Barrymore stared out onto the moor for several minutes before groaning and putting out the light. Something is going on with that guy.", "analysis": ""} |
From this point onward I will follow the course of events by
transcribing my own letters to Mr. Sherlock Holmes which lie before me
on the table. One page is missing, but otherwise they are exactly
as written and show my feelings and suspicions of the moment more
accurately than my memory, clear as it is upon these tragic events, can
possibly do.
Baskerville Hall, October 13th. MY DEAR HOLMES: My previous letters
and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has
occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one
stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul,
its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its
bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the
other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of
the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses
of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which
are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their gray
stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind
you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the
low door fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you
would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. The
strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must
always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could
imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced
to accept that which none other would occupy.
All this, however, is foreign to the mission on which you sent me and
will probably be very uninteresting to your severely practical mind.
I can still remember your complete indifference as to whether the sun
moved round the earth or the earth round the sun. Let me, therefore,
return to the facts concerning Sir Henry Baskerville.
If you have not had any report within the last few days it is because
up to today there was nothing of importance to relate. Then a very
surprising circumstance occurred, which I shall tell you in due course.
But, first of all, I must keep you in touch with some of the other
factors in the situation.
One of these, concerning which I have said little, is the escaped
convict upon the moor. There is strong reason now to believe that he
has got right away, which is a considerable relief to the lonely
householders of this district. A fortnight has passed since his flight,
during which he has not been seen and nothing has been heard of him. It
is surely inconceivable that he could have held out upon the moor during
all that time. Of course, so far as his concealment goes there is
no difficulty at all. Any one of these stone huts would give him a
hiding-place. But there is nothing to eat unless he were to catch and
slaughter one of the moor sheep. We think, therefore, that he has gone,
and the outlying farmers sleep the better in consequence.
We are four able-bodied men in this household, so that we could take
good care of ourselves, but I confess that I have had uneasy moments
when I have thought of the Stapletons. They live miles from any help.
There are one maid, an old manservant, the sister, and the brother, the
latter not a very strong man. They would be helpless in the hands of a
desperate fellow like this Notting Hill criminal if he could once effect
an entrance. Both Sir Henry and I were concerned at their situation, and
it was suggested that Perkins the groom should go over to sleep there,
but Stapleton would not hear of it.
The fact is that our friend, the baronet, begins to display a
considerable interest in our fair neighbour. It is not to be wondered
at, for time hangs heavily in this lonely spot to an active man like
him, and she is a very fascinating and beautiful woman. There is
something tropical and exotic about her which forms a singular contrast
to her cool and unemotional brother. Yet he also gives the idea of
hidden fires. He has certainly a very marked influence over her, for
I have seen her continually glance at him as she talked as if seeking
approbation for what she said. I trust that he is kind to her. There is
a dry glitter in his eyes and a firm set of his thin lips, which goes
with a positive and possibly a harsh nature. You would find him an
interesting study.
He came over to call upon Baskerville on that first day, and the very
next morning he took us both to show us the spot where the legend of the
wicked Hugo is supposed to have had its origin. It was an excursion of
some miles across the moor to a place which is so dismal that it might
have suggested the story. We found a short valley between rugged tors
which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton
grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at
the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some
monstrous beast. In every way it corresponded with the scene of the old
tragedy. Sir Henry was much interested and asked Stapleton more
than once whether he did really believe in the possibility of the
interference of the supernatural in the affairs of men. He spoke
lightly, but it was evident that he was very much in earnest. Stapleton
was guarded in his replies, but it was easy to see that he said less
than he might, and that he would not express his whole opinion out of
consideration for the feelings of the baronet. He told us of similar
cases, where families had suffered from some evil influence, and he left
us with the impression that he shared the popular view upon the matter.
On our way back we stayed for lunch at Merripit House, and it was there
that Sir Henry made the acquaintance of Miss Stapleton. From the first
moment that he saw her he appeared to be strongly attracted by her, and
I am much mistaken if the feeling was not mutual. He referred to her
again and again on our walk home, and since then hardly a day has passed
that we have not seen something of the brother and sister. They dine
here tonight, and there is some talk of our going to them next week. One
would imagine that such a match would be very welcome to Stapleton, and
yet I have more than once caught a look of the strongest disapprobation
in his face when Sir Henry has been paying some attention to his sister.
He is much attached to her, no doubt, and would lead a lonely life
without her, but it would seem the height of selfishness if he were to
stand in the way of her making so brilliant a marriage. Yet I am certain
that he does not wish their intimacy to ripen into love, and I have
several times observed that he has taken pains to prevent them from
being tete-a-tete. By the way, your instructions to me never to allow
Sir Henry to go out alone will become very much more onerous if a love
affair were to be added to our other difficulties. My popularity would
soon suffer if I were to carry out your orders to the letter.
The other day--Thursday, to be more exact--Dr. Mortimer lunched with us.
He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down and has got a prehistoric
skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a
single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came in afterwards, and
the good doctor took us all to the yew alley at Sir Henry's request to
show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is
a long, dismal walk, the yew alley, between two high walls of clipped
hedge, with a narrow band of grass upon either side. At the far end is
an old tumble-down summer-house. Halfway down is the moor-gate, where
the old gentleman left his cigar-ash. It is a white wooden gate with
a latch. Beyond it lies the wide moor. I remembered your theory of the
affair and tried to picture all that had occurred. As the old man stood
there he saw something coming across the moor, something which terrified
him so that he lost his wits and ran and ran until he died of sheer
horror and exhaustion. There was the long, gloomy tunnel down which
he fled. And from what? A sheep-dog of the moor? Or a spectral hound,
black, silent, and monstrous? Was there a human agency in the matter?
Did the pale, watchful Barrymore know more than he cared to say? It was
all dim and vague, but always there is the dark shadow of crime behind
it.
One other neighbour I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr.
Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us.
He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion
is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation.
He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take
up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found
it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy
the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands
tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has existed
there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for
trespass. He is learned in old manorial and communal rights, and he
applies his knowledge sometimes in favour of the villagers of Fernworthy
and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in
triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to
his latest exploit. He is said to have about seven lawsuits upon his
hands at present, which will probably swallow up the remainder of his
fortune and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future.
Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I
only mention him because you were particular that I should send some
description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed
at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent
telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his own house and sweeps
the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped
convict. If he would confine his energies to this all would be well, but
there are rumours that he intends to prosecute Dr. Mortimer for opening
a grave without the consent of the next of kin because he dug up the
Neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down. He helps to keep our lives
from being monotonous and gives a little comic relief where it is badly
needed.
And now, having brought you up to date in the escaped convict, the
Stapletons, Dr. Mortimer, and Frankland, of Lafter Hall, let me end on
that which is most important and tell you more about the Barrymores, and
especially about the surprising development of last night.
First of all about the test telegram, which you sent from London in
order to make sure that Barrymore was really here. I have already
explained that the testimony of the postmaster shows that the test was
worthless and that we have no proof one way or the other. I told Sir
Henry how the matter stood, and he at once, in his downright fashion,
had Barrymore up and asked him whether he had received the telegram
himself. Barrymore said that he had.
"Did the boy deliver it into your own hands?" asked Sir Henry.
Barrymore looked surprised, and considered for a little time.
"No," said he, "I was in the box-room at the time, and my wife brought
it up to me."
"Did you answer it yourself?"
"No; I told my wife what to answer and she went down to write it."
In the evening he recurred to the subject of his own accord.
"I could not quite understand the object of your questions this morning,
Sir Henry," said he. "I trust that they do not mean that I have done
anything to forfeit your confidence?"
Sir Henry had to assure him that it was not so and pacify him by giving
him a considerable part of his old wardrobe, the London outfit having
now all arrived.
Mrs. Barrymore is of interest to me. She is a heavy, solid person, very
limited, intensely respectable, and inclined to be puritanical. You
could hardly conceive a less emotional subject. Yet I have told you how,
on the first night here, I heard her sobbing bitterly, and since then
I have more than once observed traces of tears upon her face. Some deep
sorrow gnaws ever at her heart. Sometimes I wonder if she has a guilty
memory which haunts her, and sometimes I suspect Barrymore of being a
domestic tyrant. I have always felt that there was something singular
and questionable in this man's character, but the adventure of last
night brings all my suspicions to a head.
And yet it may seem a small matter in itself. You are aware that I am
not a very sound sleeper, and since I have been on guard in this house
my slumbers have been lighter than ever. Last night, about two in the
morning, I was aroused by a stealthy step passing my room. I rose,
opened my door, and peeped out. A long black shadow was trailing down
the corridor. It was thrown by a man who walked softly down the passage
with a candle held in his hand. He was in shirt and trousers, with no
covering to his feet. I could merely see the outline, but his height
told me that it was Barrymore. He walked very slowly and circumspectly,
and there was something indescribably guilty and furtive in his whole
appearance.
I have told you that the corridor is broken by the balcony which runs
round the hall, but that it is resumed upon the farther side. I waited
until he had passed out of sight and then I followed him. When I came
round the balcony he had reached the end of the farther corridor, and
I could see from the glimmer of light through an open door that he
had entered one of the rooms. Now, all these rooms are unfurnished and
unoccupied so that his expedition became more mysterious than ever. The
light shone steadily as if he were standing motionless. I crept down
the passage as noiselessly as I could and peeped round the corner of the
door.
Barrymore was crouching at the window with the candle held against the
glass. His profile was half turned towards me, and his face seemed to be
rigid with expectation as he stared out into the blackness of the moor.
For some minutes he stood watching intently. Then he gave a deep groan
and with an impatient gesture he put out the light. Instantly I made my
way back to my room, and very shortly came the stealthy steps passing
once more upon their return journey. Long afterwards when I had fallen
into a light sleep I heard a key turn somewhere in a lock, but I could
not tell whence the sound came. What it all means I cannot guess, but
there is some secret business going on in this house of gloom which
sooner or later we shall get to the bottom of. I do not trouble you with
my theories, for you asked me to furnish you only with facts. I have
had a long talk with Sir Henry this morning, and we have made a plan of
campaign founded upon my observations of last night. I will not speak
about it just now, but it should make my next report interesting
reading.
| 3,571 | Chapter 8 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-8 | As the narrator of this story, Watson then describes the telegrams he's sent to Holmes so far. The first telegram reports that it looks like Selden has left the area. Anyway, no one's seen him, which is a big relief. Watson has also noticed signs that Sir Henry is totally falling for Beryl Stapleton. Weird, though--you'd think Stapleton would be happy to have his sister marry the local rich guy. But in fact, Stapleton seems to be trying to find ways to keep Beryl and Sir Henry apart. Watson also mentions another neighbor: Mr. Frankland of Lafter Hall. He's a litigious old man interested in astronomy who has a telescope on his roof. These days, Mr. Frankland spends a fair amount of his time scanning the moors with his telescope looking for Selden the murderer. And now, for the last bit of news: weird stuff has been happening with the Barrymores. Watson told Sir Henry that Barrymore may not have received the telegram Holmes sent from London himself. So Sir Henry asks Barrymore if he read the telegram and replied to it himself. He answers that, since he was busy, he let his wife answer. Later on in the day, Barrymore asks if Sir Henry suspects him of something. Sir Henry says no, and offers Barrymore some of his used clothes to prove his faith in him. Sir Henry's lost 75 lbs. on Jenny Craig, and anyway now that he's a baronet, he needs classier clothes. Watson can't forget that first night when he heard Mrs. Barrymore sobbing. He's seen signs of crying on her face several times since then. Watson's suspicions of Barrymore have only gotten worse since a strange incident the night before. At around two in the morning, Watson heard someone sneaking around outside his room. He woke up and looked out to see Barrymore creeping along the hallway to an empty room. Watson watched Barrymore standing in front of a window with a lamp in his hand. Barrymore stared out onto the moor for several minutes before groaning and putting out the light. Something is going on with that guy. | null | 506 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/10.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_9_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 10 | chapter 10 | null | {"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-10", "summary": "As the chapter title promises us, this is--wait for it--a section of Watson's diary from his time at Baskerville Hall. Shocking, we know. Barrymore and Sir Henry get into it the next morning. Turns out Barrymore's angry that Watson and Sir Henry went to hunt down Selden. Barrymore begs the two men to let Selden go until they can get him on a boat to South America. Watson and Sir Henry agree to leave Selden alone. Barrymore's so grateful that he wants to do something for Sir Henry in return. There's something about Sir Charles' death that Barrymore's been keeping secret. The morning of Sir Charles' death, Barrymore happened to notice him receiving a letter from a nearby town called Coombe Tracey. The letter was written in a woman's handwriting. A few weeks ago, long after Sir Charles' mysterious death, Barrymore was cleaning out the ashes of the fireplace in Sir Charles' study. He found the charred pieces of that letter. He could still read the final lines: \"Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate at ten o'clock\" . The letter was signed \"L.L.\" Barrymore hasn't wanted to reveal this because he wanted to protect Sir Charles' rep. But now that Sir Henry has been so kind, Barrymore wants to help him in return. The next day, Watson goes out walking on the moors. As he's heading back to Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer drives past him in a cart. Dr. Mortimer tells Watson that there is a woman with the initials \"L.L.\" living in Coombe Tracey: Laura Lyons, the disgraced, disowned daughter of Mr. Frankland. Apparently, she eloped against her father's will with an artist named Lyons, who then left her. After dinner that evening, Watson asks Barrymore if Selden's still around. Barrymore says he last left out food for him three days ago, but hasn't seen him since. Barrymore also mentions that there's someone else out on the moor. Selden has mentioned this other man to Barrymore--the man doesn't seem to be a convict. Selden told Barrymore that this other man is living in the prehistoric ruins, and that a kid from the village brings him food regularly. The moors seem to be just the thing if you need to hide but need to be close enough to a take-out place that delivers.", "analysis": ""} |
So far I have been able to quote from the reports which I have forwarded
during these early days to Sherlock Holmes. Now, however, I have arrived
at a point in my narrative where I am compelled to abandon this method
and to trust once more to my recollections, aided by the diary which
I kept at the time. A few extracts from the latter will carry me on to
those scenes which are indelibly fixed in every detail upon my memory. I
proceed, then, from the morning which followed our abortive chase of the
convict and our other strange experiences upon the moor.
October 16th. A dull and foggy day with a drizzle of rain. The house
is banked in with rolling clouds, which rise now and then to show the
dreary curves of the moor, with thin, silver veins upon the sides of the
hills, and the distant boulders gleaming where the light strikes upon
their wet faces. It is melancholy outside and in. The baronet is in a
black reaction after the excitements of the night. I am conscious myself
of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger--ever present
danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it.
And have I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of
incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is
at work around us. There is the death of the last occupant of the Hall,
fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there
are the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange
creature upon the moor. Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound
which resembled the distant baying of a hound. It is incredible,
impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of
nature. A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the
air with its howling is surely not to be thought of. Stapleton may
fall in with such a superstition, and Mortimer also, but if I have one
quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to
believe in such a thing. To do so would be to descend to the level of
these poor peasants, who are not content with a mere fiend dog but must
needs describe him with hell-fire shooting from his mouth and eyes.
Holmes would not listen to such fancies, and I am his agent. But facts
are facts, and I have twice heard this crying upon the moor. Suppose
that there were really some huge hound loose upon it; that would go far
to explain everything. But where could such a hound lie concealed, where
did it get its food, where did it come from, how was it that no one
saw it by day? It must be confessed that the natural explanation offers
almost as many difficulties as the other. And always, apart from the
hound, there is the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the
cab, and the letter which warned Sir Henry against the moor. This at
least was real, but it might have been the work of a protecting friend
as easily as of an enemy. Where is that friend or enemy now? Has he
remained in London, or has he followed us down here? Could he--could he
be the stranger whom I saw upon the tor?
It is true that I have had only the one glance at him, and yet there are
some things to which I am ready to swear. He is no one whom I have seen
down here, and I have now met all the neighbours. The figure was far
taller than that of Stapleton, far thinner than that of Frankland.
Barrymore it might possibly have been, but we had left him behind us,
and I am certain that he could not have followed us. A stranger then is
still dogging us, just as a stranger dogged us in London. We have never
shaken him off. If I could lay my hands upon that man, then at last we
might find ourselves at the end of all our difficulties. To this one
purpose I must now devote all my energies.
My first impulse was to tell Sir Henry all my plans. My second and
wisest one is to play my own game and speak as little as possible to
anyone. He is silent and distrait. His nerves have been strangely shaken
by that sound upon the moor. I will say nothing to add to his anxieties,
but I will take my own steps to attain my own end.
We had a small scene this morning after breakfast. Barrymore asked leave
to speak with Sir Henry, and they were closeted in his study some little
time. Sitting in the billiard-room I more than once heard the sound of
voices raised, and I had a pretty good idea what the point was which was
under discussion. After a time the baronet opened his door and called
for me. "Barrymore considers that he has a grievance," he said. "He
thinks that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down
when he, of his own free will, had told us the secret."
The butler was standing very pale but very collected before us.
"I may have spoken too warmly, sir," said he, "and if I have, I am sure
that I beg your pardon. At the same time, I was very much surprised when
I heard you two gentlemen come back this morning and learned that you
had been chasing Selden. The poor fellow has enough to fight against
without my putting more upon his track."
"If you had told us of your own free will it would have been a different
thing," said the baronet, "you only told us, or rather your wife only
told us, when it was forced from you and you could not help yourself."
"I didn't think you would have taken advantage of it, Sir Henry--indeed
I didn't."
"The man is a public danger. There are lonely houses scattered over the
moor, and he is a fellow who would stick at nothing. You only want to
get a glimpse of his face to see that. Look at Mr. Stapleton's house,
for example, with no one but himself to defend it. There's no safety for
anyone until he is under lock and key."
"He'll break into no house, sir. I give you my solemn word upon that.
But he will never trouble anyone in this country again. I assure you,
Sir Henry, that in a very few days the necessary arrangements will have
been made and he will be on his way to South America. For God's sake,
sir, I beg of you not to let the police know that he is still on the
moor. They have given up the chase there, and he can lie quiet until the
ship is ready for him. You can't tell on him without getting my wife and
me into trouble. I beg you, sir, to say nothing to the police."
"What do you say, Watson?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "If he were safely out of the country it would
relieve the tax-payer of a burden."
"But how about the chance of his holding someone up before he goes?"
"He would not do anything so mad, sir. We have provided him with all
that he can want. To commit a crime would be to show where he was
hiding."
"That is true," said Sir Henry. "Well, Barrymore--"
"God bless you, sir, and thank you from my heart! It would have killed
my poor wife had he been taken again."
"I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Watson? But, after what
we have heard I don't feel as if I could give the man up, so there is an
end of it. All right, Barrymore, you can go."
With a few broken words of gratitude the man turned, but he hesitated
and then came back.
"You've been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I
can for you in return. I know something, Sir Henry, and perhaps I should
have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I found it
out. I've never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man. It's about
poor Sir Charles's death."
The baronet and I were both upon our feet. "Do you know how he died?"
"No, sir, I don't know that."
"What then?"
"I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman."
"To meet a woman! He?"
"Yes, sir."
"And the woman's name?"
"I can't give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her
initials were L. L."
"How do you know this, Barrymore?"
"Well, Sir Henry, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had usually a
great many letters, for he was a public man and well known for his kind
heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to turn to him. But
that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one letter, so I took
the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey, and it was addressed
in a woman's hand."
"Well?"
"Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done
had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was cleaning out
Sir Charles's study--it had never been touched since his death--and she
found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater
part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a
page, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was
gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end
of the letter and it said: 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn
this letter, and be at the gate by ten o clock. Beneath it were signed
the initials L. L."
"Have you got that slip?"
"No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it."
"Had Sir Charles received any other letters in the same writing?"
"Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not
have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone."
"And you have no idea who L. L. is?"
"No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands
upon that lady we should know more about Sir Charles's death."
"I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this important
information."
"Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us.
And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Charles, as we
well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake this
up couldn't help our poor master, and it's well to go carefully when
there's a lady in the case. Even the best of us--"
"You thought it might injure his reputation?"
"Well, sir, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been
kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to
tell you all that I know about the matter."
"Very good, Barrymore; you can go." When the butler had left us Sir
Henry turned to me. "Well, Watson, what do you think of this new light?"
"It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before."
"So I think. But if we can only trace L. L. it should clear up the whole
business. We have gained that much. We know that there is someone who
has the facts if we can only find her. What do you think we should do?"
"Let Holmes know all about it at once. It will give him the clue for
which he has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring him
down."
I went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning's
conversation for Holmes. It was evident to me that he had been very busy
of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few and short,
with no comments upon the information which I had supplied and hardly
any reference to my mission. No doubt his blackmailing case is absorbing
all his faculties. And yet this new factor must surely arrest his
attention and renew his interest. I wish that he were here.
October 17th. All day today the rain poured down, rustling on the ivy
and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the convict out upon the
bleak, cold, shelterless moor. Poor devil! Whatever his crimes, he has
suffered something to atone for them. And then I thought of that other
one--the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out
in that deluged--the unseen watcher, the man of darkness? In the evening
I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of
dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling
about my ears. God help those who wander into the great mire now, for
even the firm uplands are becoming a morass. I found the black tor upon
which I had seen the solitary watcher, and from its craggy summit I
looked out myself across the melancholy downs. Rain squalls drifted
across their russet face, and the heavy, slate-coloured clouds hung
low over the landscape, trailing in gray wreaths down the sides of the
fantastic hills. In the distant hollow on the left, half hidden by the
mist, the two thin towers of Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. They
were the only signs of human life which I could see, save only those
prehistoric huts which lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere
was there any trace of that lonely man whom I had seen on the same spot
two nights before.
As I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer driving in his dog-cart
over a rough moorland track which led from the outlying farmhouse of
Foulmire. He has been very attentive to us, and hardly a day has passed
that he has not called at the Hall to see how we were getting on. He
insisted upon my climbing into his dog-cart, and he gave me a lift
homeward. I found him much troubled over the disappearance of his little
spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor and had never come back. I
gave him such consolation as I might, but I thought of the pony on the
Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that he will see his little dog again.
"By the way, Mortimer," said I as we jolted along the rough road, "I
suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this whom
you do not know?"
"Hardly any, I think."
"Can you, then, tell me the name of any woman whose initials are L. L.?"
He thought for a few minutes.
"No," said he. "There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom
I can't answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose
initials are those. Wait a bit though," he added after a pause. "There
is Laura Lyons--her initials are L. L.--but she lives in Coombe Tracey."
"Who is she?" I asked.
"She is Frankland's daughter."
"What! Old Frankland the crank?"
"Exactly. She married an artist named Lyons, who came sketching on the
moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault from what
I hear may not have been entirely on one side. Her father refused to
have anything to do with her because she had married without his consent
and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the old
sinner and the young one the girl has had a pretty bad time."
"How does she live?"
"I fancy old Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more,
for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have
deserved one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her story
got about, and several of the people here did something to enable her
to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Sir Charles for
another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set her up in a typewriting
business."
He wanted to know the object of my inquiries, but I managed to satisfy
his curiosity without telling him too much, for there is no reason why
we should take anyone into our confidence. Tomorrow morning I shall
find my way to Coombe Tracey, and if I can see this Mrs. Laura Lyons, of
equivocal reputation, a long step will have been made towards clearing
one incident in this chain of mysteries. I am certainly developing the
wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an
inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Frankland's skull
belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive.
I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing.
I have only one other incident to record upon this tempestuous and
melancholy day. This was my conversation with Barrymore just now, which
gives me one more strong card which I can play in due time.
Mortimer had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played ecarte
afterwards. The butler brought me my coffee into the library, and I took
the chance to ask him a few questions.
"Well," said I, "has this precious relation of yours departed, or is he
still lurking out yonder?"
"I don't know, sir. I hope to heaven that he has gone, for he has
brought nothing but trouble here! I've not heard of him since I left out
food for him last, and that was three days ago."
"Did you see him then?"
"No, sir, but the food was gone when next I went that way."
"Then he was certainly there?"
"So you would think, sir, unless it was the other man who took it."
I sat with my coffee-cup halfway to my lips and stared at Barrymore.
"You know that there is another man then?"
"Yes, sir; there is another man upon the moor."
"Have you seen him?"
"No, sir."
"How do you know of him then?"
"Selden told me of him, sir, a week ago or more. He's in hiding, too,
but he's not a convict as far as I can make out. I don't like it, Dr.
Watson--I tell you straight, sir, that I don't like it." He spoke with a
sudden passion of earnestness.
"Now, listen to me, Barrymore! I have no interest in this matter but
that of your master. I have come here with no object except to help him.
Tell me, frankly, what it is that you don't like."
Barrymore hesitated for a moment, as if he regretted his outburst or
found it difficult to express his own feelings in words.
"It's all these goings-on, sir," he cried at last, waving his hand
towards the rain-lashed window which faced the moor. "There's foul play
somewhere, and there's black villainy brewing, to that I'll swear!
Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir Henry on his way back to London
again!"
"But what is it that alarms you?"
"Look at Sir Charles's death! That was bad enough, for all that the
coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There's not a
man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look at this
stranger hiding out yonder, and watching and waiting! What's he waiting
for? What does it mean? It means no good to anyone of the name of
Baskerville, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it all on the day
that Sir Henry's new servants are ready to take over the Hall."
"But about this stranger," said I. "Can you tell me anything about
him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he was
doing?"
"He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one and gives nothing away.
At first he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he
had some lay of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could
see, but what he was doing he could not make out."
"And where did he say that he lived?"
"Among the old houses on the hillside--the stone huts where the old folk
used to live."
"But how about his food?"
"Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him and brings all
he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants."
"Very good, Barrymore. We may talk further of this some other time."
When the butler had gone I walked over to the black window, and I looked
through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline
of the wind-swept trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it
be in a stone hut upon the moor. What passion of hatred can it be which
leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time! And what deep and
earnest purpose can he have which calls for such a trial! There, in that
hut upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which
has vexed me so sorely. I swear that another day shall not have passed
before I have done all that man can do to reach the heart of the
mystery.
| 5,011 | Chapter 10 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-10 | As the chapter title promises us, this is--wait for it--a section of Watson's diary from his time at Baskerville Hall. Shocking, we know. Barrymore and Sir Henry get into it the next morning. Turns out Barrymore's angry that Watson and Sir Henry went to hunt down Selden. Barrymore begs the two men to let Selden go until they can get him on a boat to South America. Watson and Sir Henry agree to leave Selden alone. Barrymore's so grateful that he wants to do something for Sir Henry in return. There's something about Sir Charles' death that Barrymore's been keeping secret. The morning of Sir Charles' death, Barrymore happened to notice him receiving a letter from a nearby town called Coombe Tracey. The letter was written in a woman's handwriting. A few weeks ago, long after Sir Charles' mysterious death, Barrymore was cleaning out the ashes of the fireplace in Sir Charles' study. He found the charred pieces of that letter. He could still read the final lines: "Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate at ten o'clock" . The letter was signed "L.L." Barrymore hasn't wanted to reveal this because he wanted to protect Sir Charles' rep. But now that Sir Henry has been so kind, Barrymore wants to help him in return. The next day, Watson goes out walking on the moors. As he's heading back to Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer drives past him in a cart. Dr. Mortimer tells Watson that there is a woman with the initials "L.L." living in Coombe Tracey: Laura Lyons, the disgraced, disowned daughter of Mr. Frankland. Apparently, she eloped against her father's will with an artist named Lyons, who then left her. After dinner that evening, Watson asks Barrymore if Selden's still around. Barrymore says he last left out food for him three days ago, but hasn't seen him since. Barrymore also mentions that there's someone else out on the moor. Selden has mentioned this other man to Barrymore--the man doesn't seem to be a convict. Selden told Barrymore that this other man is living in the prehistoric ruins, and that a kid from the village brings him food regularly. The moors seem to be just the thing if you need to hide but need to be close enough to a take-out place that delivers. | null | 586 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/11.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_10_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 11 | chapter 11 | null | {"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-11", "summary": "Watson travels into Coombe Tracey to see if he can track down Laura Lyons. She's actually pretty easy to find . Watson asks her straight out if she knew Sir Charles. She reluctantly admits that she has received financial assistance from him. Laura goes on to say that a friend of hers, Stapleton, used to speak to Sir Charles on her behalf. She denies that she ever wrote asking to meet him, though. That is, she denies it until Watson quotes her own letter back to her. Oops. She finally admits that she wrote to Sir Charles asking to meet him. She explains why she kept it secret: hello, it's rural England in 1901, a married woman can't just visit an unmarried guy at night without it being a huge scandal. The one thing she won't explain is why she never went to the meeting. She just swears that she made the appointment, but she never went to Baskerville Hall. She says she received the help she needed from \"another source\" . Watson is sure there's more to the story than Laura will tell him, but she never changes her answers. He realizes she must have been asking for money for a divorce, but why so urgently right now? Watson goes back to Baskerville Hall. Mr. Frankland sees him passing by in his carriage and calls him over for a drink. Mr. Frankland starts bragging because he knows something the cops don't know--and he won't tell them. Apparently, there's a boy that has been carrying food to a man hidden near a large hill called Black Tor. Mr. Frankland has been keeping watch with his telescope because he thinks the man is the murderous Selden. Even as they're talking about it, the boy appears on his twice daily errand of sneaking over the moors with food for the mysterious man. Watson ditches Mr. Frankland and goes out onto the moors to follow the boy's tracks. He finds a circle of old stone huts, and he discovers one that's clearly being lived in. Inside the hut, there's a note: \"Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey\" . Watson realizes that the mystery man has been following him. But he can't find any other signs of the man's identity. Watson sits and waits nervously for the man to return. Finally, he hears the sound of someone approaching. And he hears a familiar voice inviting him to come outside, where it's more comfortable.", "analysis": ""} |
The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has
brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these
strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion.
The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my
recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made
at the time. I start them from the day which succeeded that upon which
I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Laura
Lyons of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made
an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his
death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found
among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my
possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be
deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark
places.
I had no opportunity to tell the baronet what I had learned about Mrs.
Lyons upon the evening before, for Dr. Mortimer remained with him at
cards until it was very late. At breakfast, however, I informed him
about my discovery and asked him whether he would care to accompany
me to Coombe Tracey. At first he was very eager to come, but on second
thoughts it seemed to both of us that if I went alone the results might
be better. The more formal we made the visit the less information we
might obtain. I left Sir Henry behind, therefore, not without some
prickings of conscience, and drove off upon my new quest.
When I reached Coombe Tracey I told Perkins to put up the horses, and
I made inquiries for the lady whom I had come to interrogate. I had no
difficulty in finding her rooms, which were central and well appointed.
A maid showed me in without ceremony, and as I entered the sitting-room
a lady, who was sitting before a Remington typewriter, sprang up with a
pleasant smile of welcome. Her face fell, however, when she saw that
I was a stranger, and she sat down again and asked me the object of my
visit.
The first impression left by Mrs. Lyons was one of extreme beauty. Her
eyes and hair were of the same rich hazel colour, and her cheeks, though
considerably freckled, were flushed with the exquisite bloom of the
brunette, the dainty pink which lurks at the heart of the sulphur rose.
Admiration was, I repeat, the first impression. But the second was
criticism. There was something subtly wrong with the face, some
coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness
of lip which marred its perfect beauty. But these, of course, are
afterthoughts. At the moment I was simply conscious that I was in
the presence of a very handsome woman, and that she was asking me the
reasons for my visit. I had not quite understood until that instant how
delicate my mission was.
"I have the pleasure," said I, "of knowing your father."
It was a clumsy introduction, and the lady made me feel it. "There
is nothing in common between my father and me," she said. "I owe him
nothing, and his friends are not mine. If it were not for the late Sir
Charles Baskerville and some other kind hearts I might have starved for
all that my father cared."
"It was about the late Sir Charles Baskerville that I have come here to
see you."
The freckles started out on the lady's face.
"What can I tell you about him?" she asked, and her fingers played
nervously over the stops of her typewriter.
"You knew him, did you not?"
"I have already said that I owe a great deal to his kindness. If I am
able to support myself it is largely due to the interest which he took
in my unhappy situation."
"Did you correspond with him?"
The lady looked quickly up with an angry gleam in her hazel eyes.
"What is the object of these questions?" she asked sharply.
"The object is to avoid a public scandal. It is better that I should ask
them here than that the matter should pass outside our control."
She was silent and her face was still very pale. At last she looked up
with something reckless and defiant in her manner.
"Well, I'll answer," she said. "What are your questions?"
"Did you correspond with Sir Charles?"
"I certainly wrote to him once or twice to acknowledge his delicacy and
his generosity."
"Have you the dates of those letters?"
"No."
"Have you ever met him?"
"Yes, once or twice, when he came into Coombe Tracey. He was a very
retiring man, and he preferred to do good by stealth."
"But if you saw him so seldom and wrote so seldom, how did he know
enough about your affairs to be able to help you, as you say that he has
done?"
She met my difficulty with the utmost readiness.
"There were several gentlemen who knew my sad history and united to
help me. One was Mr. Stapleton, a neighbour and intimate friend of Sir
Charles's. He was exceedingly kind, and it was through him that Sir
Charles learned about my affairs."
I knew already that Sir Charles Baskerville had made Stapleton his
almoner upon several occasions, so the lady's statement bore the impress
of truth upon it.
"Did you ever write to Sir Charles asking him to meet you?" I continued.
Mrs. Lyons flushed with anger again. "Really, sir, this is a very
extraordinary question."
"I am sorry, madam, but I must repeat it."
"Then I answer, certainly not."
"Not on the very day of Sir Charles's death?"
The flush had faded in an instant, and a deathly face was before me. Her
dry lips could not speak the "No" which I saw rather than heard.
"Surely your memory deceives you," said I. "I could even quote a passage
of your letter. It ran 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn
this letter, and be at the gate by ten o'clock.'"
I thought that she had fainted, but she recovered herself by a supreme
effort.
"Is there no such thing as a gentleman?" she gasped.
"You do Sir Charles an injustice. He did burn the letter. But sometimes
a letter may be legible even when burned. You acknowledge now that you
wrote it?"
"Yes, I did write it," she cried, pouring out her soul in a torrent of
words. "I did write it. Why should I deny it? I have no reason to be
ashamed of it. I wished him to help me. I believed that if I had an
interview I could gain his help, so I asked him to meet me."
"But why at such an hour?"
"Because I had only just learned that he was going to London next day
and might be away for months. There were reasons why I could not get
there earlier."
"But why a rendezvous in the garden instead of a visit to the house?"
"Do you think a woman could go alone at that hour to a bachelor's
house?"
"Well, what happened when you did get there?"
"I never went."
"Mrs. Lyons!"
"No, I swear it to you on all I hold sacred. I never went. Something
intervened to prevent my going."
"What was that?"
"That is a private matter. I cannot tell it."
"You acknowledge then that you made an appointment with Sir Charles at
the very hour and place at which he met his death, but you deny that you
kept the appointment."
"That is the truth."
Again and again I cross-questioned her, but I could never get past that
point.
"Mrs. Lyons," said I as I rose from this long and inconclusive
interview, "you are taking a very great responsibility and putting
yourself in a very false position by not making an absolutely clean
breast of all that you know. If I have to call in the aid of the police
you will find how seriously you are compromised. If your position is
innocent, why did you in the first instance deny having written to Sir
Charles upon that date?"
"Because I feared that some false conclusion might be drawn from it and
that I might find myself involved in a scandal."
"And why were you so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy your
letter?"
"If you have read the letter you will know."
"I did not say that I had read all the letter."
"You quoted some of it."
"I quoted the postscript. The letter had, as I said, been burned and it
was not all legible. I ask you once again why it was that you were so
pressing that Sir Charles should destroy this letter which he received
on the day of his death."
"The matter is a very private one."
"The more reason why you should avoid a public investigation."
"I will tell you, then. If you have heard anything of my unhappy history
you will know that I made a rash marriage and had reason to regret it."
"I have heard so much."
"My life has been one incessant persecution from a husband whom I abhor.
The law is upon his side, and every day I am faced by the possibility
that he may force me to live with him. At the time that I wrote this
letter to Sir Charles I had learned that there was a prospect of
my regaining my freedom if certain expenses could be met. It meant
everything to me--peace of mind, happiness, self-respect--everything. I
knew Sir Charles's generosity, and I thought that if he heard the story
from my own lips he would help me."
"Then how is it that you did not go?"
"Because I received help in the interval from another source."
"Why then, did you not write to Sir Charles and explain this?"
"So I should have done had I not seen his death in the paper next
morning."
The woman's story hung coherently together, and all my questions were
unable to shake it. I could only check it by finding if she had, indeed,
instituted divorce proceedings against her husband at or about the time
of the tragedy.
It was unlikely that she would dare to say that she had not been to
Baskerville Hall if she really had been, for a trap would be necessary
to take her there, and could not have returned to Coombe Tracey until
the early hours of the morning. Such an excursion could not be kept
secret. The probability was, therefore, that she was telling the truth,
or, at least, a part of the truth. I came away baffled and disheartened.
Once again I had reached that dead wall which seemed to be built across
every path by which I tried to get at the object of my mission. And yet
the more I thought of the lady's face and of her manner the more I felt
that something was being held back from me. Why should she turn so pale?
Why should she fight against every admission until it was forced from
her? Why should she have been so reticent at the time of the tragedy?
Surely the explanation of all this could not be as innocent as she
would have me believe. For the moment I could proceed no farther in that
direction, but must turn back to that other clue which was to be sought
for among the stone huts upon the moor.
And that was a most vague direction. I realized it as I drove back
and noted how hill after hill showed traces of the ancient people.
Barrymore's only indication had been that the stranger lived in one of
these abandoned huts, and many hundreds of them are scattered throughout
the length and breadth of the moor. But I had my own experience for a
guide since it had shown me the man himself standing upon the summit of
the Black Tor. That, then, should be the centre of my search. From there
I should explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right
one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at
the point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged
us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street,
but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other
hand, if I should find the hut and its tenant should not be within it I
must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Holmes had
missed him in London. It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run
him to earth where my master had failed.
Luck had been against us again and again in this inquiry, but now at
last it came to my aid. And the messenger of good fortune was none other
than Mr. Frankland, who was standing, gray-whiskered and red-faced,
outside the gate of his garden, which opened on to the highroad along
which I travelled.
"Good-day, Dr. Watson," cried he with unwonted good humour, "you must
really give your horses a rest and come in to have a glass of wine and
to congratulate me."
My feelings towards him were very far from being friendly after what I
had heard of his treatment of his daughter, but I was anxious to send
Perkins and the wagonette home, and the opportunity was a good one. I
alighted and sent a message to Sir Henry that I should walk over in time
for dinner. Then I followed Frankland into his dining-room.
"It is a great day for me, sir--one of the red-letter days of my life,"
he cried with many chuckles. "I have brought off a double event. I mean
to teach them in these parts that law is law, and that there is a man
here who does not fear to invoke it. I have established a right of way
through the centre of old Middleton's park, slap across it, sir, within
a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We'll
teach these magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights
of the commoners, confound them! And I've closed the wood where the
Fernworthy folk used to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that
there are no rights of property, and that they can swarm where they like
with their papers and their bottles. Both cases decided, Dr. Watson, and
both in my favour. I haven't had such a day since I had Sir John Morland
for trespass because he shot in his own warren."
"How on earth did you do that?"
"Look it up in the books, sir. It will repay reading--Frankland v.
Morland, Court of Queen's Bench. It cost me 200 pounds, but I got my
verdict."
"Did it do you any good?"
"None, sir, none. I am proud to say that I had no interest in the
matter. I act entirely from a sense of public duty. I have no doubt, for
example, that the Fernworthy people will burn me in effigy tonight.
I told the police last time they did it that they should stop these
disgraceful exhibitions. The County Constabulary is in a scandalous
state, sir, and it has not afforded me the protection to which I am
entitled. The case of Frankland v. Regina will bring the matter before
the attention of the public. I told them that they would have occasion
to regret their treatment of me, and already my words have come true."
"How so?" I asked.
The old man put on a very knowing expression. "Because I could tell them
what they are dying to know; but nothing would induce me to help the
rascals in any way."
I had been casting round for some excuse by which I could get away
from his gossip, but now I began to wish to hear more of it. I had seen
enough of the contrary nature of the old sinner to understand that any
strong sign of interest would be the surest way to stop his confidences.
"Some poaching case, no doubt?" said I with an indifferent manner.
"Ha, ha, my boy, a very much more important matter than that! What about
the convict on the moor?"
I stared. "You don't mean that you know where he is?" said I.
"I may not know exactly where he is, but I am quite sure that I could
help the police to lay their hands on him. Has it never struck you that
the way to catch that man was to find out where he got his food and so
trace it to him?"
He certainly seemed to be getting uncomfortably near the truth. "No
doubt," said I; "but how do you know that he is anywhere upon the moor?"
"I know it because I have seen with my own eyes the messenger who takes
him his food."
My heart sank for Barrymore. It was a serious thing to be in the power
of this spiteful old busybody. But his next remark took a weight from my
mind.
"You'll be surprised to hear that his food is taken to him by a child.
I see him every day through my telescope upon the roof. He passes along
the same path at the same hour, and to whom should he be going except to
the convict?"
Here was luck indeed! And yet I suppressed all appearance of interest. A
child! Barrymore had said that our unknown was supplied by a boy. It was
on his track, and not upon the convict's, that Frankland had stumbled.
If I could get his knowledge it might save me a long and weary hunt. But
incredulity and indifference were evidently my strongest cards.
"I should say that it was much more likely that it was the son of one of
the moorland shepherds taking out his father's dinner."
The least appearance of opposition struck fire out of the old autocrat.
His eyes looked malignantly at me, and his gray whiskers bristled like
those of an angry cat.
"Indeed, sir!" said he, pointing out over the wide-stretching moor. "Do
you see that Black Tor over yonder? Well, do you see the low hill beyond
with the thornbush upon it? It is the stoniest part of the whole moor.
Is that a place where a shepherd would be likely to take his station?
Your suggestion, sir, is a most absurd one."
I meekly answered that I had spoken without knowing all the facts. My
submission pleased him and led him to further confidences.
"You may be sure, sir, that I have very good grounds before I come to an
opinion. I have seen the boy again and again with his bundle. Every
day, and sometimes twice a day, I have been able--but wait a moment,
Dr. Watson. Do my eyes deceive me, or is there at the present moment
something moving upon that hillside?"
It was several miles off, but I could distinctly see a small dark dot
against the dull green and gray.
"Come, sir, come!" cried Frankland, rushing upstairs. "You will see with
your own eyes and judge for yourself."
The telescope, a formidable instrument mounted upon a tripod, stood upon
the flat leads of the house. Frankland clapped his eye to it and gave a
cry of satisfaction.
"Quick, Dr. Watson, quick, before he passes over the hill!"
There he was, sure enough, a small urchin with a little bundle upon his
shoulder, toiling slowly up the hill. When he reached the crest I saw
the ragged uncouth figure outlined for an instant against the cold blue
sky. He looked round him with a furtive and stealthy air, as one who
dreads pursuit. Then he vanished over the hill.
"Well! Am I right?"
"Certainly, there is a boy who seems to have some secret errand."
"And what the errand is even a county constable could guess. But not
one word shall they have from me, and I bind you to secrecy also, Dr.
Watson. Not a word! You understand!"
"Just as you wish."
"They have treated me shamefully--shamefully. When the facts come out in
Frankland v. Regina I venture to think that a thrill of indignation will
run through the country. Nothing would induce me to help the police in
any way. For all they cared it might have been me, instead of my effigy,
which these rascals burned at the stake. Surely you are not going! You
will help me to empty the decanter in honour of this great occasion!"
But I resisted all his solicitations and succeeded in dissuading him
from his announced intention of walking home with me. I kept the road
as long as his eye was on me, and then I struck off across the moor and
made for the stony hill over which the boy had disappeared. Everything
was working in my favour, and I swore that it should not be through lack
of energy or perseverance that I should miss the chance which fortune
had thrown in my way.
The sun was already sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and
the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray
shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of
which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the
wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a
gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be
the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert
beneath it. The barren scene, the sense of loneliness, and the mystery
and urgency of my task all struck a chill into my heart. The boy was
nowhere to be seen. But down beneath me in a cleft of the hills there
was a circle of the old stone huts, and in the middle of them there
was one which retained sufficient roof to act as a screen against the
weather. My heart leaped within me as I saw it. This must be the burrow
where the stranger lurked. At last my foot was on the threshold of his
hiding place--his secret was within my grasp.
As I approached the hut, walking as warily as Stapleton would do when
with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly, I satisfied myself
that the place had indeed been used as a habitation. A vague pathway
among the boulders led to the dilapidated opening which served as a
door. All was silent within. The unknown might be lurking there, or
he might be prowling on the moor. My nerves tingled with the sense of
adventure. Throwing aside my cigarette, I closed my hand upon the butt
of my revolver and, walking swiftly up to the door, I looked in. The
place was empty.
But there were ample signs that I had not come upon a false scent. This
was certainly where the man lived. Some blankets rolled in a waterproof
lay upon that very stone slab upon which Neolithic man had once
slumbered. The ashes of a fire were heaped in a rude grate. Beside it
lay some cooking utensils and a bucket half-full of water. A litter of
empty tins showed that the place had been occupied for some time, and I
saw, as my eyes became accustomed to the checkered light, a pannikin and
a half-full bottle of spirits standing in the corner. In the middle of
the hut a flat stone served the purpose of a table, and upon this stood
a small cloth bundle--the same, no doubt, which I had seen through the
telescope upon the shoulder of the boy. It contained a loaf of bread,
a tinned tongue, and two tins of preserved peaches. As I set it down
again, after having examined it, my heart leaped to see that beneath it
there lay a sheet of paper with writing upon it. I raised it, and this
was what I read, roughly scrawled in pencil: "Dr. Watson has gone to
Coombe Tracey."
For a minute I stood there with the paper in my hands thinking out the
meaning of this curt message. It was I, then, and not Sir Henry, who was
being dogged by this secret man. He had not followed me himself, but
he had set an agent--the boy, perhaps--upon my track, and this was his
report. Possibly I had taken no step since I had been upon the moor
which had not been observed and reported. Always there was this feeling
of an unseen force, a fine net drawn round us with infinite skill and
delicacy, holding us so lightly that it was only at some supreme moment
that one realized that one was indeed entangled in its meshes.
If there was one report there might be others, so I looked round the hut
in search of them. There was no trace, however, of anything of the kind,
nor could I discover any sign which might indicate the character or
intentions of the man who lived in this singular place, save that he
must be of Spartan habits and cared little for the comforts of life.
When I thought of the heavy rains and looked at the gaping roof I
understood how strong and immutable must be the purpose which had kept
him in that inhospitable abode. Was he our malignant enemy, or was he by
chance our guardian angel? I swore that I would not leave the hut until
I knew.
Outside the sun was sinking low and the west was blazing with scarlet
and gold. Its reflection was shot back in ruddy patches by the distant
pools which lay amid the great Grimpen Mire. There were the two towers
of Baskerville Hall, and there a distant blur of smoke which marked the
village of Grimpen. Between the two, behind the hill, was the house
of the Stapletons. All was sweet and mellow and peaceful in the golden
evening light, and yet as I looked at them my soul shared none of the
peace of Nature but quivered at the vagueness and the terror of that
interview which every instant was bringing nearer. With tingling nerves
but a fixed purpose, I sat in the dark recess of the hut and waited with
sombre patience for the coming of its tenant.
And then at last I heard him. Far away came the sharp clink of a boot
striking upon a stone. Then another and yet another, coming nearer and
nearer. I shrank back into the darkest corner and cocked the pistol in
my pocket, determined not to discover myself until I had an opportunity
of seeing something of the stranger. There was a long pause which showed
that he had stopped. Then once more the footsteps approached and a
shadow fell across the opening of the hut.
"It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson," said a well-known voice. "I
really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in."
| 6,119 | Chapter 11 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-11 | Watson travels into Coombe Tracey to see if he can track down Laura Lyons. She's actually pretty easy to find . Watson asks her straight out if she knew Sir Charles. She reluctantly admits that she has received financial assistance from him. Laura goes on to say that a friend of hers, Stapleton, used to speak to Sir Charles on her behalf. She denies that she ever wrote asking to meet him, though. That is, she denies it until Watson quotes her own letter back to her. Oops. She finally admits that she wrote to Sir Charles asking to meet him. She explains why she kept it secret: hello, it's rural England in 1901, a married woman can't just visit an unmarried guy at night without it being a huge scandal. The one thing she won't explain is why she never went to the meeting. She just swears that she made the appointment, but she never went to Baskerville Hall. She says she received the help she needed from "another source" . Watson is sure there's more to the story than Laura will tell him, but she never changes her answers. He realizes she must have been asking for money for a divorce, but why so urgently right now? Watson goes back to Baskerville Hall. Mr. Frankland sees him passing by in his carriage and calls him over for a drink. Mr. Frankland starts bragging because he knows something the cops don't know--and he won't tell them. Apparently, there's a boy that has been carrying food to a man hidden near a large hill called Black Tor. Mr. Frankland has been keeping watch with his telescope because he thinks the man is the murderous Selden. Even as they're talking about it, the boy appears on his twice daily errand of sneaking over the moors with food for the mysterious man. Watson ditches Mr. Frankland and goes out onto the moors to follow the boy's tracks. He finds a circle of old stone huts, and he discovers one that's clearly being lived in. Inside the hut, there's a note: "Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey" . Watson realizes that the mystery man has been following him. But he can't find any other signs of the man's identity. Watson sits and waits nervously for the man to return. Finally, he hears the sound of someone approaching. And he hears a familiar voice inviting him to come outside, where it's more comfortable. | null | 586 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/12.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_11_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 12 | chapter 12 | null | {"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-12", "summary": "Surprise! The mysterious man on the hill is none other than Holmes. Watson gets upset when he realizes that Holmes has been deliberately keeping him in the dark. And what about all those reports, which he so carefully wrote up and sent off to London? Holmes tries to make nice. He says he trusts Watson completely. But he also worried that Watson wouldn't have been able to resist making contact with Holmes on the moors. And Holmes has been getting the reports--he arranged to have them delivered back to him on the moors from London. Holmes is fascinated by Watson's account of his conversation with Laura Lyons. Holmes knows that Stapleton and Laura Lyons have been hooking up. Holmes drops another bombshell: Beryl is actually Mrs. Stapleton. She's his wife, not his sister! Stapleton is the one who followed Sir Henry in London, and Beryl's the one who sent that warning to Sir Henry at his hotel. Holmes knows that Stapleton's pose as an unmarried man helped him enlist Laura in his plotting. And Laura's desperate for divorce money now because she believes that she can marry him. Holmes is almost ready to charge Stapleton with murder. But he needs Watson to wait at Baskerville Hall with Sir Henry for at least another day or two. Just as Holmes says this, they hear a horrible scream over the moors, followed by the growling of a dog. Holmes fears that they may be too late. At the side of a cliff, they find a body with a crushed skull. It's Sir Henry Baskerville. Besides feeling guilty that they were on the moors and still failed to save Sir Henry, Holmes is deeply frustrated. Even though Holmes and Watson are both sure that Stapleton is involved with the Hound murders, there's no definite proof linking him to the Baskerville deaths. Holmes goes over to the body to carry it to the hall. But suddenly, he starts dancing around and shaking Watson's hand. It's not Sir Henry at all! The body has a beard! In fact, the body belongs to Selden. Watson remembers that Sir Henry gave some of his old clothes to Barrymore; Barrymore probably passed them on to Selden. Stapleton's dog has obviously been trained to react to Sir Henry's smell, which lead him to attack Selden in Sir Henry's clothes. They see someone smoking and strolling towards them: it's Stapleton. Stapleton turns pale when he sees the body, since he realizes that it's not Sir Henry. Stapleton claims he invited Sir Henry to walk over to Merripit House and then got worried when he never turned up. Stapleton asks suspiciously if anybody heard the sounds of a dog, since the moors are supposed to be haunted. Neither Holmes nor Watson gives any sign that they might know why Stapleton's so interested in this mysterious dog. Watson claims to believe that Selden died from madness and stress, which drove him over a cliff. Holmes also pretends that he plans to go back to London the next day, since this has \"not been a satisfactory case\" .", "analysis": ""} |
For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears.
Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight
of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That
cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in all the
world.
"Holmes!" I cried--"Holmes!"
"Come out," said he, "and please be careful with the revolver."
I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside,
his gray eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished
features. He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face
bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and
cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had
contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one
of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen
as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.
"I never was more glad to see anyone in my life," said I as I wrung him
by the hand.
"Or more astonished, eh?"
"Well, I must confess to it."
"The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you. I had no idea that
you had found my occasional retreat, still less that you were inside it,
until I was within twenty paces of the door."
"My footprint, I presume?"
"No, Watson, I fear that I could not undertake to recognize your
footprint amid all the footprints of the world. If you seriously desire
to deceive me you must change your tobacconist; for when I see the stub
of a cigarette marked Bradley, Oxford Street, I know that my friend
Watson is in the neighbourhood. You will see it there beside the path.
You threw it down, no doubt, at that supreme moment when you charged
into the empty hut."
"Exactly."
"I thought as much--and knowing your admirable tenacity I was convinced
that you were sitting in ambush, a weapon within reach, waiting for the
tenant to return. So you actually thought that I was the criminal?"
"I did not know who you were, but I was determined to find out."
"Excellent, Watson! And how did you localize me? You saw me, perhaps, on
the night of the convict hunt, when I was so imprudent as to allow the
moon to rise behind me?"
"Yes, I saw you then."
"And have no doubt searched all the huts until you came to this one?"
"No, your boy had been observed, and that gave me a guide where to
look."
"The old gentleman with the telescope, no doubt. I could not make it out
when first I saw the light flashing upon the lens." He rose and peeped
into the hut. "Ha, I see that Cartwright has brought up some supplies.
What's this paper? So you have been to Coombe Tracey, have you?"
"Yes."
"To see Mrs. Laura Lyons?"
"Exactly."
"Well done! Our researches have evidently been running on parallel
lines, and when we unite our results I expect we shall have a fairly
full knowledge of the case."
"Well, I am glad from my heart that you are here, for indeed the
responsibility and the mystery were both becoming too much for my
nerves. But how in the name of wonder did you come here, and what have
you been doing? I thought that you were in Baker Street working out that
case of blackmailing."
"That was what I wished you to think."
"Then you use me, and yet do not trust me!" I cried with some
bitterness. "I think that I have deserved better at your hands, Holmes."
"My dear fellow, you have been invaluable to me in this as in many other
cases, and I beg that you will forgive me if I have seemed to play a
trick upon you. In truth, it was partly for your own sake that I did it,
and it was my appreciation of the danger which you ran which led me to
come down and examine the matter for myself. Had I been with Sir Henry
and you it is confident that my point of view would have been the
same as yours, and my presence would have warned our very formidable
opponents to be on their guard. As it is, I have been able to get about
as I could not possibly have done had I been living in the Hall, and
I remain an unknown factor in the business, ready to throw in all my
weight at a critical moment."
"But why keep me in the dark?"
"For you to know could not have helped us and might possibly have led
to my discovery. You would have wished to tell me something, or in your
kindness you would have brought me out some comfort or other, and so an
unnecessary risk would be run. I brought Cartwright down with me--you
remember the little chap at the express office--and he has seen after
my simple wants: a loaf of bread and a clean collar. What does man want
more? He has given me an extra pair of eyes upon a very active pair of
feet, and both have been invaluable."
"Then my reports have all been wasted!"--My voice trembled as I recalled
the pains and the pride with which I had composed them.
Holmes took a bundle of papers from his pocket.
"Here are your reports, my dear fellow, and very well thumbed, I assure
you. I made excellent arrangements, and they are only delayed one day
upon their way. I must compliment you exceedingly upon the zeal and
the intelligence which you have shown over an extraordinarily difficult
case."
I was still rather raw over the deception which had been practised upon
me, but the warmth of Holmes's praise drove my anger from my mind. I
felt also in my heart that he was right in what he said and that it was
really best for our purpose that I should not have known that he was
upon the moor.
"That's better," said he, seeing the shadow rise from my face. "And
now tell me the result of your visit to Mrs. Laura Lyons--it was not
difficult for me to guess that it was to see her that you had gone, for
I am already aware that she is the one person in Coombe Tracey who might
be of service to us in the matter. In fact, if you had not gone today it
is exceedingly probable that I should have gone tomorrow."
The sun had set and dusk was settling over the moor. The air had turned
chill and we withdrew into the hut for warmth. There, sitting together
in the twilight, I told Holmes of my conversation with the lady. So
interested was he that I had to repeat some of it twice before he was
satisfied.
"This is most important," said he when I had concluded. "It fills up a
gap which I had been unable to bridge in this most complex affair. You
are aware, perhaps, that a close intimacy exists between this lady and
the man Stapleton?"
"I did not know of a close intimacy."
"There can be no doubt about the matter. They meet, they write, there
is a complete understanding between them. Now, this puts a very powerful
weapon into our hands. If I could only use it to detach his wife--"
"His wife?"
"I am giving you some information now, in return for all that you have
given me. The lady who has passed here as Miss Stapleton is in reality
his wife."
"Good heavens, Holmes! Are you sure of what you say? How could he have
permitted Sir Henry to fall in love with her?"
"Sir Henry's falling in love could do no harm to anyone except Sir
Henry. He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her,
as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and
not his sister."
"But why this elaborate deception?"
"Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in
the character of a free woman."
All my unspoken instincts, my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and
centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive colourless man, with his
straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible--a
creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a
murderous heart.
"It is he, then, who is our enemy--it is he who dogged us in London?"
"So I read the riddle."
"And the warning--it must have come from her!"
"Exactly."
The shape of some monstrous villainy, half seen, half guessed, loomed
through the darkness which had girt me so long.
"But are you sure of this, Holmes? How do you know that the woman is his
wife?"
"Because he so far forgot himself as to tell you a true piece of
autobiography upon the occasion when he first met you, and I dare say
he has many a time regretted it since. He was once a schoolmaster in
the north of England. Now, there is no one more easy to trace than a
schoolmaster. There are scholastic agencies by which one may identify
any man who has been in the profession. A little investigation showed me
that a school had come to grief under atrocious circumstances, and that
the man who had owned it--the name was different--had disappeared with
his wife. The descriptions agreed. When I learned that the missing man
was devoted to entomology the identification was complete."
The darkness was rising, but much was still hidden by the shadows.
"If this woman is in truth his wife, where does Mrs. Laura Lyons come
in?" I asked.
"That is one of the points upon which your own researches have shed a
light. Your interview with the lady has cleared the situation very
much. I did not know about a projected divorce between herself and her
husband. In that case, regarding Stapleton as an unmarried man, she
counted no doubt upon becoming his wife."
"And when she is undeceived?"
"Why, then we may find the lady of service. It must be our first duty
to see her--both of us--tomorrow. Don't you think, Watson, that you are
away from your charge rather long? Your place should be at Baskerville
Hall."
The last red streaks had faded away in the west and night had settled
upon the moor. A few faint stars were gleaming in a violet sky.
"One last question, Holmes," I said as I rose. "Surely there is no need
of secrecy between you and me. What is the meaning of it all? What is he
after?"
Holmes's voice sank as he answered:
"It is murder, Watson--refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Do not
ask me for particulars. My nets are closing upon him, even as his are
upon Sir Henry, and with your help he is already almost at my mercy.
There is but one danger which can threaten us. It is that he should
strike before we are ready to do so. Another day--two at the most--and
I have my case complete, but until then guard your charge as closely
as ever a fond mother watched her ailing child. Your mission today has
justified itself, and yet I could almost wish that you had not left his
side. Hark!"
A terrible scream--a prolonged yell of horror and anguish--burst out of
the silence of the moor. That frightful cry turned the blood to ice in
my veins.
"Oh, my God!" I gasped. "What is it? What does it mean?"
Holmes had sprung to his feet, and I saw his dark, athletic outline at
the door of the hut, his shoulders stooping, his head thrust forward,
his face peering into the darkness.
"Hush!" he whispered. "Hush!"
The cry had been loud on account of its vehemence, but it had pealed out
from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain. Now it burst upon our ears,
nearer, louder, more urgent than before.
"Where is it?" Holmes whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice
that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. "Where is it, Watson?"
"There, I think." I pointed into the darkness.
"No, there!"
Again the agonized cry swept through the silent night, louder and much
nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered
rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low,
constant murmur of the sea.
"The hound!" cried Holmes. "Come, Watson, come! Great heavens, if we are
too late!"
He had started running swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his
heels. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in
front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy
thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence
of the windless night.
I saw Holmes put his hand to his forehead like a man distracted. He
stamped his feet upon the ground.
"He has beaten us, Watson. We are too late."
"No, no, surely not!"
"Fool that I was to hold my hand. And you, Watson, see what comes of
abandoning your charge! But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened we'll
avenge him!"
Blindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing
our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes,
heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come.
At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were
thick upon the moor, and nothing moved upon its dreary face.
"Can you see anything?"
"Nothing."
"But, hark, what is that?"
A low moan had fallen upon our ears. There it was again upon our left!
On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff which overlooked
a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark,
irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into
a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downward upon the ground,
the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded
and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault.
So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realize
that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a
rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid
his hand upon him and held it up again with an exclamation of horror.
The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers
and upon the ghastly pool which widened slowly from the crushed skull
of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts
sick and faint within us--the body of Sir Henry Baskerville!
There was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed
suit--the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had
seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and
then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out
of our souls. Holmes groaned, and his face glimmered white through the
darkness.
"The brute! The brute!" I cried with clenched hands. "Oh Holmes, I shall
never forgive myself for having left him to his fate."
"I am more to blame than you, Watson. In order to have my case well
rounded and complete, I have thrown away the life of my client. It is
the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I
know--how could I know--that he would risk his life alone upon the moor
in the face of all my warnings?"
"That we should have heard his screams--my God, those screams!--and yet
have been unable to save him! Where is this brute of a hound which drove
him to his death? It may be lurking among these rocks at this instant.
And Stapleton, where is he? He shall answer for this deed."
"He shall. I will see to that. Uncle and nephew have been murdered--the
one frightened to death by the very sight of a beast which he thought
to be supernatural, the other driven to his end in his wild flight to
escape from it. But now we have to prove the connection between the
man and the beast. Save from what we heard, we cannot even swear to the
existence of the latter, since Sir Henry has evidently died from the
fall. But, by heavens, cunning as he is, the fellow shall be in my power
before another day is past!"
We stood with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body,
overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought
all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon
rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had
fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half
silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen,
a single steady yellow light was shining. It could only come from the
lonely abode of the Stapletons. With a bitter curse I shook my fist at
it as I gazed.
"Why should we not seize him at once?"
"Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last
degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove. If we make one
false move the villain may escape us yet."
"What can we do?"
"There will be plenty for us to do tomorrow. Tonight we can only perform
the last offices to our poor friend."
Together we made our way down the precipitous slope and approached the
body, black and clear against the silvered stones. The agony of those
contorted limbs struck me with a spasm of pain and blurred my eyes with
tears.
"We must send for help, Holmes! We cannot carry him all the way to the
Hall. Good heavens, are you mad?"
He had uttered a cry and bent over the body. Now he was dancing and
laughing and wringing my hand. Could this be my stern, self-contained
friend? These were hidden fires, indeed!
"A beard! A beard! The man has a beard!"
"A beard?"
"It is not the baronet--it is--why, it is my neighbour, the convict!"
With feverish haste we had turned the body over, and that dripping beard
was pointing up to the cold, clear moon. There could be no doubt about
the beetling forehead, the sunken animal eyes. It was indeed the same
face which had glared upon me in the light of the candle from over the
rock--the face of Selden, the criminal.
Then in an instant it was all clear to me. I remembered how the baronet
had told me that he had handed his old wardrobe to Barrymore. Barrymore
had passed it on in order to help Selden in his escape. Boots, shirt,
cap--it was all Sir Henry's. The tragedy was still black enough, but
this man had at least deserved death by the laws of his country. I told
Holmes how the matter stood, my heart bubbling over with thankfulness
and joy.
"Then the clothes have been the poor devil's death," said he. "It is
clear enough that the hound has been laid on from some article of
Sir Henry's--the boot which was abstracted in the hotel, in all
probability--and so ran this man down. There is one very singular thing,
however: How came Selden, in the darkness, to know that the hound was on
his trail?"
"He heard him."
"To hear a hound upon the moor would not work a hard man like this
convict into such a paroxysm of terror that he would risk recapture
by screaming wildly for help. By his cries he must have run a long way
after he knew the animal was on his track. How did he know?"
"A greater mystery to me is why this hound, presuming that all our
conjectures are correct--"
"I presume nothing."
"Well, then, why this hound should be loose tonight. I suppose that it
does not always run loose upon the moor. Stapleton would not let it go
unless he had reason to think that Sir Henry would be there."
"My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I think that we
shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while mine may remain
forever a mystery. The question now is, what shall we do with this poor
wretch's body? We cannot leave it here to the foxes and the ravens."
"I suggest that we put it in one of the huts until we can communicate
with the police."
"Exactly. I have no doubt that you and I could carry it so far. Halloa,
Watson, what's this? It's the man himself, by all that's wonderful and
audacious! Not a word to show your suspicions--not a word, or my plans
crumble to the ground."
A figure was approaching us over the moor, and I saw the dull red glow
of a cigar. The moon shone upon him, and I could distinguish the dapper
shape and jaunty walk of the naturalist. He stopped when he saw us, and
then came on again.
"Why, Dr. Watson, that's not you, is it? You are the last man that I
should have expected to see out on the moor at this time of night. But,
dear me, what's this? Somebody hurt? Not--don't tell me that it is our
friend Sir Henry!" He hurried past me and stooped over the dead man. I
heard a sharp intake of his breath and the cigar fell from his fingers.
"Who--who's this?" he stammered.
"It is Selden, the man who escaped from Princetown."
Stapleton turned a ghastly face upon us, but by a supreme effort he had
overcome his amazement and his disappointment. He looked sharply from
Holmes to me. "Dear me! What a very shocking affair! How did he die?"
"He appears to have broken his neck by falling over these rocks. My
friend and I were strolling on the moor when we heard a cry."
"I heard a cry also. That was what brought me out. I was uneasy about
Sir Henry."
"Why about Sir Henry in particular?" I could not help asking.
"Because I had suggested that he should come over. When he did not come
I was surprised, and I naturally became alarmed for his safety when I
heard cries upon the moor. By the way"--his eyes darted again from my
face to Holmes's--"did you hear anything else besides a cry?"
"No," said Holmes; "did you?"
"No."
"What do you mean, then?"
"Oh, you know the stories that the peasants tell about a phantom
hound, and so on. It is said to be heard at night upon the moor. I was
wondering if there were any evidence of such a sound tonight."
"We heard nothing of the kind," said I.
"And what is your theory of this poor fellow's death?"
"I have no doubt that anxiety and exposure have driven him off his head.
He has rushed about the moor in a crazy state and eventually fallen over
here and broken his neck."
"That seems the most reasonable theory," said Stapleton, and he gave a
sigh which I took to indicate his relief. "What do you think about it,
Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"
My friend bowed his compliments. "You are quick at identification," said
he.
"We have been expecting you in these parts since Dr. Watson came down.
You are in time to see a tragedy."
"Yes, indeed. I have no doubt that my friend's explanation will cover
the facts. I will take an unpleasant remembrance back to London with me
tomorrow."
"Oh, you return tomorrow?"
"That is my intention."
"I hope your visit has cast some light upon those occurrences which have
puzzled us?"
Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
"One cannot always have the success for which one hopes. An investigator
needs facts and not legends or rumours. It has not been a satisfactory
case."
My friend spoke in his frankest and most unconcerned manner. Stapleton
still looked hard at him. Then he turned to me.
"I would suggest carrying this poor fellow to my house, but it would
give my sister such a fright that I do not feel justified in doing it.
I think that if we put something over his face he will be safe until
morning."
And so it was arranged. Resisting Stapleton's offer of hospitality,
Holmes and I set off to Baskerville Hall, leaving the naturalist to
return alone. Looking back we saw the figure moving slowly away over the
broad moor, and behind him that one black smudge on the silvered slope
which showed where the man was lying who had come so horribly to his
end.
| 5,828 | Chapter 12 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-12 | Surprise! The mysterious man on the hill is none other than Holmes. Watson gets upset when he realizes that Holmes has been deliberately keeping him in the dark. And what about all those reports, which he so carefully wrote up and sent off to London? Holmes tries to make nice. He says he trusts Watson completely. But he also worried that Watson wouldn't have been able to resist making contact with Holmes on the moors. And Holmes has been getting the reports--he arranged to have them delivered back to him on the moors from London. Holmes is fascinated by Watson's account of his conversation with Laura Lyons. Holmes knows that Stapleton and Laura Lyons have been hooking up. Holmes drops another bombshell: Beryl is actually Mrs. Stapleton. She's his wife, not his sister! Stapleton is the one who followed Sir Henry in London, and Beryl's the one who sent that warning to Sir Henry at his hotel. Holmes knows that Stapleton's pose as an unmarried man helped him enlist Laura in his plotting. And Laura's desperate for divorce money now because she believes that she can marry him. Holmes is almost ready to charge Stapleton with murder. But he needs Watson to wait at Baskerville Hall with Sir Henry for at least another day or two. Just as Holmes says this, they hear a horrible scream over the moors, followed by the growling of a dog. Holmes fears that they may be too late. At the side of a cliff, they find a body with a crushed skull. It's Sir Henry Baskerville. Besides feeling guilty that they were on the moors and still failed to save Sir Henry, Holmes is deeply frustrated. Even though Holmes and Watson are both sure that Stapleton is involved with the Hound murders, there's no definite proof linking him to the Baskerville deaths. Holmes goes over to the body to carry it to the hall. But suddenly, he starts dancing around and shaking Watson's hand. It's not Sir Henry at all! The body has a beard! In fact, the body belongs to Selden. Watson remembers that Sir Henry gave some of his old clothes to Barrymore; Barrymore probably passed them on to Selden. Stapleton's dog has obviously been trained to react to Sir Henry's smell, which lead him to attack Selden in Sir Henry's clothes. They see someone smoking and strolling towards them: it's Stapleton. Stapleton turns pale when he sees the body, since he realizes that it's not Sir Henry. Stapleton claims he invited Sir Henry to walk over to Merripit House and then got worried when he never turned up. Stapleton asks suspiciously if anybody heard the sounds of a dog, since the moors are supposed to be haunted. Neither Holmes nor Watson gives any sign that they might know why Stapleton's so interested in this mysterious dog. Watson claims to believe that Selden died from madness and stress, which drove him over a cliff. Holmes also pretends that he plans to go back to London the next day, since this has "not been a satisfactory case" . | null | 714 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/13.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_12_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 13 | chapter 13 | null | {"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-13", "summary": "Holmes is impressed at how Stapleton's so cool under pressure. Yeah, he's cool--it's not like Holmes can prove any of his ideas in a court of law yet. Holmes believes that Laura Lyons will be the key to this stage of the case. Watson brings Holmes to Baskerville Hall, and Sir Henry welcomes him. Watson breaks the news to the Barrymores that Selden's dead. Holmes tells Sir Henry that he'll soon have the answer to his mystery, as long as Sir Henry does exactly what Holmes says without asking why. More control-freak stuff. Holmes suddenly jumps up to look at one of the portraits on Sir Henry's wall. When Holmes points to the portrait of a man in black velvet and lace, Sir Henry identifies him as than Hugo Baskerville--the original victim of the Hound. After dinner, Holmes leads Watson back over to the portrait. When Holmes covers Hugo's ridiculous hair, Watson can finally spot what Holmes noticed so long before: that the face of Hugo Baskerville hugely resembles Stapleton's. In other words, Stapleton must be a member of the Baskerville family. Sir Henry comes in, and Holmes tells him that he and Watson are planning to go back to London. Sir Henry's disappointed , but Holmes reassures him that they'll be back soon. They were all supposed to go over to dinner at Stapleton's house together, but now Sir Henry will just have to go alone. Holmes tells Sir Henry to drive over to Merripit House, but then to have the groom bring the carriage home. Sir Henry should then tell his host, Stapleton, that he plans to walk home that night. At the train station in Coombe Tracey, Holmes and Watson meet the boy, Cartwright, who was bringing Holmes' food to the moors over those many days. Holmes orders Cartwright to take the train into London. From London, Cartwright should send a telegram to Sir Henry asking about a pocketbook Holmes might have forgotten at Baskerville Hall. Cartwright agrees, and he also gives Holmes a telegram. It's from \"Lestrade,\" who's coming down to Devonshire on the 5:40 train with a warrant. Holmes explains that Lestrade's a policeman, and they may need his help tonight. Holmes and Watson head over to Laura Lyons' house. Holmes tells Laura Lyons that he is involved in a case which implicates Stapleton and \"his wife\" in murder. Holmes shows her pictures of the people now calling themselves Jack and Beryl Stapleton. The pictures were taken several years ago in York, where they were called Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur . Laura Lyons is shocked that Stapleton has lied to her about his wife. First time in history that's ever happened. She admits that Stapleton told her what to write in the letter to Sir Charles. She also says that, after she sent the letter, Stapleton appeared to change his mind about her borrowing money from Sir Charles. After she agreed not to meet with Sir Charles, she didn't hear anything more about him until she read about his death in the newspaper. Stapleton then frightened Laura into promising not to say anything about the scheduled appointment with Sir Charles, since his death was so mysterious. Holmes and Watson go to the train station to meet Lestrade. Holmes promises that this case is the \"biggest thing for years\" .", "analysis": ""} |
"We're at close grips at last," said Holmes as we walked together across
the moor. "What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together
in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that
the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot. I told you in London,
Watson, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more
worthy of our steel."
"I am sorry that he has seen you."
"And so was I at first. But there was no getting out of it."
"What effect do you think it will have upon his plans now that he knows
you are here?"
"It may cause him to be more cautious, or it may drive him to desperate
measures at once. Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in
his own cleverness and imagine that he has completely deceived us."
"Why should we not arrest him at once?"
"My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is
always to do something energetic. But supposing, for argument's sake,
that we had him arrested tonight, what on earth the better off should
we be for that? We could prove nothing against him. There's the devilish
cunning of it! If he were acting through a human agent we could get some
evidence, but if we were to drag this great dog to the light of day it
would not help us in putting a rope round the neck of its master."
"Surely we have a case."
"Not a shadow of one--only surmise and conjecture. We should be laughed
out of court if we came with such a story and such evidence."
"There is Sir Charles's death."
"Found dead without a mark upon him. You and I know that he died of
sheer fright, and we know also what frightened him, but how are we to
get twelve stolid jurymen to know it? What signs are there of a hound?
Where are the marks of its fangs? Of course we know that a hound does
not bite a dead body and that Sir Charles was dead before ever the
brute overtook him. But we have to prove all this, and we are not in a
position to do it."
"Well, then, tonight?"
"We are not much better off tonight. Again, there was no direct
connection between the hound and the man's death. We never saw the
hound. We heard it, but we could not prove that it was running upon this
man's trail. There is a complete absence of motive. No, my dear fellow;
we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have no case at present,
and that it is worth our while to run any risk in order to establish
one."
"And how do you propose to do so?"
"I have great hopes of what Mrs. Laura Lyons may do for us when the
position of affairs is made clear to her. And I have my own plan as
well. Sufficient for tomorrow is the evil thereof; but I hope before the
day is past to have the upper hand at last."
I could draw nothing further from him, and he walked, lost in thought,
as far as the Baskerville gates.
"Are you coming up?"
"Yes; I see no reason for further concealment. But one last word,
Watson. Say nothing of the hound to Sir Henry. Let him think that
Selden's death was as Stapleton would have us believe. He will have a
better nerve for the ordeal which he will have to undergo tomorrow,
when he is engaged, if I remember your report aright, to dine with these
people."
"And so am I."
"Then you must excuse yourself and he must go alone. That will be easily
arranged. And now, if we are too late for dinner, I think that we are
both ready for our suppers."
Sir Henry was more pleased than surprised to see Sherlock Holmes, for he
had for some days been expecting that recent events would bring him down
from London. He did raise his eyebrows, however, when he found that my
friend had neither any luggage nor any explanations for its absence.
Between us we soon supplied his wants, and then over a belated supper
we explained to the baronet as much of our experience as it seemed
desirable that he should know. But first I had the unpleasant duty of
breaking the news to Barrymore and his wife. To him it may have been an
unmitigated relief, but she wept bitterly in her apron. To all the world
he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he
always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who
had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to
mourn him.
"I've been moping in the house all day since Watson went off in the
morning," said the baronet. "I guess I should have some credit, for I
have kept my promise. If I hadn't sworn not to go about alone I might
have had a more lively evening, for I had a message from Stapleton
asking me over there."
"I have no doubt that you would have had a more lively evening," said
Holmes drily. "By the way, I don't suppose you appreciate that we have
been mourning over you as having broken your neck?"
Sir Henry opened his eyes. "How was that?"
"This poor wretch was dressed in your clothes. I fear your servant who
gave them to him may get into trouble with the police."
"That is unlikely. There was no mark on any of them, as far as I know."
"That's lucky for him--in fact, it's lucky for all of you, since you are
all on the wrong side of the law in this matter. I am not sure that as
a conscientious detective my first duty is not to arrest the whole
household. Watson's reports are most incriminating documents."
"But how about the case?" asked the baronet. "Have you made anything out
of the tangle? I don't know that Watson and I are much the wiser since
we came down."
"I think that I shall be in a position to make the situation rather more
clear to you before long. It has been an exceedingly difficult and most
complicated business. There are several points upon which we still want
light--but it is coming all the same."
"We've had one experience, as Watson has no doubt told you. We heard the
hound on the moor, so I can swear that it is not all empty superstition.
I had something to do with dogs when I was out West, and I know one when
I hear one. If you can muzzle that one and put him on a chain I'll be
ready to swear you are the greatest detective of all time."
"I think I will muzzle him and chain him all right if you will give me
your help."
"Whatever you tell me to do I will do."
"Very good; and I will ask you also to do it blindly, without always
asking the reason."
"Just as you like."
"If you will do this I think the chances are that our little problem
will soon be solved. I have no doubt--"
He stopped suddenly and stared fixedly up over my head into the air. The
lamp beat upon his face, and so intent was it and so still that it might
have been that of a clear-cut classical statue, a personification of
alertness and expectation.
"What is it?" we both cried.
I could see as he looked down that he was repressing some internal
emotion. His features were still composed, but his eyes shone with
amused exultation.
"Excuse the admiration of a connoisseur," said he as he waved his hand
towards the line of portraits which covered the opposite wall. "Watson
won't allow that I know anything of art but that is mere jealousy
because our views upon the subject differ. Now, these are a really very
fine series of portraits."
"Well, I'm glad to hear you say so," said Sir Henry, glancing with some
surprise at my friend. "I don't pretend to know much about these things,
and I'd be a better judge of a horse or a steer than of a picture. I
didn't know that you found time for such things."
"I know what is good when I see it, and I see it now. That's a Kneller,
I'll swear, that lady in the blue silk over yonder, and the stout
gentleman with the wig ought to be a Reynolds. They are all family
portraits, I presume?"
"Every one."
"Do you know the names?"
"Barrymore has been coaching me in them, and I think I can say my
lessons fairly well."
"Who is the gentleman with the telescope?"
"That is Rear-Admiral Baskerville, who served under Rodney in the West
Indies. The man with the blue coat and the roll of paper is Sir William
Baskerville, who was Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons
under Pitt."
"And this Cavalier opposite to me--the one with the black velvet and the
lace?"
"Ah, you have a right to know about him. That is the cause of all the
mischief, the wicked Hugo, who started the Hound of the Baskervilles.
We're not likely to forget him."
I gazed with interest and some surprise upon the portrait.
"Dear me!" said Holmes, "he seems a quiet, meek-mannered man enough, but
I dare say that there was a lurking devil in his eyes. I had pictured
him as a more robust and ruffianly person."
"There's no doubt about the authenticity, for the name and the date,
1647, are on the back of the canvas."
Holmes said little more, but the picture of the old roysterer seemed to
have a fascination for him, and his eyes were continually fixed upon it
during supper. It was not until later, when Sir Henry had gone to his
room, that I was able to follow the trend of his thoughts. He led me
back into the banqueting-hall, his bedroom candle in his hand, and he
held it up against the time-stained portrait on the wall.
"Do you see anything there?"
I looked at the broad plumed hat, the curling love-locks, the white lace
collar, and the straight, severe face which was framed between them. It
was not a brutal countenance, but it was prim, hard, and stern, with a
firm-set, thin-lipped mouth, and a coldly intolerant eye.
"Is it like anyone you know?"
"There is something of Sir Henry about the jaw."
"Just a suggestion, perhaps. But wait an instant!" He stood upon a
chair, and, holding up the light in his left hand, he curved his right
arm over the broad hat and round the long ringlets.
"Good heavens!" I cried in amazement.
The face of Stapleton had sprung out of the canvas.
"Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not
their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that
he should see through a disguise."
"But this is marvellous. It might be his portrait."
"Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be
both physical and spiritual. A study of family portraits is enough
to convert a man to the doctrine of reincarnation. The fellow is a
Baskerville--that is evident."
"With designs upon the succession."
"Exactly. This chance of the picture has supplied us with one of our
most obvious missing links. We have him, Watson, we have him, and I dare
swear that before tomorrow night he will be fluttering in our net as
helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and
we add him to the Baker Street collection!" He burst into one of his
rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not
heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.
I was up betimes in the morning, but Holmes was afoot earlier still, for
I saw him as I dressed, coming up the drive.
"Yes, we should have a full day today," he remarked, and he rubbed his
hands with the joy of action. "The nets are all in place, and the drag
is about to begin. We'll know before the day is out whether we have
caught our big, leanjawed pike, or whether he has got through the
meshes."
"Have you been on the moor already?"
"I have sent a report from Grimpen to Princetown as to the death of
Selden. I think I can promise that none of you will be troubled in the
matter. And I have also communicated with my faithful Cartwright, who
would certainly have pined away at the door of my hut, as a dog does at
his master's grave, if I had not set his mind at rest about my safety."
"What is the next move?"
"To see Sir Henry. Ah, here he is!"
"Good-morning, Holmes," said the baronet. "You look like a general who
is planning a battle with his chief of the staff."
"That is the exact situation. Watson was asking for orders."
"And so do I."
"Very good. You are engaged, as I understand, to dine with our friends
the Stapletons tonight."
"I hope that you will come also. They are very hospitable people, and I
am sure that they would be very glad to see you."
"I fear that Watson and I must go to London."
"To London?"
"Yes, I think that we should be more useful there at the present
juncture."
The baronet's face perceptibly lengthened.
"I hoped that you were going to see me through this business. The Hall
and the moor are not very pleasant places when one is alone."
"My dear fellow, you must trust me implicitly and do exactly what I tell
you. You can tell your friends that we should have been happy to have
come with you, but that urgent business required us to be in town. We
hope very soon to return to Devonshire. Will you remember to give them
that message?"
"If you insist upon it."
"There is no alternative, I assure you."
I saw by the baronet's clouded brow that he was deeply hurt by what he
regarded as our desertion.
"When do you desire to go?" he asked coldly.
"Immediately after breakfast. We will drive in to Coombe Tracey, but
Watson will leave his things as a pledge that he will come back to you.
Watson, you will send a note to Stapleton to tell him that you regret
that you cannot come."
"I have a good mind to go to London with you," said the baronet. "Why
should I stay here alone?"
"Because it is your post of duty. Because you gave me your word that you
would do as you were told, and I tell you to stay."
"All right, then, I'll stay."
"One more direction! I wish you to drive to Merripit House. Send back
your trap, however, and let them know that you intend to walk home."
"To walk across the moor?"
"Yes."
"But that is the very thing which you have so often cautioned me not to
do."
"This time you may do it with safety. If I had not every confidence in
your nerve and courage I would not suggest it, but it is essential that
you should do it."
"Then I will do it."
"And as you value your life do not go across the moor in any direction
save along the straight path which leads from Merripit House to the
Grimpen Road, and is your natural way home."
"I will do just what you say."
"Very good. I should be glad to get away as soon after breakfast as
possible, so as to reach London in the afternoon."
I was much astounded by this programme, though I remembered that Holmes
had said to Stapleton on the night before that his visit would terminate
next day. It had not crossed my mind however, that he would wish me to
go with him, nor could I understand how we could both be absent at a
moment which he himself declared to be critical. There was nothing for
it, however, but implicit obedience; so we bade good-bye to our rueful
friend, and a couple of hours afterwards we were at the station of
Coombe Tracey and had dispatched the trap upon its return journey. A
small boy was waiting upon the platform.
"Any orders, sir?"
"You will take this train to town, Cartwright. The moment you arrive you
will send a wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, in my name, to say that if he
finds the pocketbook which I have dropped he is to send it by registered
post to Baker Street."
"Yes, sir."
"And ask at the station office if there is a message for me."
The boy returned with a telegram, which Holmes handed to me. It ran:
Wire received. Coming down with unsigned warrant. Arrive five-forty.
Lestrade.
"That is in answer to mine of this morning. He is the best of the
professionals, I think, and we may need his assistance. Now, Watson, I
think that we cannot employ our time better than by calling upon your
acquaintance, Mrs. Laura Lyons."
His plan of campaign was beginning to be evident. He would use the
baronet in order to convince the Stapletons that we were really gone,
while we should actually return at the instant when we were likely to
be needed. That telegram from London, if mentioned by Sir Henry to the
Stapletons, must remove the last suspicions from their minds. Already I
seemed to see our nets drawing closer around that leanjawed pike.
Mrs. Laura Lyons was in her office, and Sherlock Holmes opened his
interview with a frankness and directness which considerably amazed her.
"I am investigating the circumstances which attended the death of the
late Sir Charles Baskerville," said he. "My friend here, Dr. Watson,
has informed me of what you have communicated, and also of what you have
withheld in connection with that matter."
"What have I withheld?" she asked defiantly.
"You have confessed that you asked Sir Charles to be at the gate at ten
o'clock. We know that that was the place and hour of his death. You have
withheld what the connection is between these events."
"There is no connection."
"In that case the coincidence must indeed be an extraordinary one. But
I think that we shall succeed in establishing a connection, after all. I
wish to be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Lyons. We regard this case as
one of murder, and the evidence may implicate not only your friend Mr.
Stapleton but his wife as well."
The lady sprang from her chair.
"His wife!" she cried.
"The fact is no longer a secret. The person who has passed for his
sister is really his wife."
Mrs. Lyons had resumed her seat. Her hands were grasping the arms of her
chair, and I saw that the pink nails had turned white with the pressure
of her grip.
"His wife!" she said again. "His wife! He is not a married man."
Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
"Prove it to me! Prove it to me! And if you can do so--!"
The fierce flash of her eyes said more than any words.
"I have come prepared to do so," said Holmes, drawing several papers
from his pocket. "Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four
years ago. It is indorsed 'Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur,' but you will have no
difficulty in recognizing him, and her also, if you know her by sight.
Here are three written descriptions by trustworthy witnesses of Mr. and
Mrs. Vandeleur, who at that time kept St. Oliver's private school. Read
them and see if you can doubt the identity of these people."
She glanced at them, and then looked up at us with the set, rigid face
of a desperate woman.
"Mr. Holmes," she said, "this man had offered me marriage on condition
that I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the
villain, in every conceivable way. Not one word of truth has he ever
told me. And why--why? I imagined that all was for my own sake. But now
I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands. Why should I
preserve faith with him who never kept any with me? Why should I try to
shield him from the consequences of his own wicked acts? Ask me what you
like, and there is nothing which I shall hold back. One thing I swear
to you, and that is that when I wrote the letter I never dreamed of any
harm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend."
"I entirely believe you, madam," said Sherlock Holmes. "The recital of
these events must be very painful to you, and perhaps it will make it
easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can check me if I make any
material mistake. The sending of this letter was suggested to you by
Stapleton?"
"He dictated it."
"I presume that the reason he gave was that you would receive help from
Sir Charles for the legal expenses connected with your divorce?"
"Exactly."
"And then after you had sent the letter he dissuaded you from keeping
the appointment?"
"He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any other man
should find the money for such an object, and that though he was a poor
man himself he would devote his last penny to removing the obstacles
which divided us."
"He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heard
nothing until you read the reports of the death in the paper?"
"No."
"And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointment with Sir
Charles?"
"He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, and that I
should certainly be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me
into remaining silent."
"Quite so. But you had your suspicions?"
She hesitated and looked down.
"I knew him," she said. "But if he had kept faith with me I should
always have done so with him."
"I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape," said
Sherlock Holmes. "You have had him in your power and he knew it, and yet
you are alive. You have been walking for some months very near to the
edge of a precipice. We must wish you good-morning now, Mrs. Lyons, and
it is probable that you will very shortly hear from us again."
"Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficulty thins
away in front of us," said Holmes as we stood waiting for the arrival of
the express from town. "I shall soon be in the position of being able
to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular
and sensational crimes of modern times. Students of criminology will
remember the analogous incidents in Godno, in Little Russia, in the year
'66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina, but
this case possesses some features which are entirely its own. Even now
we have no clear case against this very wily man. But I shall be very
much surprised if it is not clear enough before we go to bed this
night."
The London express came roaring into the station, and a small, wiry
bulldog of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. We all three
shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential way in which
Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned a good deal since
the days when they had first worked together. I could well remember
the scorn which the theories of the reasoner used then to excite in the
practical man.
"Anything good?" he asked.
"The biggest thing for years," said Holmes. "We have two hours before
we need think of starting. I think we might employ it in getting some
dinner and then, Lestrade, we will take the London fog out of your
throat by giving you a breath of the pure night air of Dartmoor. Never
been there? Ah, well, I don't suppose you will forget your first visit."
| 5,529 | Chapter 13 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-13 | Holmes is impressed at how Stapleton's so cool under pressure. Yeah, he's cool--it's not like Holmes can prove any of his ideas in a court of law yet. Holmes believes that Laura Lyons will be the key to this stage of the case. Watson brings Holmes to Baskerville Hall, and Sir Henry welcomes him. Watson breaks the news to the Barrymores that Selden's dead. Holmes tells Sir Henry that he'll soon have the answer to his mystery, as long as Sir Henry does exactly what Holmes says without asking why. More control-freak stuff. Holmes suddenly jumps up to look at one of the portraits on Sir Henry's wall. When Holmes points to the portrait of a man in black velvet and lace, Sir Henry identifies him as than Hugo Baskerville--the original victim of the Hound. After dinner, Holmes leads Watson back over to the portrait. When Holmes covers Hugo's ridiculous hair, Watson can finally spot what Holmes noticed so long before: that the face of Hugo Baskerville hugely resembles Stapleton's. In other words, Stapleton must be a member of the Baskerville family. Sir Henry comes in, and Holmes tells him that he and Watson are planning to go back to London. Sir Henry's disappointed , but Holmes reassures him that they'll be back soon. They were all supposed to go over to dinner at Stapleton's house together, but now Sir Henry will just have to go alone. Holmes tells Sir Henry to drive over to Merripit House, but then to have the groom bring the carriage home. Sir Henry should then tell his host, Stapleton, that he plans to walk home that night. At the train station in Coombe Tracey, Holmes and Watson meet the boy, Cartwright, who was bringing Holmes' food to the moors over those many days. Holmes orders Cartwright to take the train into London. From London, Cartwright should send a telegram to Sir Henry asking about a pocketbook Holmes might have forgotten at Baskerville Hall. Cartwright agrees, and he also gives Holmes a telegram. It's from "Lestrade," who's coming down to Devonshire on the 5:40 train with a warrant. Holmes explains that Lestrade's a policeman, and they may need his help tonight. Holmes and Watson head over to Laura Lyons' house. Holmes tells Laura Lyons that he is involved in a case which implicates Stapleton and "his wife" in murder. Holmes shows her pictures of the people now calling themselves Jack and Beryl Stapleton. The pictures were taken several years ago in York, where they were called Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur . Laura Lyons is shocked that Stapleton has lied to her about his wife. First time in history that's ever happened. She admits that Stapleton told her what to write in the letter to Sir Charles. She also says that, after she sent the letter, Stapleton appeared to change his mind about her borrowing money from Sir Charles. After she agreed not to meet with Sir Charles, she didn't hear anything more about him until she read about his death in the newspaper. Stapleton then frightened Laura into promising not to say anything about the scheduled appointment with Sir Charles, since his death was so mysterious. Holmes and Watson go to the train station to meet Lestrade. Holmes promises that this case is the "biggest thing for years" . | null | 782 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/14.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_13_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 14 | chapter 14 | null | {"name": "Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-14", "summary": "As Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade drive over to Merripit House, the suspense is killing Watson. Holmes and Lestrade hide about two hundred yards away from the house. Holmes sends Watson to spy through the dining-room window. Sir Henry and Stapleton are sitting together and smoking. Beryl's nowhere to be seen. The Grimpen Mire is covered with fog, which is a bummer for Holmes--fog is the one thing that could really endanger Sir Henry's life. They hear the sounds of Sir Henry leaving the house. And then, Holmes hushes Watson--there's another sound of pattering feet coming. It's a black hound covered in flickering flame, with fire coming out of its mouth. Oh no, it's running toward Sir Henry. Holmes and Watson shoot the dog, which howls but keeps running. Sir Henry is looking behind him at the dog--and he looks terrified. Duh. The dog leaps at Sir Henry and starts biting him. Bad dog! But Holmes catches up and empties his gun into the dog. The dog falls dead. Sir Henry faints, but he's still alive. When Sir Henry comes to, he, Holmes, and Watson inspect the body of the dog. It's an enormous beast with huge jaws, and it's been covered in some kind of weird glow-in-the-dark stuff. Watson touches the stuff on the dog's fur and realizes that it's phosphorus . Holmes apologizes for putting Sir Henry in so much danger--he didn't expect either the fog or the dog. Sir Henry's so freaked out that Holmes and Watson leave him sitting on a rock while they go off after Stapleton. Back at Merripit House, there's a locked bedroom door. Holmes breaks down the door. They find a woman bound and gagged: Beryl Stapleton. She's furious and heartbroken that Stapleton has been abusing her and using her as his tool in his schemes against Sir Henry. Beryl says that Stapleton has a hiding place in the middle of the Grimpen Mire. The fog is so dense that he won't be able to leave his hiding place that night. The next morning, Beryl leads Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade through the dangerous bog. As the three men walk deep into the Grimpen Mire, Holmes spots something: Sir Henry's black boot. Stapleton must have been using the boot to teach the hound to track Sir Henry's smell. But they don't find any other sign of Stapleton. Watson believes that Stapleton probably got lost in the fog that night and fell into the Mire, never to emerge. On the island in the Mire, they find traces of the dog: this must be where Stapleton kept it. Sadly, they also find the skeleton of Dr. Mortimer's little spaniel. There's a pot full of the glowing stuff that Stapleton had been using to create the fire-breathing \"Hound of the Baskervilles,\" which frightened Selden into running over a cliff and scared Sir Charles to death.", "analysis": ""} |
One of Sherlock Holmes's defects--if, indeed, one may call it a
defect--was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans
to any other person until the instant of their fulfilment. Partly it
came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and
surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional
caution, which urged him never to take any chances. The result, however,
was very trying for those who were acting as his agents and assistants.
I had often suffered under it, but never more so than during that long
drive in the darkness. The great ordeal was in front of us; at last we
were about to make our final effort, and yet Holmes had said nothing,
and I could only surmise what his course of action would be. My nerves
thrilled with anticipation when at last the cold wind upon our faces and
the dark, void spaces on either side of the narrow road told me that we
were back upon the moor once again. Every stride of the horses and every
turn of the wheels was taking us nearer to our supreme adventure.
Our conversation was hampered by the presence of the driver of the hired
wagonette, so that we were forced to talk of trivial matters when our
nerves were tense with emotion and anticipation. It was a relief to me,
after that unnatural restraint, when we at last passed Frankland's
house and knew that we were drawing near to the Hall and to the scene
of action. We did not drive up to the door but got down near the gate of
the avenue. The wagonette was paid off and ordered to return to Coombe
Tracey forthwith, while we started to walk to Merripit House.
"Are you armed, Lestrade?"
The little detective smiled. "As long as I have my trousers I have a
hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it."
"Good! My friend and I are also ready for emergencies."
"You're mighty close about this affair, Mr. Holmes. What's the game
now?"
"A waiting game."
"My word, it does not seem a very cheerful place," said the detective
with a shiver, glancing round him at the gloomy slopes of the hill and
at the huge lake of fog which lay over the Grimpen Mire. "I see the
lights of a house ahead of us."
"That is Merripit House and the end of our journey. I must request you
to walk on tiptoe and not to talk above a whisper."
We moved cautiously along the track as if we were bound for the house,
but Holmes halted us when we were about two hundred yards from it.
"This will do," said he. "These rocks upon the right make an admirable
screen."
"We are to wait here?"
"Yes, we shall make our little ambush here. Get into this hollow,
Lestrade. You have been inside the house, have you not, Watson? Can you
tell the position of the rooms? What are those latticed windows at this
end?"
"I think they are the kitchen windows."
"And the one beyond, which shines so brightly?"
"That is certainly the dining-room."
"The blinds are up. You know the lie of the land best. Creep forward
quietly and see what they are doing--but for heaven's sake don't let
them know that they are watched!"
I tiptoed down the path and stooped behind the low wall which surrounded
the stunted orchard. Creeping in its shadow I reached a point whence I
could look straight through the uncurtained window.
There were only two men in the room, Sir Henry and Stapleton. They sat
with their profiles towards me on either side of the round table. Both
of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them.
Stapleton was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and
distrait. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk across the ill-omened
moor was weighing heavily upon his mind.
As I watched them Stapleton rose and left the room, while Sir Henry
filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair, puffing at his
cigar. I heard the creak of a door and the crisp sound of boots upon
gravel. The steps passed along the path on the other side of the wall
under which I crouched. Looking over, I saw the naturalist pause at the
door of an out-house in the corner of the orchard. A key turned in
a lock, and as he passed in there was a curious scuffling noise from
within. He was only a minute or so inside, and then I heard the key turn
once more and he passed me and reentered the house. I saw him rejoin his
guest, and I crept quietly back to where my companions were waiting to
tell them what I had seen.
"You say, Watson, that the lady is not there?" Holmes asked when I had
finished my report.
"No."
"Where can she be, then, since there is no light in any other room
except the kitchen?"
"I cannot think where she is."
I have said that over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a dense, white
fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction and banked itself up like a
wall on that side of us, low but thick and well defined. The moon shone
on it, and it looked like a great shimmering ice-field, with the heads
of the distant tors as rocks borne upon its surface. Holmes's face
was turned towards it, and he muttered impatiently as he watched its
sluggish drift.
"It's moving towards us, Watson."
"Is that serious?"
"Very serious, indeed--the one thing upon earth which could have
disarranged my plans. He can't be very long, now. It is already ten
o'clock. Our success and even his life may depend upon his coming out
before the fog is over the path."
The night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold and bright,
while a half-moon bathed the whole scene in a soft, uncertain light.
Before us lay the dark bulk of the house, its serrated roof and
bristling chimneys hard outlined against the silver-spangled sky. Broad
bars of golden light from the lower windows stretched across the orchard
and the moor. One of them was suddenly shut off. The servants had left
the kitchen. There only remained the lamp in the dining-room where the
two men, the murderous host and the unconscious guest, still chatted
over their cigars.
Every minute that white woolly plain which covered one-half of the moor
was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin
wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window.
The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees
were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the
fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled
slowly into one dense bank on which the upper floor and the roof
floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Holmes struck his hand
passionately upon the rock in front of us and stamped his feet in his
impatience.
"If he isn't out in a quarter of an hour the path will be covered. In
half an hour we won't be able to see our hands in front of us."
"Shall we move farther back upon higher ground?"
"Yes, I think it would be as well."
So as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until we were
half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the
moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on.
"We are going too far," said Holmes. "We dare not take the chance of his
being overtaken before he can reach us. At all costs we must hold our
ground where we are." He dropped on his knees and clapped his ear to the
ground. "Thank God, I think that I hear him coming."
A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among
the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us.
The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there
stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise
as he emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along
the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope
behind us. As he walked he glanced continually over either shoulder,
like a man who is ill at ease.
"Hist!" cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol.
"Look out! It's coming!"
There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart
of that crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay,
and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break
from the heart of it. I was at Holmes's elbow, and I glanced for an
instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly
in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed
stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade
gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground.
I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed
by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of
the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a
hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its
eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap
were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of
a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more
hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke
upon us out of the wall of fog.
With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track,
following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So paralyzed were we by
the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our
nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave a
hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not
pause, however, but bounded onward. Far away on the path we saw Sir
Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in
horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him
down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the
winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we
could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. I
am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me as much as I outpaced the
little professional. In front of us as we flew up the track we heard
scream after scream from Sir Henry and the deep roar of the hound. I was
in time to see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground,
and worry at his throat. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five
barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last howl of
agony and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its back, four feet
pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped, panting,
and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head, but it was
useless to press the trigger. The giant hound was dead.
Sir Henry lay insensible where he had fallen. We tore away his collar,
and Holmes breathed a prayer of gratitude when we saw that there was
no sign of a wound and that the rescue had been in time. Already our
friend's eyelids shivered and he made a feeble effort to move. Lestrade
thrust his brandy-flask between the baronet's teeth, and two frightened
eyes were looking up at us.
"My God!" he whispered. "What was it? What, in heaven's name, was it?"
"It's dead, whatever it is," said Holmes. "We've laid the family ghost
once and forever."
In mere size and strength it was a terrible creature which was lying
stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it was not a pure
mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of the two--gaunt, savage,
and as large as a small lioness. Even now in the stillness of death,
the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small,
deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the
glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and
gleamed in the darkness.
"Phosphorus," I said.
"A cunning preparation of it," said Holmes, sniffing at the dead animal.
"There is no smell which might have interfered with his power of scent.
We owe you a deep apology, Sir Henry, for having exposed you to this
fright. I was prepared for a hound, but not for such a creature as this.
And the fog gave us little time to receive him."
"You have saved my life."
"Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?"
"Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready for
anything. So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you propose to do?"
"To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures tonight. If
you will wait, one or other of us will go back with you to the Hall."
He tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale and
trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he sat shivering
with his face buried in his hands.
"We must leave you now," said Holmes. "The rest of our work must be
done, and every moment is of importance. We have our case, and now we
only want our man.
"It's a thousand to one against our finding him at the house," he
continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path. "Those shots
must have told him that the game was up."
"We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened them."
"He followed the hound to call him off--of that you may be certain. No,
no, he's gone by this time! But we'll search the house and make sure."
The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to
room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant, who met us in the
passage. There was no light save in the dining-room, but Holmes caught
up the lamp and left no corner of the house unexplored. No sign could we
see of the man whom we were chasing. On the upper floor, however, one of
the bedroom doors was locked.
"There's someone in here," cried Lestrade. "I can hear a movement. Open
this door!"
A faint moaning and rustling came from within. Holmes struck the door
just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew open. Pistol in
hand, we all three rushed into the room.
But there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant villain
whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an object so strange
and so unexpected that we stood for a moment staring at it in amazement.
The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were
lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of
butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of
this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an
upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the
old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a
figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been
used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it
was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was
secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of
the face, and over it two dark eyes--eyes full of grief and shame and a
dreadful questioning--stared back at us. In a minute we had torn off
the gag, unswathed the bonds, and Mrs. Stapleton sank upon the floor in
front of us. As her beautiful head fell upon her chest I saw the clear
red weal of a whiplash across her neck.
"The brute!" cried Holmes. "Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle! Put her
in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and exhaustion."
She opened her eyes again.
"Is he safe?" she asked. "Has he escaped?"
"He cannot escape us, madam."
"No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?"
"Yes."
"And the hound?"
"It is dead."
She gave a long sigh of satisfaction.
"Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me!"
She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they
were all mottled with bruises. "But this is nothing--nothing! It is my
mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all,
ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could
still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in
this also I have been his dupe and his tool." She broke into passionate
sobbing as she spoke.
"You bear him no good will, madam," said Holmes. "Tell us then where we
shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help us now and so
atone."
"There is but one place where he can have fled," she answered. "There is
an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that
he kept his hound and there also he had made preparations so that he
might have a refuge. That is where he would fly."
The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held the
lamp towards it.
"See," said he. "No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire
tonight."
She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with
fierce merriment.
"He may find his way in, but never out," she cried. "How can he see the
guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the
pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out
today. Then indeed you would have had him at your mercy!"
It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had
lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house while
Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall. The story
of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld from him, but he took
the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had
loved. But the shock of the night's adventures had shattered his nerves,
and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of
Dr. Mortimer. The two of them were destined to travel together round the
world before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he
had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate.
And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in
which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague
surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a
manner. On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted
and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton to the point where they had found
a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this
woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us
on her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of
firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the
end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path
zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits
and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and
lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic
vapour onto our faces, while a false step plunged us more than once
thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft
undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as
we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was
tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was
the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone
had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of cotton grass
which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing was projecting. Holmes
sank to his waist as he stepped from the path to seize it, and had we
not been there to drag him out he could never have set his foot
upon firm land again. He held an old black boot in the air. "Meyers,
Toronto," was printed on the leather inside.
"It is worth a mud bath," said he. "It is our friend Sir Henry's missing
boot."
"Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight."
"Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set the hound
upon the track. He fled when he knew the game was up, still clutching
it. And he hurled it away at this point of his flight. We know at least
that he came so far in safety."
But more than that we were never destined to know, though there was much
which we might surmise. There was no chance of finding footsteps in the
mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly in upon them, but as we at last
reached firmer ground beyond the morass we all looked eagerly for them.
But no slightest sign of them ever met our eyes. If the earth told a
true story, then Stapleton never reached that island of refuge towards
which he struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in
the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the
huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is
forever buried.
Many traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he had hid his
savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish
showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling
remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul
reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with
a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined.
A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the
debris.
"A dog!" said Holmes. "By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor Mortimer
will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that this place
contains any secret which we have not already fathomed. He could hide
his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those cries
which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear. On an emergency he
could keep the hound in the out-house at Merripit, but it was always a
risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end
of all his efforts, that he dared do it. This paste in the tin is no
doubt the luminous mixture with which the creature was daubed. It was
suggested, of course, by the story of the family hell-hound, and by the
desire to frighten old Sir Charles to death. No wonder the poor devil of
a convict ran and screamed, even as our friend did, and as we ourselves
might have done, when he saw such a creature bounding through the
darkness of the moor upon his track. It was a cunning device, for, apart
from the chance of driving your victim to his death, what peasant would
venture to inquire too closely into such a creature should he get sight
of it, as many have done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Watson,
and I say it again now, that never yet have we helped to hunt down a
more dangerous man than he who is lying yonder"--he swept his long arm
towards the huge mottled expanse of green-splotched bog which stretched
away until it merged into the russet slopes of the moor.
| 5,844 | Chapter 14 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-14 | As Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade drive over to Merripit House, the suspense is killing Watson. Holmes and Lestrade hide about two hundred yards away from the house. Holmes sends Watson to spy through the dining-room window. Sir Henry and Stapleton are sitting together and smoking. Beryl's nowhere to be seen. The Grimpen Mire is covered with fog, which is a bummer for Holmes--fog is the one thing that could really endanger Sir Henry's life. They hear the sounds of Sir Henry leaving the house. And then, Holmes hushes Watson--there's another sound of pattering feet coming. It's a black hound covered in flickering flame, with fire coming out of its mouth. Oh no, it's running toward Sir Henry. Holmes and Watson shoot the dog, which howls but keeps running. Sir Henry is looking behind him at the dog--and he looks terrified. Duh. The dog leaps at Sir Henry and starts biting him. Bad dog! But Holmes catches up and empties his gun into the dog. The dog falls dead. Sir Henry faints, but he's still alive. When Sir Henry comes to, he, Holmes, and Watson inspect the body of the dog. It's an enormous beast with huge jaws, and it's been covered in some kind of weird glow-in-the-dark stuff. Watson touches the stuff on the dog's fur and realizes that it's phosphorus . Holmes apologizes for putting Sir Henry in so much danger--he didn't expect either the fog or the dog. Sir Henry's so freaked out that Holmes and Watson leave him sitting on a rock while they go off after Stapleton. Back at Merripit House, there's a locked bedroom door. Holmes breaks down the door. They find a woman bound and gagged: Beryl Stapleton. She's furious and heartbroken that Stapleton has been abusing her and using her as his tool in his schemes against Sir Henry. Beryl says that Stapleton has a hiding place in the middle of the Grimpen Mire. The fog is so dense that he won't be able to leave his hiding place that night. The next morning, Beryl leads Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade through the dangerous bog. As the three men walk deep into the Grimpen Mire, Holmes spots something: Sir Henry's black boot. Stapleton must have been using the boot to teach the hound to track Sir Henry's smell. But they don't find any other sign of Stapleton. Watson believes that Stapleton probably got lost in the fog that night and fell into the Mire, never to emerge. On the island in the Mire, they find traces of the dog: this must be where Stapleton kept it. Sadly, they also find the skeleton of Dr. Mortimer's little spaniel. There's a pot full of the glowing stuff that Stapleton had been using to create the fire-breathing "Hound of the Baskervilles," which frightened Selden into running over a cliff and scared Sir Charles to death. | null | 716 | 1 |
2,852 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/15.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_14_part_0.txt | The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 15 | chapter 15 | null | {"name": "Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-15", "summary": "About a month later, Holmes and Watson are sitting by the fire in their apartment in London. They've had a visit from Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer, who are about to go on a relaxing trip around the world to help improve Sir Henry's \"shattered nerves\" . No kidding. Since the case of the Baskervilles is on Watson's mind, he presses Holmes to tell him more about the background of the case. Apparently, Mrs. Stapleton has confirmed Holmes' guess that Stapleton was a Baskerville. He was the son of Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles' younger brother, who moved to South America to escape some nasty rumors about him. Stapleton's real name was Rodger Baskerville , and he married a South American woman named Beryl Garcia. He and Beryl came to England under the fake name of Vandelay--wait, we meant Vandeleur--after running away with some embezzled money. They opened a school, which eventually failed. So the Vandeleurs changed their names to Stapleton and moved to the south of England. Stapleton discovered that he was pretty close to being the heir to the Baskerville fortune. And--luckily for him, because he was a creep--the current holder of that fortune was easily frightened and had a heart problem. So Stapleton bought a giant dog, mixed up some phosphorus, plunked the dog down in the middle of the Grimpen Mire, and waited for his chance. Stapleton had planned at first to live with Beryl as his sister rather than his wife just in case he could use her to attract Sir Charles. But she absolutely refused to help Stapleton in this way. Stapleton lucked out when he met Laura Lyons, whom he manipulated into writing to Sir Charles for help in getting a divorce. On the night of Sir Charles' death, Stapleton brought the dog to the driveway where Sir Charles was waiting for Laura. Stapleton released the dog on Sir Charles, who ran away screaming until he collapsed from his weak heart. That's why there was a paw print near Sir Charles' body. Both Beryl and Laura Lyons suspected Stapleton of planning Sir Charles' death, but neither would turn on him while they were still in love with him. And then, along came Sir Henry. Stapleton traveled to London to see if he could figure out some way of stopping Sir Henry from coming down to Baskerville Hall at all. At this point, Stapleton had stopped trusting Beryl, so he dragged her along on the trip and kept her prisoner in the hotel while he spied on Sir Henry. She still managed to send Sir Henry her secret message cut out of the Times, though. The disappearing boots were also a clue: the first one was too new to smell like Sir Henry, which is why Stapleton returned it. The older black boot was better for training his giant dog to chase the scent. When Stapleton spotted Holmes in the company of Sir Henry, he realized that there was no point in continuing to hunt Sir Henry in London. Stapleton went back to Merripit House with his wife to try his luck in Dartmoor. Even before Holmes went down to the moors, he already suspected Stapleton. The problem was catching him, with enough proof to make a legal case against him. That's why Holmes set up poor Sir Henry as bait to catch Stapleton red-handed. As for Beryl, she started out helping Stapleton because she really loved him . But as time went on, Beryl's loyalties shifted to Sir Henry and she began to hate Stapleton. Finally, on the night of the attack, Beryl tried to stop Stapleton from setting up Sir Henry for death-by-dog, and he tied her up to keep her out of the way. So that's that. Elementary. There's nothing more that Holmes can say with any certainty. So he and Watson go off to the opera for the evening--a happy ending .", "analysis": ""} |
It was the end of November, and Holmes and I sat, upon a raw and foggy
night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting-room in Baker
Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had been
engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of which
he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection
with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second
he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge
of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of her
step-daughter, Mlle. Carere, the young lady who, as it will be
remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York.
My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended
a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to
induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery. I had
waited patiently for the opportunity for I was aware that he would never
permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical mind would not
be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories of the past. Sir
Henry and Dr. Mortimer were, however, in London, on their way to that
long voyage which had been recommended for the restoration of his
shattered nerves. They had called upon us that very afternoon, so that
it was natural that the subject should come up for discussion.
"The whole course of events," said Holmes, "from the point of view of
the man who called himself Stapleton was simple and direct, although
to us, who had no means in the beginning of knowing the motives of
his actions and could only learn part of the facts, it all appeared
exceedingly complex. I have had the advantage of two conversations with
Mrs. Stapleton, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up that I
am not aware that there is anything which has remained a secret to us.
You will find a few notes upon the matter under the heading B in my
indexed list of cases."
"Perhaps you would kindly give me a sketch of the course of events from
memory."
"Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in my
mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out
what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his fingers' ends and
is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week
or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So
each of my cases displaces the last, and Mlle. Carere has blurred my
recollection of Baskerville Hall. Tomorrow some other little problem may
be submitted to my notice which will in turn dispossess the fair French
lady and the infamous Upwood. So far as the case of the hound goes,
however, I will give you the course of events as nearly as I can, and
you will suggest anything which I may have forgotten.
"My inquiries show beyond all question that the family portrait did not
lie, and that this fellow was indeed a Baskerville. He was a son of that
Rodger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles, who fled with
a sinister reputation to South America, where he was said to have died
unmarried. He did, as a matter of fact, marry, and had one child, this
fellow, whose real name is the same as his father's. He married Beryl
Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, and, having purloined a
considerable sum of public money, he changed his name to Vandeleur and
fled to England, where he established a school in the east of Yorkshire.
His reason for attempting this special line of business was that he had
struck up an acquaintance with a consumptive tutor upon the voyage
home, and that he had used this man's ability to make the undertaking a
success. Fraser, the tutor, died however, and the school which had begun
well sank from disrepute into infamy. The Vandeleurs found it convenient
to change their name to Stapleton, and he brought the remains of his
fortune, his schemes for the future, and his taste for entomology to
the south of England. I learned at the British Museum that he was a
recognized authority upon the subject, and that the name of Vandeleur
has been permanently attached to a certain moth which he had, in his
Yorkshire days, been the first to describe.
"We now come to that portion of his life which has proved to be of such
intense interest to us. The fellow had evidently made inquiry and found
that only two lives intervened between him and a valuable estate. When
he went to Devonshire his plans were, I believe, exceedingly hazy, but
that he meant mischief from the first is evident from the way in which
he took his wife with him in the character of his sister. The idea of
using her as a decoy was clearly already in his mind, though he may not
have been certain how the details of his plot were to be arranged. He
meant in the end to have the estate, and he was ready to use any tool
or run any risk for that end. His first act was to establish himself as
near to his ancestral home as he could, and his second was to cultivate
a friendship with Sir Charles Baskerville and with the neighbours.
"The baronet himself told him about the family hound, and so prepared
the way for his own death. Stapleton, as I will continue to call him,
knew that the old man's heart was weak and that a shock would kill him.
So much he had learned from Dr. Mortimer. He had heard also that Sir
Charles was superstitious and had taken this grim legend very seriously.
His ingenious mind instantly suggested a way by which the baronet could
be done to death, and yet it would be hardly possible to bring home the
guilt to the real murderer.
"Having conceived the idea he proceeded to carry it out with
considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content
to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the
creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he
bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It
was the strongest and most savage in their possession. He brought it
down by the North Devon line and walked a great distance over the moor
so as to get it home without exciting any remarks. He had already on his
insect hunts learned to penetrate the Grimpen Mire, and so had found a
safe hiding-place for the creature. Here he kennelled it and waited his
chance.
"But it was some time coming. The old gentleman could not be decoyed
outside of his grounds at night. Several times Stapleton lurked about
with his hound, but without avail. It was during these fruitless quests
that he, or rather his ally, was seen by peasants, and that the legend
of the demon dog received a new confirmation. He had hoped that his wife
might lure Sir Charles to his ruin, but here she proved unexpectedly
independent. She would not endeavour to entangle the old gentleman in
a sentimental attachment which might deliver him over to his enemy.
Threats and even, I am sorry to say, blows refused to move her. She
would have nothing to do with it, and for a time Stapleton was at a
deadlock.
"He found a way out of his difficulties through the chance that Sir
Charles, who had conceived a friendship for him, made him the minister
of his charity in the case of this unfortunate woman, Mrs. Laura Lyons.
By representing himself as a single man he acquired complete influence
over her, and he gave her to understand that in the event of her
obtaining a divorce from her husband he would marry her. His plans were
suddenly brought to a head by his knowledge that Sir Charles was about
to leave the Hall on the advice of Dr. Mortimer, with whose opinion he
himself pretended to coincide. He must act at once, or his victim might
get beyond his power. He therefore put pressure upon Mrs. Lyons to
write this letter, imploring the old man to give her an interview on
the evening before his departure for London. He then, by a specious
argument, prevented her from going, and so had the chance for which he
had waited.
"Driving back in the evening from Coombe Tracey he was in time to get
his hound, to treat it with his infernal paint, and to bring the beast
round to the gate at which he had reason to expect that he would find
the old gentleman waiting. The dog, incited by its master, sprang over
the wicket-gate and pursued the unfortunate baronet, who fled screaming
down the yew alley. In that gloomy tunnel it must indeed have been a
dreadful sight to see that huge black creature, with its flaming jaws
and blazing eyes, bounding after its victim. He fell dead at the end
of the alley from heart disease and terror. The hound had kept upon the
grassy border while the baronet had run down the path, so that no track
but the man's was visible. On seeing him lying still the creature had
probably approached to sniff at him, but finding him dead had turned
away again. It was then that it left the print which was actually
observed by Dr. Mortimer. The hound was called off and hurried away to
its lair in the Grimpen Mire, and a mystery was left which puzzled
the authorities, alarmed the countryside, and finally brought the case
within the scope of our observation.
"So much for the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. You perceive the
devilish cunning of it, for really it would be almost impossible to make
a case against the real murderer. His only accomplice was one who could
never give him away, and the grotesque, inconceivable nature of
the device only served to make it more effective. Both of the women
concerned in the case, Mrs. Stapleton and Mrs. Laura Lyons, were left
with a strong suspicion against Stapleton. Mrs. Stapleton knew that he
had designs upon the old man, and also of the existence of the hound.
Mrs. Lyons knew neither of these things, but had been impressed by the
death occurring at the time of an uncancelled appointment which was only
known to him. However, both of them were under his influence, and he had
nothing to fear from them. The first half of his task was successfully
accomplished but the more difficult still remained.
"It is possible that Stapleton did not know of the existence of an heir
in Canada. In any case he would very soon learn it from his friend Dr.
Mortimer, and he was told by the latter all details about the arrival of
Henry Baskerville. Stapleton's first idea was that this young stranger
from Canada might possibly be done to death in London without coming
down to Devonshire at all. He distrusted his wife ever since she had
refused to help him in laying a trap for the old man, and he dared not
leave her long out of his sight for fear he should lose his influence
over her. It was for this reason that he took her to London with him.
They lodged, I find, at the Mexborough Private Hotel, in Craven Street,
which was actually one of those called upon by my agent in search
of evidence. Here he kept his wife imprisoned in her room while
he, disguised in a beard, followed Dr. Mortimer to Baker Street and
afterwards to the station and to the Northumberland Hotel. His wife had
some inkling of his plans; but she had such a fear of her husband--a
fear founded upon brutal ill-treatment--that she dare not write to warn
the man whom she knew to be in danger. If the letter should fall into
Stapleton's hands her own life would not be safe. Eventually, as we
know, she adopted the expedient of cutting out the words which would
form the message, and addressing the letter in a disguised hand. It
reached the baronet, and gave him the first warning of his danger.
"It was very essential for Stapleton to get some article of Sir Henry's
attire so that, in case he was driven to use the dog, he might always
have the means of setting him upon his track. With characteristic
promptness and audacity he set about this at once, and we cannot doubt
that the boots or chamber-maid of the hotel was well bribed to help him
in his design. By chance, however, the first boot which was procured for
him was a new one and, therefore, useless for his purpose. He then had
it returned and obtained another--a most instructive incident, since it
proved conclusively to my mind that we were dealing with a real hound,
as no other supposition could explain this anxiety to obtain an old
boot and this indifference to a new one. The more outre and grotesque an
incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very
point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and
scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.
"Then we had the visit from our friends next morning, shadowed always
by Stapleton in the cab. From his knowledge of our rooms and of my
appearance, as well as from his general conduct, I am inclined to think
that Stapleton's career of crime has been by no means limited to this
single Baskerville affair. It is suggestive that during the last three
years there have been four considerable burglaries in the west country,
for none of which was any criminal ever arrested. The last of these, at
Folkestone Court, in May, was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistolling
of the page, who surprised the masked and solitary burglar. I cannot
doubt that Stapleton recruited his waning resources in this fashion, and
that for years he has been a desperate and dangerous man.
"We had an example of his readiness of resource that morning when he got
away from us so successfully, and also of his audacity in sending back
my own name to me through the cabman. From that moment he understood
that I had taken over the case in London, and that therefore there was
no chance for him there. He returned to Dartmoor and awaited the arrival
of the baronet."
"One moment!" said I. "You have, no doubt, described the sequence
of events correctly, but there is one point which you have left
unexplained. What became of the hound when its master was in London?"
"I have given some attention to this matter and it is undoubtedly of
importance. There can be no question that Stapleton had a confidant,
though it is unlikely that he ever placed himself in his power by
sharing all his plans with him. There was an old manservant at Merripit
House, whose name was Anthony. His connection with the Stapletons can
be traced for several years, as far back as the school-mastering days,
so that he must have been aware that his master and mistress were really
husband and wife. This man has disappeared and has escaped from the
country. It is suggestive that Anthony is not a common name in England,
while Antonio is so in all Spanish or Spanish-American countries. The
man, like Mrs. Stapleton herself, spoke good English, but with a curious
lisping accent. I have myself seen this old man cross the Grimpen
Mire by the path which Stapleton had marked out. It is very probable,
therefore, that in the absence of his master it was he who cared for the
hound, though he may never have known the purpose for which the beast
was used.
"The Stapletons then went down to Devonshire, whither they were soon
followed by Sir Henry and you. One word now as to how I stood myself at
that time. It may possibly recur to your memory that when I examined
the paper upon which the printed words were fastened I made a close
inspection for the water-mark. In doing so I held it within a few inches
of my eyes, and was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as
white jessamine. There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very
necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each
other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended
upon their prompt recognition. The scent suggested the presence of a
lady, and already my thoughts began to turn towards the Stapletons. Thus
I had made certain of the hound, and had guessed at the criminal before
ever we went to the west country.
"It was my game to watch Stapleton. It was evident, however, that I
could not do this if I were with you, since he would be keenly on his
guard. I deceived everybody, therefore, yourself included, and I came
down secretly when I was supposed to be in London. My hardships were
not so great as you imagined, though such trifling details must never
interfere with the investigation of a case. I stayed for the most
part at Coombe Tracey, and only used the hut upon the moor when it was
necessary to be near the scene of action. Cartwright had come down with
me, and in his disguise as a country boy he was of great assistance
to me. I was dependent upon him for food and clean linen. When I was
watching Stapleton, Cartwright was frequently watching you, so that I
was able to keep my hand upon all the strings.
"I have already told you that your reports reached me rapidly, being
forwarded instantly from Baker Street to Coombe Tracey. They were of
great service to me, and especially that one incidentally truthful piece
of biography of Stapleton's. I was able to establish the identity of
the man and the woman and knew at last exactly how I stood. The case
had been considerably complicated through the incident of the escaped
convict and the relations between him and the Barrymores. This also you
cleared up in a very effective way, though I had already come to the
same conclusions from my own observations.
"By the time that you discovered me upon the moor I had a complete
knowledge of the whole business, but I had not a case which could go to
a jury. Even Stapleton's attempt upon Sir Henry that night which ended
in the death of the unfortunate convict did not help us much in proving
murder against our man. There seemed to be no alternative but to
catch him red-handed, and to do so we had to use Sir Henry, alone and
apparently unprotected, as a bait. We did so, and at the cost of a
severe shock to our client we succeeded in completing our case and
driving Stapleton to his destruction. That Sir Henry should have been
exposed to this is, I must confess, a reproach to my management of the
case, but we had no means of foreseeing the terrible and paralyzing
spectacle which the beast presented, nor could we predict the fog which
enabled him to burst upon us at such short notice. We succeeded in our
object at a cost which both the specialist and Dr. Mortimer assure me
will be a temporary one. A long journey may enable our friend to recover
not only from his shattered nerves but also from his wounded feelings.
His love for the lady was deep and sincere, and to him the saddest part
of all this black business was that he should have been deceived by her.
"It only remains to indicate the part which she had played throughout.
There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her
which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both,
since they are by no means incompatible emotions. It was, at least,
absolutely effective. At his command she consented to pass as his
sister, though he found the limits of his power over her when he
endeavoured to make her the direct accessory to murder. She was ready to
warn Sir Henry so far as she could without implicating her husband, and
again and again she tried to do so. Stapleton himself seems to have been
capable of jealousy, and when he saw the baronet paying court to the
lady, even though it was part of his own plan, still he could not help
interrupting with a passionate outburst which revealed the fiery soul
which his self-contained manner so cleverly concealed. By encouraging
the intimacy he made it certain that Sir Henry would frequently come
to Merripit House and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity
which he desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned
suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of the
convict, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the outhouse on
the evening that Sir Henry was coming to dinner. She taxed her husband
with his intended crime, and a furious scene followed in which he showed
her for the first time that she had a rival in his love. Her fidelity
turned in an instant to bitter hatred, and he saw that she would betray
him. He tied her up, therefore, that she might have no chance of warning
Sir Henry, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole countryside put
down the baronet's death to the curse of his family, as they certainly
would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and
to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case
he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom
would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does
not condone such an injury so lightly. And now, my dear Watson, without
referring to my notes, I cannot give you a more detailed account of
this curious case. I do not know that anything essential has been left
unexplained."
"He could not hope to frighten Sir Henry to death as he had done the old
uncle with his bogie hound."
"The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not
frighten its victim to death, at least it would paralyze the resistance
which might be offered."
"No doubt. There only remains one difficulty. If Stapleton came into the
succession, how could he explain the fact that he, the heir, had been
living unannounced under another name so close to the property? How
could he claim it without causing suspicion and inquiry?"
"It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when
you expect me to solve it. The past and the present are within the field
of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question
to answer. Mrs. Stapleton has heard her husband discuss the problem on
several occasions. There were three possible courses. He might claim the
property from South America, establish his identity before the British
authorities there and so obtain the fortune without ever coming to
England at all, or he might adopt an elaborate disguise during the
short time that he need be in London; or, again, he might furnish an
accomplice with the proofs and papers, putting him in as heir, and
retaining a claim upon some proportion of his income. We cannot doubt
from what we know of him that he would have found some way out of the
difficulty. And now, my dear Watson, we have had some weeks of severe
work, and for one evening, I think, we may turn our thoughts into more
pleasant channels. I have a box for 'Les Huguenots.' Have you heard the
De Reszkes? Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we
can stop at Marcini's for a little dinner on the way?"
| 5,344 | Chapter 15 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-15 | About a month later, Holmes and Watson are sitting by the fire in their apartment in London. They've had a visit from Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer, who are about to go on a relaxing trip around the world to help improve Sir Henry's "shattered nerves" . No kidding. Since the case of the Baskervilles is on Watson's mind, he presses Holmes to tell him more about the background of the case. Apparently, Mrs. Stapleton has confirmed Holmes' guess that Stapleton was a Baskerville. He was the son of Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles' younger brother, who moved to South America to escape some nasty rumors about him. Stapleton's real name was Rodger Baskerville , and he married a South American woman named Beryl Garcia. He and Beryl came to England under the fake name of Vandelay--wait, we meant Vandeleur--after running away with some embezzled money. They opened a school, which eventually failed. So the Vandeleurs changed their names to Stapleton and moved to the south of England. Stapleton discovered that he was pretty close to being the heir to the Baskerville fortune. And--luckily for him, because he was a creep--the current holder of that fortune was easily frightened and had a heart problem. So Stapleton bought a giant dog, mixed up some phosphorus, plunked the dog down in the middle of the Grimpen Mire, and waited for his chance. Stapleton had planned at first to live with Beryl as his sister rather than his wife just in case he could use her to attract Sir Charles. But she absolutely refused to help Stapleton in this way. Stapleton lucked out when he met Laura Lyons, whom he manipulated into writing to Sir Charles for help in getting a divorce. On the night of Sir Charles' death, Stapleton brought the dog to the driveway where Sir Charles was waiting for Laura. Stapleton released the dog on Sir Charles, who ran away screaming until he collapsed from his weak heart. That's why there was a paw print near Sir Charles' body. Both Beryl and Laura Lyons suspected Stapleton of planning Sir Charles' death, but neither would turn on him while they were still in love with him. And then, along came Sir Henry. Stapleton traveled to London to see if he could figure out some way of stopping Sir Henry from coming down to Baskerville Hall at all. At this point, Stapleton had stopped trusting Beryl, so he dragged her along on the trip and kept her prisoner in the hotel while he spied on Sir Henry. She still managed to send Sir Henry her secret message cut out of the Times, though. The disappearing boots were also a clue: the first one was too new to smell like Sir Henry, which is why Stapleton returned it. The older black boot was better for training his giant dog to chase the scent. When Stapleton spotted Holmes in the company of Sir Henry, he realized that there was no point in continuing to hunt Sir Henry in London. Stapleton went back to Merripit House with his wife to try his luck in Dartmoor. Even before Holmes went down to the moors, he already suspected Stapleton. The problem was catching him, with enough proof to make a legal case against him. That's why Holmes set up poor Sir Henry as bait to catch Stapleton red-handed. As for Beryl, she started out helping Stapleton because she really loved him . But as time went on, Beryl's loyalties shifted to Sir Henry and she began to hate Stapleton. Finally, on the night of the attack, Beryl tried to stop Stapleton from setting up Sir Henry for death-by-dog, and he tied her up to keep her out of the way. So that's that. Elementary. There's nothing more that Holmes can say with any certainty. So he and Watson go off to the opera for the evening--a happy ending . | null | 918 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/01.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_0_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 1 | part 1, chapter 1 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-1", "summary": "A nameless first-person narrator recounts the day young Charles Bovary appeared at school. Charles is an embarrassed, rusticated, slow, and bewildered rural fellow. Also, he's a total fashion victim. Charles has some difficulty managing his tragically ugly hat; the teacher and the other boys all mock him. The class gets even rowdier, and the teacher assigns some lines to punish them. Things quiet down, though Charles is attacked with surreptitious spitballs. The other boys observe the newcomer carefully. He's not terribly bright, but he's a hard worker. Next, we get some background on the Bovary family: Charles's dad is a boastful but unsuccessful businessman who pretty much fails to support his family. His poor mom, whose money sustained her husband through his attempts at finding a career, is embittered, peevish, and obsessed with her son. Charles received a half-hearted education, but spent most of his childhood left to his own devices, running barefoot around the village and chasing turkeys . Despite his lackluster upbringing, Charles's parents hope that he'll make a name for himself. After a pretty average, unmemorable time at school, they enroll him in medical school, where he begins to appreciate the finer things in life: the stereotypical temptations of wine, women, and song. After failing his exams once, then cramming like crazy and passing a second time, Charles manages to get certified as an officier de sante . This is kind of like a junior doctor; it's a guy who's not a real doctor, but is allowed to practice medicine. Mama Bovary is happy. She sets Charles up in a nearby town, Tostes, then marries him off to a wealthy, needy widow. You've got to feel bad for the guy.", "analysis": ""} |
We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new
fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a
large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if
just surprised at his work.
The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the
class-master, he said to him in a low voice--
"Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be
in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into
one of the upper classes, as becomes his age."
The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he
could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller
than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village
chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was
not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black
buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the
opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in
blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by
braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots.
We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as
attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean
on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was
obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us.
When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on
the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to
toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a
lot of dust: it was "the thing."
But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt
it, the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on his knees even after
prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in
which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin
cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose
dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval,
stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in
succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band;
after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with
complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord,
small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new;
its peak shone.
"Rise," said the master.
He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to
pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked
it up once more.
"Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag.
There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the
poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap
in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on his head. He sat down
again and placed it on his knee.
"Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name."
The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name.
"Again!"
The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of
the class.
"Louder!" cried the master; "louder!"
The "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately
large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling someone
in the word "Charbovari."
A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they
yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died
away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and
now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence rose
here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.
However, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established
in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of
"Charles Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read,
at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form
at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated.
"What are you looking for?" asked the master.
"My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round
him.
"Five hundred lines for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice
stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst. "Silence!" continued the
master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he
had just taken from his cap. "As to you, 'new boy,' you will conjugate
'ridiculus sum'** twenty times."
Then, in a gentler tone, "Come, you'll find your cap again; it hasn't
been stolen."
*A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat.
**I am ridiculous.
Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained
for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some
paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he
wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered.
In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk,
arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him
working conscientiously, looking up every word in the dictionary, and
taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he
showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his
rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure
of his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from
motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible.
His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired
assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription
scandals, and forced at this time to leave the service, had taken
advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand
francs that offered in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen
in love with his good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his
spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache,
his fingers always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours,
he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a commercial
traveller.
Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune,
dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in
at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law
died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in for the
business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he
thought he would make money.
But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses
instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of
selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased
his hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding
out that he would do better to give up all speculation.
For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of
the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half
private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his
luck, jealous of everyone, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five,
sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace.
His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a
thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once,
expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the
fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered,
grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at
first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and
until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary,
stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent,
burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death.
She was constantly going about looking after business matters. She
called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due,
got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the
workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing,
eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself
to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting
into the cinders.
When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home,
the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him
with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the
philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the
young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain
virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing
him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong
constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink
off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But,
peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His
mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him
tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety
and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the
child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of
high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as
an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old
piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this
Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth
while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to
buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man
always gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child
knocked about the village.
He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens
that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the
geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in
the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and
at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he
might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward
by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on
hand, fresh of colour.
When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began
lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and
irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare
moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and
a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil
after the Angelus*. They went up to his room and settled down; the
flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child
fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his
stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions,
when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum
to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles
playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of
an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his
verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance
passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the
"young man" had a very good memory.
*A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound
of a bell. Here, the evening prayer.
Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps.
Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a
struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take
his first communion.
Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to
school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the end of October,
at the time of the St. Romain fair.
It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him.
He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in
school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory,
and ate well in the refectory. He had in loco parentis* a wholesale
ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took him out once a month on Sundays
after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at
the boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock before
supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with
red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or
read an old volume of "Anarchasis" that was knocking about the study.
When he went for walks he talked to the servant, who, like himself, came
from the country.
*In place of a parent.
By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once
even he got a certificate in natural history. But at the end of his
third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study
medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself.
His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she
knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made arrangements for his
board, got him furniture, table and two chairs, sent home for an old
cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with
the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child.
Then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to
be good now that he was going to be left to himself.
The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him; lectures
on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on
pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics,
without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose
etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to
sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.
He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did
not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all
the courses, never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily task
like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not
knowing what work he is doing.
To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a
piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he lunched when he came back
from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall.
After this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the
hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. In the
evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his
room and set to work again in his wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in
front of the hot stove.
On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are
empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock at the doors, he
opened his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter
of Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between the
bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling
on the banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting
from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite,
beyond the roots spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How
pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And he
expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet odours of the country
which did not reach him.
He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look
that made it nearly interesting. Naturally, through indifference, he
abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture; the
next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little,
he gave up work altogether. He got into the habit of going to the
public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every
evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the
small sheep bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his
freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to see
life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put
his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. Then many things
hidden within him came out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to
his boon companions, became enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to
make punch, and, finally, how to make love.
Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely in his
examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the same night
to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning
of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused
him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners,
encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight.
It was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was
old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a man
born of him could be a fool.
So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination,
ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passed pretty
well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a grand dinner.
Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was only one old
doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his
death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was
installed, opposite his place, as his successor.
But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him
taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practice it;
he must have a wife. She found him one--the widow of a bailiff at
Dieppe--who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs.
Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as
the spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her
ends Madame Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in
very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a port-butcher backed up by the
priests.
Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he
would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. But his
wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast
every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients
who did not pay. She opened his letter, watched his comings and goings,
and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his
surgery.
She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She
constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of
footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to
her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles
returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from
beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit
down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he
was neglecting her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be
unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little
more love.
| 4,978 | Part 1, Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-1 | A nameless first-person narrator recounts the day young Charles Bovary appeared at school. Charles is an embarrassed, rusticated, slow, and bewildered rural fellow. Also, he's a total fashion victim. Charles has some difficulty managing his tragically ugly hat; the teacher and the other boys all mock him. The class gets even rowdier, and the teacher assigns some lines to punish them. Things quiet down, though Charles is attacked with surreptitious spitballs. The other boys observe the newcomer carefully. He's not terribly bright, but he's a hard worker. Next, we get some background on the Bovary family: Charles's dad is a boastful but unsuccessful businessman who pretty much fails to support his family. His poor mom, whose money sustained her husband through his attempts at finding a career, is embittered, peevish, and obsessed with her son. Charles received a half-hearted education, but spent most of his childhood left to his own devices, running barefoot around the village and chasing turkeys . Despite his lackluster upbringing, Charles's parents hope that he'll make a name for himself. After a pretty average, unmemorable time at school, they enroll him in medical school, where he begins to appreciate the finer things in life: the stereotypical temptations of wine, women, and song. After failing his exams once, then cramming like crazy and passing a second time, Charles manages to get certified as an officier de sante . This is kind of like a junior doctor; it's a guy who's not a real doctor, but is allowed to practice medicine. Mama Bovary is happy. She sets Charles up in a nearby town, Tostes, then marries him off to a wealthy, needy widow. You've got to feel bad for the guy. | null | 435 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/02.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_1_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 2 | part 1, chapter 2 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-2", "summary": "The young \"doctor\" is awakened in the night by a call from a patient; someone at a farm called Les Bertaux outside the town has a broken leg that needs to be set. It's agreed that Charles will head out to take care of the patient at moonrise. Until then, Charles lies awake, dreading the medical debacle about to unfold. We've already figured out that he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he doesn't feel too confident about his healing powers. We have to admit, we're nervous for him and his patient, too...seriously, would you want this guy operating on your broken leg? Les Bertaux turns out to be a nice piece of real estate. Monsieur Rouault, the farmer/patient, is obviously pretty well off. A widower, he takes care of the family farm with the help of his young daughter. Said daughter lets Charles in and takes him up to the patient. Monsieur Rouault is a good-natured man, and his fracture also proves to be somewhat good-natured; it's a totally clean break, and Charles starts to feel confident again. He cheers up his patient, and competently takes care of the injury. In the meanwhile, the daughter, Emma, attempts to make herself useful by sewing some padding, but she turns out to be a bad seamstress. Her ineptitude doesn't matter, though - Charles is quite taken by her dainty appearance . As the three of them go downstairs to have a bite to eat, the young doctor takes a better look at the young daughter. Charles get to know Emma a little better. She hates country living, and doesn't seem quite content with her life. We're not sure if Charles notices this. What he does notice is that she is really beautiful. She's got gorgeous brown eyes, full lips, carefully arranged black hair, and rosy cheeks. Someone's got a crush... Charles keeps visiting Les Bertaux, supposedly to check in with his patient, but really to see Emma. His irritable/irritating wife finds out that Emma is something of a fine young lady, having received a fancy education at a convent, and is upset by the idea that Charles is in love with the girl. She makes Charles promise not to visit Les Bertaux anymore. Charles's first wife is not long in this world. Some bad financial news emerges , and the distraught woman actually collapses and dies. Charles is now free, although he does feel a little sad, since she loved him.", "analysis": ""} |
One night towards eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of
a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the
garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below.
He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came downstairs
shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left
his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He
pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in
a rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested on his elbow on
the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed, held the light.
Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.
This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur
Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken
leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across
country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night;
Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was
decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles would start three
hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and
show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.
Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in his
cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed,
he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped
of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that
are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly
remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures
he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches
of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers
bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as
eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals
seemed like dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that on the
horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.
Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and,
sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein, his recent
sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double
self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and
crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warm smell of poultices
mingled in his brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron
rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed and saw his wife
sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the
grass at the edge of a ditch.
"Are you the doctor?" asked the child.
And on Charles's answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on
in front of him.
The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide's talk
that Monsieur Rouault must be one of the well-to-do farmers.
He had broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a
Twelfth-night feast at a neighbour's. His wife had been dead for two
years. There was with him only his daughter, who helped him to keep
house.
The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the Bertaux.
The little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared;
then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. The
horse slipped on the wet grass; Charles had to stoop to pass under
the branches. The watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their
chains. As he entered the Bertaux, the horse took fright and stumbled.
It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the
open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new
racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from
which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys, five or six
peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of
it. The sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your
hand. Under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with
their whips, shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool
were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The
courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and
the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond.
A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the
threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the
kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servant's breakfast was
boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were
drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle
of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while
along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the
hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the
window, was mirrored fitfully.
Charles went up the first floor to see the patient. He found him in his
bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton nightcap
right away from him. He was a fat little man of fifty, with white skin
and blue eyes, the forepart of his head bald, and he wore earrings. By
his side on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence he poured
himself a little from time to time to keep up his spirits; but as soon
as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and instead of
swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, began to groan
freely.
The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication.
Charles could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling to mind
the devices of his masters at the bedsides of patients, he comforted the
sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon
that are like the oil they put on bistouries. In order to make some
splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. Charles
selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment
of windowpane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and
Mademoiselle Emma tried to sew some pads. As she was a long time before
she found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not answer,
but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her
mouth to suck them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails.
They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of
Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not
white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too
long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in
her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and
her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness.
The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself
to "pick a bit" before he left.
Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks
and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a
huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing
Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped
from a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were
sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from
the neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of
decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the
wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre,
was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, underneath which was written
in Gothic letters "To dear Papa."
First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold,
of the wolves that infested the fields at night.
Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, especially now
that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the room was
chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of her full lips,
that she had a habit of biting when silent.
Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her hair, whose
two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was
parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the
curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined
behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the
country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of
her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two
buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.
When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the
room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the
window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked
down by the wind. She turned round. "Are you looking for anything?" she
asked.
"My whip, if you please," he answered.
He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It
had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle
Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks.
Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out his
arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the
young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked
at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip.
Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised,
he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without
counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident.
Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favourably; and
when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk
alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man
of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured
better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.
As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure
to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have
attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the
money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits
to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of
his life? On these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on
his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black
gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing
the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads
run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old
Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the
small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the
kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in
front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp
sound against the leather of her boots.
She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. When his
horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said
"Good-bye"; there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round,
playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro
on her hips the apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once,
during a thaw the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on
the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold,
and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of
the colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted
up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the
tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on
the stretched silk.
During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame
Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had
even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a
clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a
daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle
Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called
"a good education"; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to
embroider and play the piano. That was the last straw.
"So it is for this," she said to herself, "that his face beams when he
goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of
spoiling it with the rain. Ah! that woman! That woman!"
And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced herself by
allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations
that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to
which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the Bertaux now
that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet?
Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who know how to
talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted
town misses." And she went on--
"The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was
a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes
for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss,
or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess.
Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year,
would have had much ado to pay up his arrears."
For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made
him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more
after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He
obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the
servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive
hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to
love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all
weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her
shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they
were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the
laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings.
Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few
days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and
then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and
observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much.
Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came?
What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it came about that a
notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widow Dubuc's property, one fine
day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. Heloise,
it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six
thousand francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all
this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting
perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the
household. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found
to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed
with the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed
one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation,
Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his
wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such
a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They came to Tostes.
Explanations followed. There were scenes. Heloise in tears, throwing her
arms about her husband, implored him to defend her from his parents.
Charles tried to speak up for her. They grew angry and left the house.
But "the blow had struck home." A week after, as she was hanging up some
washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and
the next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the
window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and fainted. She was
dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Charles went
home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to
their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then,
leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried
in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!
| 4,240 | Part 1, Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-2 | The young "doctor" is awakened in the night by a call from a patient; someone at a farm called Les Bertaux outside the town has a broken leg that needs to be set. It's agreed that Charles will head out to take care of the patient at moonrise. Until then, Charles lies awake, dreading the medical debacle about to unfold. We've already figured out that he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he doesn't feel too confident about his healing powers. We have to admit, we're nervous for him and his patient, too...seriously, would you want this guy operating on your broken leg? Les Bertaux turns out to be a nice piece of real estate. Monsieur Rouault, the farmer/patient, is obviously pretty well off. A widower, he takes care of the family farm with the help of his young daughter. Said daughter lets Charles in and takes him up to the patient. Monsieur Rouault is a good-natured man, and his fracture also proves to be somewhat good-natured; it's a totally clean break, and Charles starts to feel confident again. He cheers up his patient, and competently takes care of the injury. In the meanwhile, the daughter, Emma, attempts to make herself useful by sewing some padding, but she turns out to be a bad seamstress. Her ineptitude doesn't matter, though - Charles is quite taken by her dainty appearance . As the three of them go downstairs to have a bite to eat, the young doctor takes a better look at the young daughter. Charles get to know Emma a little better. She hates country living, and doesn't seem quite content with her life. We're not sure if Charles notices this. What he does notice is that she is really beautiful. She's got gorgeous brown eyes, full lips, carefully arranged black hair, and rosy cheeks. Someone's got a crush... Charles keeps visiting Les Bertaux, supposedly to check in with his patient, but really to see Emma. His irritable/irritating wife finds out that Emma is something of a fine young lady, having received a fancy education at a convent, and is upset by the idea that Charles is in love with the girl. She makes Charles promise not to visit Les Bertaux anymore. Charles's first wife is not long in this world. Some bad financial news emerges , and the distraught woman actually collapses and dies. Charles is now free, although he does feel a little sad, since she loved him. | null | 585 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/03.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_2_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 3 | part 1, chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-3", "summary": "Charles's half-hearted mourning doesn't last too long. Monsieur Rouault shows up the day after the funeral to deliver his payment for the medical treatment, and also to give his condolences. He encourages Charles to visit Les Bertaux again, which he does, happily. Monsieur Rouault cheers Charles up, and he quickly begins to forget about his dead wife. In the weeks that follow, things start to look up for Charles. He discovers that he likes living without his wife - he can decide when and what he wants to eat, and doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. Furthermore, her death was actually good for business, since all the townspeople feel bad for him. Charles keeps up his visits to Les Bertaux. One day, he encounters Emma alone. She convinces him to have a drink by saying that she'll have one, too. She pours herself a few drops of liqueur, but in order to taste it, she throws back her head and licks the bottom of the shot glass. Emma and Charles have their first real conversation - that is, Emma talks, and Charles listens. They even go to her room to look at mementos of her days as a schoolgirl at the convent. She complains about the hired help, complains about not living in the city, and generally talks a lot about herself. Charles is charmed. On his way home, Charles mulls over the pros and cons of starting something with Emma. He begins to wonder if another marriage might be a good idea... Monsieur Rouault, we discover, is not averse to this idea. He loves Emma, but he's come to terms with the fact that she is simply useless on the farm. He himself isn't a big fan of farming, and really doesn't enjoy his profession. When he notices Charles's interest in Emma, he decides to give his blessing. After a while, Charles finally builds up the courage ask Monsieur Rouault for Emma's hand in marriage. In typical fashion, Charles can't even get the words out - fortunately, his future father-in-law figures out what's going on and says it's all cool with him. The marriage ball is rolling. Notably, we don't know what Emma thinks about any of this... The winter passes, and Emma busily prepares her trousseau . Emma reveals herself to be something of a romantic ninny; she would like to be married by torchlight in the dead of night. However, her more practical fiance and father decide that this is probably not the best idea. A traditional wedding is planned.", "analysis": ""} |
One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his
leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard
of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could.
"I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been
through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be
quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I
talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the
branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it.
And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their
nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on
the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very
idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well,
quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an
autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb;
it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something
always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's
heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way
altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must
pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see
us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says
you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some
rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit."
Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all
as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear
trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again,
came and went, making the farm more full of life.
Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor
because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off,
spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended
to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him
than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He
told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his
wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in;
he thought no more about her.
He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new
delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now
change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was
very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and
coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him.
On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his
business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young
man! what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had
increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked.
He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better
looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.
One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields.
He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the
outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun
sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners
of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table
were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they
drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in
by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and
touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth
Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of
perspiration on her bare shoulders.
After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to
drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have
a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao
from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the
brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked
glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent
back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the
strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her
tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the
bottom of her glass.
She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was
darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did
Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the
flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing
in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the
yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her
hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs.
She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from
giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began
talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They
went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little
prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a
cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even
showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every
month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But the
gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid!
She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town,
although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more
wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her
voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in
modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now
joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her
look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.
Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to
recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life
she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts
other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her.
Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married,
and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But
Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the
humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry after
all! If you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was
parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and
opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing
in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the
Bertaux.
Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised
himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each
time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words
sealed his lips.
Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was
of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking
her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one
never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it,
the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in
which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture
properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him
less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his
pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking
to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider,
underdone legs of mutton, glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in
the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him
all ready laid as on the stage.
*A mixture of coffee and spirits.
When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his
daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days,
he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a
little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he
was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt
would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old
Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property,"
as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the
shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said
to himself, "I'll give her to him."
At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux.
The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to
hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road
full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave
himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past
it--
"Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to
you."
They stopped. Charles was silent.
"Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault,
laughing softly.
"Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles.
"I ask nothing better", the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the
little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get
off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't return because of
all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so
that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter
of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning
over the hedge."
And he went off.
Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited.
Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch.
Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown
back; the hook was still swinging.
The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as
he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in
countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion
of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before
them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out
of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.
The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with
her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself
chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When
Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked
over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed
of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be
entrees.
Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding
with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So
there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which
they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to
some extent on the days following.
| 2,870 | Part 1, Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-3 | Charles's half-hearted mourning doesn't last too long. Monsieur Rouault shows up the day after the funeral to deliver his payment for the medical treatment, and also to give his condolences. He encourages Charles to visit Les Bertaux again, which he does, happily. Monsieur Rouault cheers Charles up, and he quickly begins to forget about his dead wife. In the weeks that follow, things start to look up for Charles. He discovers that he likes living without his wife - he can decide when and what he wants to eat, and doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. Furthermore, her death was actually good for business, since all the townspeople feel bad for him. Charles keeps up his visits to Les Bertaux. One day, he encounters Emma alone. She convinces him to have a drink by saying that she'll have one, too. She pours herself a few drops of liqueur, but in order to taste it, she throws back her head and licks the bottom of the shot glass. Emma and Charles have their first real conversation - that is, Emma talks, and Charles listens. They even go to her room to look at mementos of her days as a schoolgirl at the convent. She complains about the hired help, complains about not living in the city, and generally talks a lot about herself. Charles is charmed. On his way home, Charles mulls over the pros and cons of starting something with Emma. He begins to wonder if another marriage might be a good idea... Monsieur Rouault, we discover, is not averse to this idea. He loves Emma, but he's come to terms with the fact that she is simply useless on the farm. He himself isn't a big fan of farming, and really doesn't enjoy his profession. When he notices Charles's interest in Emma, he decides to give his blessing. After a while, Charles finally builds up the courage ask Monsieur Rouault for Emma's hand in marriage. In typical fashion, Charles can't even get the words out - fortunately, his future father-in-law figures out what's going on and says it's all cool with him. The marriage ball is rolling. Notably, we don't know what Emma thinks about any of this... The winter passes, and Emma busily prepares her trousseau . Emma reveals herself to be something of a romantic ninny; she would like to be married by torchlight in the dead of night. However, her more practical fiance and father decide that this is probably not the best idea. A traditional wedding is planned. | null | 592 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/04.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_3_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 4 | part 1, chapter 4 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-4", "summary": "It's the big day, and various friends and family members arrive in a bustle of horses, carriages, and passengers. Flaubert treats us to a rather ridiculous description of country folks; we are reminded again that this is not the sophisticated big city event that Emma longs for; rather, it is a procession of people awkwardly dressed up in their unfashionable best for a small-town wedding. We don't get to see the ceremony, but the wedding feast that comes afterwards is mouth-watering. The guests are treated to be huge table overflowing with roast beef, mutton, chickens, a suckling pig, many alcohols, and a dizzyingly fancy wedding cake. The guests gorge themselves until nightfall, when they pile back into their vehicles and raucously drive back home. As everyone settles in for the night, a group of whiny wedding guests complain about how unsatisfactory the event was, cursing Monsieur Rouault behind his back . The Bovary family members are characteristically unimpressive during all of these goings-on. Charles's mother holds her tongue for once , while his father stays up partying and drinking all night with the guests. Charles himself is, as usual, fairly dull on the day of the wedding - but after the wedding night, he's a changed man. He's clearly very, very in love with Emma. The bride, on the other hand, is pretty casual about the whole thing. After the couple leaves to start their married life, Monsieur Rouault reflects upon his own life and his dear, departed wife. He remembers happier times and, overcome by sadness, heads home alone. Charles and Emma return to his house in Tostes; the neighbors show up to check out the new arrival.", "analysis": ""} |
The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled
cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young
people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in
rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot
and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from
Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany.
All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between
friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to.
From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then
the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the
steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all
sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets,
had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with
the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down
behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads,
dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes
(many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their
sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first
communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or
sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their
hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their
gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the
carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it
themselves. According to their different social positions they wore
tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats,
redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe
on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and
round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse
cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short
cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like
a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at
the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say,
with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small
plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt.
And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had
just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been
close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and
not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or
cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh
air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were
mottled here and there with red dabs.
The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither
on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church.
The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated
across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn,
soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to
talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at
its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all
following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves
plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves
unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from
time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her
gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns,
while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault,
with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands
up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur
Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply
in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing
compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed,
and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their
business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another
on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the
squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When
he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly
rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set
off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark
time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little
birds from afar.
The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six
chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle
a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At
the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round
the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine
beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least
shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of
the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot
had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up
on the place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself
brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin
with, at its base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a
temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and
in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second
stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications
in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and
finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of
jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate
swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.
Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they
went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the
granary, and then returned to table. Some towards the finish went to
sleep and snored. But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then they began
songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with
their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad
jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed
up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they
kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore;
and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were
runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over
yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning
out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins.
Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen.
The children had fallen asleep under the seats.
The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage
pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even
brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water
from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in
time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position
of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the
same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused
old Rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in
a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running
served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been
badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints
hoping he would ruin himself.
Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been
consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the
arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead
of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till
daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This
added greatly to the consideration in which he was held.
Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding.
He answered feebly to the puns, doubles entendres*, compliments, and
chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup
appeared.
*Double meanings.
The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who
might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before,
whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did
not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed
near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed
nothing. He called her "my wife", tutoyed* her, asked for her of
everyone, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the
yards, where he could be seen from far between the trees, putting his
arm around her waist, and walking half-bending over her, ruffling the
chemisette of her bodice with his head.
*Used the familiar form of address.
Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of
his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back
in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here
he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way.
When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the
cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh.
Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of
his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her
from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion,
trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the
country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from
the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that
it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he
saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently
under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from
time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would
have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the
road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling
with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he
felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was
afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
right away home.
Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock.
The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.
The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not
having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should
look over her house.
| 2,831 | Part 1, Chapter 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-4 | It's the big day, and various friends and family members arrive in a bustle of horses, carriages, and passengers. Flaubert treats us to a rather ridiculous description of country folks; we are reminded again that this is not the sophisticated big city event that Emma longs for; rather, it is a procession of people awkwardly dressed up in their unfashionable best for a small-town wedding. We don't get to see the ceremony, but the wedding feast that comes afterwards is mouth-watering. The guests are treated to be huge table overflowing with roast beef, mutton, chickens, a suckling pig, many alcohols, and a dizzyingly fancy wedding cake. The guests gorge themselves until nightfall, when they pile back into their vehicles and raucously drive back home. As everyone settles in for the night, a group of whiny wedding guests complain about how unsatisfactory the event was, cursing Monsieur Rouault behind his back . The Bovary family members are characteristically unimpressive during all of these goings-on. Charles's mother holds her tongue for once , while his father stays up partying and drinking all night with the guests. Charles himself is, as usual, fairly dull on the day of the wedding - but after the wedding night, he's a changed man. He's clearly very, very in love with Emma. The bride, on the other hand, is pretty casual about the whole thing. After the couple leaves to start their married life, Monsieur Rouault reflects upon his own life and his dear, departed wife. He remembers happier times and, overcome by sadness, heads home alone. Charles and Emma return to his house in Tostes; the neighbors show up to check out the new arrival. | null | 398 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/05.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_4_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 5 | part 1, chapter 5 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-5", "summary": "Next, we get a brief tour of Charles and Emma's house. It sounds pretty decent - nothing impressive, but a nice enough home for a country doctor and his wife. There's a little garden, an office for Charles , and generally everything a typical village housewife might need. Emma, however, is not your typical village housewife. First of all, she notices the former Madame Bovary's bridal bouquet preserved in the bedroom - this totally doesn't fly. This relic of wife #1 is relegated to exile in the attic. After this change, Emma goes on a total renovation rampage, making changes to every aspect of the little house's decor. Charles is in heaven. He gives in to all of Emma's whims, and buys everything she wants. He's totally head over heels in love with her, and is infatuated by her beauty. Everything is perfect, as far as he's concerned, and he can't remember ever being happier. The whole world is wrapped up in Emma. Emma, however, isn't sure that she's so happy. She had thought herself in love before the marriage, but now conjugal life doesn't seem so blissful. She wonders if the words she's read about in books - passion, rapture, bliss - can apply to her life.", "analysis": ""} |
The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road.
Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black
leather cap, and on the floor, in a corner, were a pair of leggings,
still covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment, that was
both dining and sitting room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at the
top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly
stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung crossways
at the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with
a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks
under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was Charles's
consulting room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table,
three chairs, and an office chair. Volumes of the "Dictionary of Medical
Science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive
sales through which they had gone, occupied almost along the six shelves
of a deal bookcase.
The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls when he saw
patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in
the consulting room and recounting their histories.
Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large
dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and
pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements
past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to
guess.
The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered
apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the
middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with
eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed.
Right at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure in plaster
reading his breviary.
Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in the second,
which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red
drapery. A shell box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary
near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin
ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the other
one's. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it
up to the attic, while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were putting
her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in
a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she
were to die.
During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in
the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wallpaper
put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the
sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain
and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,
picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard
in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.
He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together,
a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her
hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and
many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now
made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by
her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down
on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen
thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on
waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the
shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of
different colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towards the
surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw
himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round
his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window
to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of
geranium, clad in her dressing gown hanging loosely about her. Charles,
in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while
she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of
flower or leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating,
described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before
it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare
standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a
kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And
then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along
the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where
the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning
air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his
mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness,
like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are
digesting.
Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when
he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of
companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his
accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school
with cakes in their muffs? Later on, when he studied medicine, and never
had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have
become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the
widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life
this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend
beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself
with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly,
ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing;
he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.
He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her
fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on
her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm
from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away
half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.
Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that
should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought,
have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in
life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so
beautiful in books.
| 1,675 | Part 1, Chapter 5 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-5 | Next, we get a brief tour of Charles and Emma's house. It sounds pretty decent - nothing impressive, but a nice enough home for a country doctor and his wife. There's a little garden, an office for Charles , and generally everything a typical village housewife might need. Emma, however, is not your typical village housewife. First of all, she notices the former Madame Bovary's bridal bouquet preserved in the bedroom - this totally doesn't fly. This relic of wife #1 is relegated to exile in the attic. After this change, Emma goes on a total renovation rampage, making changes to every aspect of the little house's decor. Charles is in heaven. He gives in to all of Emma's whims, and buys everything she wants. He's totally head over heels in love with her, and is infatuated by her beauty. Everything is perfect, as far as he's concerned, and he can't remember ever being happier. The whole world is wrapped up in Emma. Emma, however, isn't sure that she's so happy. She had thought herself in love before the marriage, but now conjugal life doesn't seem so blissful. She wonders if the words she's read about in books - passion, rapture, bliss - can apply to her life. | null | 307 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/06.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_5_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 6 | part 1, chapter 6 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-6", "summary": "Now that we've had a tour of the Bovary household, it's time for a tour of Emma's inner landscape. Fade out to a flashback... Emma is a dreamy, romantic child, and is perhaps too heavily influenced by Paul and Virginia, a popular and super-utopian novel about two siblings stranded on a desert island. At age thirteen, Emma is sent to a convent school, where she quickly falls in love with the mystical, aesthetic atmosphere of the religious life; she devotes herself to the ceremonies and artistic poses of convent life. We can see where this is heading. The things Emma likes best about religion aren't what you'd hope or expect - you know, stuff like God or faith. Instead, she is really into the romantic aspects of it; metaphors for the nun's relationship with God like \"betrothed\" and \"heavenly lover\" really get her going. At the convent, Emma meets an old lady with an aristocratic background . She introduces Emma to novels - and thus to a whole new world of swoony romantic dreams. As she does her work, the girls listen to her stories and read the romance novels she carries around in her apron pocket. Soon enough, Emma's attentions turn from religious ecstasy to dreams of historical romance. She wishes she could live the life she read about in her books. Emma's mother dies while Emma is away at school; the girl is dramatically sad for a little while, but is kind of secretly pleased at herself for being so sensitive. The nuns worry that they've lost Emma - they'd assumed that she would join the sisterhood. She rebells against their attempts to draw her back in, and ends up leaving the convent. As Flaubert states pointedly, \"no one was sorry to see her go\" . Back home, Emma enjoys playing lady of the manor and ordering the servants around for a while. However, she gets sick of it soon enough and - surprise, surprise - misses the convent. By the time Charles appears on the scene, she feels cynical and experienced . She actually believes that she's in love with Charles - but we get the feeling that she would have felt the same way about any guy who happened to wander into her life at that time. Unsurprisingly, now that they're married, she's unsettled and discontented.", "analysis": ""} |
She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little
bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the
sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for
you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand,
bringing you a bird's nest.
When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place
her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter,
where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the
story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped
here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the
tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court.
Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the
society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel,
which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very
little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she
who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living
thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and
amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she
was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the
altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers.
Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with
their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred
heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the
cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a
whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil.
When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she
might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined,
her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest.
The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal
marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of
unexpected sweetness.
In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in
the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or
the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the
"Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to
the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing
through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the
shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened
her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to
us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well;
she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs.
Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to
those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms,
and the green fields only when broken up by ruins.
She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected
as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her
heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking
for emotions, not landscapes.
At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to
mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an
ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the
refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit
of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped
out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs
of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away.
She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on
the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the
pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed
long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers,
sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions
killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre
forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by
moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions,
gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and
weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of
age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.
Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events,
dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked
to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines
who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the
stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on
his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult
for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy
women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and
Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of
heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St.
Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a
little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always
the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV.
In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but
little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild
compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity
of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria
of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes"
given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden;
it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately
handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at
the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the
most part as counts or viscounts.
She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and
saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the
balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his
arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or
there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who
looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear
eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through
parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at
a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on
sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open
window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their
cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or,
smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a
marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked
shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining
beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres,
Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands,
that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a
lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by
a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam
trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white
excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.
And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head
lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one
by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some
belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.
When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a
funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter
sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be
buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill,
and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at
a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre
hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened
to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of
the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of
the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not
confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel
herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her
brow.
The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with
great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping
from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,
novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to
saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of
the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined
horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This
nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the
church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the
songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against
the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing
antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school,
no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she
had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.
Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the
servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.
When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself
quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to
feel.
But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance
caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe
that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a
great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies
of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived
was the happiness she had dreamed.
| 2,639 | Part 1, Chapter 6 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-6 | Now that we've had a tour of the Bovary household, it's time for a tour of Emma's inner landscape. Fade out to a flashback... Emma is a dreamy, romantic child, and is perhaps too heavily influenced by Paul and Virginia, a popular and super-utopian novel about two siblings stranded on a desert island. At age thirteen, Emma is sent to a convent school, where she quickly falls in love with the mystical, aesthetic atmosphere of the religious life; she devotes herself to the ceremonies and artistic poses of convent life. We can see where this is heading. The things Emma likes best about religion aren't what you'd hope or expect - you know, stuff like God or faith. Instead, she is really into the romantic aspects of it; metaphors for the nun's relationship with God like "betrothed" and "heavenly lover" really get her going. At the convent, Emma meets an old lady with an aristocratic background . She introduces Emma to novels - and thus to a whole new world of swoony romantic dreams. As she does her work, the girls listen to her stories and read the romance novels she carries around in her apron pocket. Soon enough, Emma's attentions turn from religious ecstasy to dreams of historical romance. She wishes she could live the life she read about in her books. Emma's mother dies while Emma is away at school; the girl is dramatically sad for a little while, but is kind of secretly pleased at herself for being so sensitive. The nuns worry that they've lost Emma - they'd assumed that she would join the sisterhood. She rebells against their attempts to draw her back in, and ends up leaving the convent. As Flaubert states pointedly, "no one was sorry to see her go" . Back home, Emma enjoys playing lady of the manor and ordering the servants around for a while. However, she gets sick of it soon enough and - surprise, surprise - misses the convent. By the time Charles appears on the scene, she feels cynical and experienced . She actually believes that she's in love with Charles - but we get the feeling that she would have felt the same way about any guy who happened to wander into her life at that time. Unsurprisingly, now that they're married, she's unsettled and discontented. | null | 555 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/07.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_6_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 7 | part 1, chapter 7 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-7", "summary": "Emma wonders if these \"honeymoon days\" are really the best days of her life. She starts to feel cheated, as though Charles has deprived her of the cliched, romantic fantasies she cooks up. She's sure that she would be happier if only she was somewhere else...preferably with someone else... Emma wants to reveal these feelings of discontent to somebody, and wishes Charles could be a little more sensitive. Day by day he just grows less and less interesting to her, and she is consistently disappointed in the man she married. She believes that men should know everything and be able to do anything - Charles, however, is just an average guy. Emma attempts to express her turbulent feelings through drawing and music; Charles loves to watch her, and the people of the village are impressed by her accomplishments. Speaking of which, Emma turns out to actually be a pretty capable wife when she tries. She knows how to take care of the house and of Charles's business, and this makes the village respect the doctor and his young wife even more. Charles is also extremely impressed himself for having such a terrific wife. In his view, everything is just peachy keen. As far as we can tell, he's a really simple creature, with very few desires and no ambition at all. He's stingy and kind of oafish, but is generally still the same old predictable Charles - the kind of nice guy that finishes last. Charles's mom approves of her son's ways wholeheartedly, but she's skeptical of her daughter-in-law. She's worried that Emma wastes too much money, and every time she visits , the two women harass each other relentlessly. This springs largely from Mom's anxieties about Charles's love for Emma - she's no longer the favorite, now that Wife #2 is in the picture. Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two loves of his life. He can't believe that his mother could ever be wrong, but he also can't believe that Emma ever makes any mistakes. It's a confusing time for him; mostly, he just bumbles about, which doesn't help. Emma decides to at least attempt to \"experience love\" . She sings songs and recites poetry to Charles, but it doesn't accomplish anything. That's it. Emma is certain she doesn't love Charles, and furthermore, that she's incapable of loving him. She's way, way bored with her life on the whole. One of the great constants in life is the fact that Puppies Are Awesome. Emma receives a little greyhound pup as a gift from one of Charles's patients, and for a while, the awesomeness of the puppy actually makes her feel a wee bit better. She names the dog Djali and tells her about the troubles of married life. You may not have realized it, but dog is woman's best friend, too. Emma is certain she could have married someone different - and better - given the chance. She wonders about her former classmates from the convent school, and is sure that they have better husbands than she does. Her former life seems painfully far away. Just when it seems like nothing will ever happen for Emma, an invitation arrives: she and Charles are invited to a party at the home of a local big-shot, the Marquis d'Andervilliers. The Marquis, a former patient of Charles's, was impressed by Emma's elegance. The chapter ends as the couple arrives at the Marquis' chateau.", "analysis": ""} |
She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time
of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full
sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those
lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of
laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride
slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed
by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of
a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume
of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in
hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her
that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar
to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean
over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch
cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails,
and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked
to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable
uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed
her--the opportunity, the courage.
If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but
once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have
gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by
a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater
became the gulf that separated her from him.
Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and
everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without
exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity,
he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors
from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day
he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come
across in a novel.
A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold
activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements
of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing,
wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm,
this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.
Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand
there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes
half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers,
little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers
glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb,
and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken
up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the
other end of the village when the window was open, and often the
bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list
slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.
Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the
patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of
a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to
have some tasty dish--piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves,
served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying
finger-glasses for dessert. From all this much consideration was
extended to Bovary.
Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife.
He showed with pride in the sitting room two small pencil sketches by
her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the
wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at his
door in his wool-work slippers.
He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked
for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited
on him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one
after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been,
the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he
finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off
the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to
bed, and lay on his back and snored.
As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief
would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was
all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of
the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore
thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely
towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight
line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that "was quite good
enough for the country."
His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly
when there had been some violent row at her place; and yet Madame Bovary
senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought "her
ways too fine for their position"; the wood, the sugar, and the candles
disappeared as "at a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in
the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She put her
linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on
the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with these lessons.
Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words "daughter" and "mother"
were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the
lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger.
In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the
favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion
from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched
her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through
the windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as
remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with
Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to
adore her so exclusively.
Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved
his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible,
and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam
Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or
two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma
proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his
patients.
And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she wanted to make
herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all
the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many
melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and
Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.
When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without
getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did
not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself
in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that
Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became
regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among
other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony
of dinner.
A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had
given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for
she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see
before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far
as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an
angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of
the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you.
She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last
she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and
wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and
the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always
closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts,
aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round
and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing
the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield.
Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass
that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to
herself, "Good heavens! Why did I marry?"
She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would have not
been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would
have been these unrealised events, this different life, this unknown
husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been
handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old
companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In
town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the
lights of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands,
the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose
dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was
weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.
She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive
her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and
open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her
seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was
full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows;
the music master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all
of this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and
smoothed the long delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have
no troubles."
Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned
slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud
as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.
Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in
one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought
even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground,
whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their
summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl
round her shoulders and rose.
In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the short moss
that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky
showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform,
and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out
against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali,
and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself into an
armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak.
But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her
life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.
Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to
re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to
the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a
great deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always enthusiastically
demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had
suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by
giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes
to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some
superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry trees did not
thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it
his business to thank his personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty
figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not
think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other
hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.
On Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in
their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped
on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles
held a bandbox between his knees.
They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lit
to show the way for the carriages.
| 3,146 | Part 1, Chapter 7 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-7 | Emma wonders if these "honeymoon days" are really the best days of her life. She starts to feel cheated, as though Charles has deprived her of the cliched, romantic fantasies she cooks up. She's sure that she would be happier if only she was somewhere else...preferably with someone else... Emma wants to reveal these feelings of discontent to somebody, and wishes Charles could be a little more sensitive. Day by day he just grows less and less interesting to her, and she is consistently disappointed in the man she married. She believes that men should know everything and be able to do anything - Charles, however, is just an average guy. Emma attempts to express her turbulent feelings through drawing and music; Charles loves to watch her, and the people of the village are impressed by her accomplishments. Speaking of which, Emma turns out to actually be a pretty capable wife when she tries. She knows how to take care of the house and of Charles's business, and this makes the village respect the doctor and his young wife even more. Charles is also extremely impressed himself for having such a terrific wife. In his view, everything is just peachy keen. As far as we can tell, he's a really simple creature, with very few desires and no ambition at all. He's stingy and kind of oafish, but is generally still the same old predictable Charles - the kind of nice guy that finishes last. Charles's mom approves of her son's ways wholeheartedly, but she's skeptical of her daughter-in-law. She's worried that Emma wastes too much money, and every time she visits , the two women harass each other relentlessly. This springs largely from Mom's anxieties about Charles's love for Emma - she's no longer the favorite, now that Wife #2 is in the picture. Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two loves of his life. He can't believe that his mother could ever be wrong, but he also can't believe that Emma ever makes any mistakes. It's a confusing time for him; mostly, he just bumbles about, which doesn't help. Emma decides to at least attempt to "experience love" . She sings songs and recites poetry to Charles, but it doesn't accomplish anything. That's it. Emma is certain she doesn't love Charles, and furthermore, that she's incapable of loving him. She's way, way bored with her life on the whole. One of the great constants in life is the fact that Puppies Are Awesome. Emma receives a little greyhound pup as a gift from one of Charles's patients, and for a while, the awesomeness of the puppy actually makes her feel a wee bit better. She names the dog Djali and tells her about the troubles of married life. You may not have realized it, but dog is woman's best friend, too. Emma is certain she could have married someone different - and better - given the chance. She wonders about her former classmates from the convent school, and is sure that they have better husbands than she does. Her former life seems painfully far away. Just when it seems like nothing will ever happen for Emma, an invitation arrives: she and Charles are invited to a party at the home of a local big-shot, the Marquis d'Andervilliers. The Marquis, a former patient of Charles's, was impressed by Emma's elegance. The chapter ends as the couple arrives at the Marquis' chateau. | null | 799 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/08.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_7_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 8 | part 1, chapter 8 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-8", "summary": "The chateau is everything Emma could have dreamt of. It's gorgeous and extravagantly beautiful. Emma is profoundly impressed by the whole thing and notices every detail. At dinner, Emma sees that many of the ladies take wine at dinner . Emma is fascinated by an old, unattractive man, the Duc de Laverdiere; rumor has it that he had been Marie Antoinette's lover. Emma gets her first taste of champagne, pomegranates, and pineapple. Everything here seems better than it is at home. We get the feeling that she finally feels she's getting what she deserves. Getting dressed for the ball, Emma and Charles have a little spat. Charles wants to dance, but Emma claims it's ridiculous, saying that people will laugh at him. On this night, Emma looks better than ever. Charles, taken with her beauty, attempts to kiss her, but she just shoos him away. The ball is like one of Emma's romantic daydreams. It's filled with beautiful women in gorgeous dresses and jewels, and - to Emma's excitement - with beautiful men, too. Everything about these gorgeous guys radiates wealth, from their clear, white complexions to their well-cut clothes. Emma and Charles are clearly in a brand new world. Emma sees some peasants looking in through the windows, and is reminded of her former life on the farm at Les Bertaux. These new visions of luxury and beauty totally sweep her off her feet, and she begins to wonder if she ever really was a simple country girl. Emma witnesses a lady and gentleman exchange a secret love note. Hours into the ball, a second gourmet meal is served. After this, people start to leave. By 3am, it's time for the last dance, a waltz. Emma dances with a man Flaubert simply calls the Viscount, despite the fact that she doesn't really know how to waltz. She stumbles, then watches the Viscount resume the dance with another lady. Charles, who's been watching a game of whist at the card table all night, takes Emma up to bed, complaining all the way about his tired legs. Emma stays up late, looking out the window and hoping to prolong her stay in this fantastical other world. Eventually she lets herself fall asleep. In the morning, the remaining guests eat a quick breakfast, then walk around the chateau's extensive grounds. Charles and Emma pack up their buggy, say their thank yous, and head back to Tostes. During the drive home, they encounter a party of riders on horseback. One of them, Emma thinks, is the Viscount. Shortly thereafter, Charles has to fix something on the buggy. While he's outside, he finds a green silk cigar case. Home again, Emma is really in a foul mood. She fires the maid, Nastasie, because dinner isn't ready on time. The word that comes to mind is \"irrational.\" Charles, on the other hand, is happy to be home. He's a little sad to see Nastasie go, since she's gone through a lot with him, but doesn't want to argue with his wife. After dinner, Charles tries to act like an aristocratic man by smoking one of the cigars he found in the silk case. Embarrassingly, he makes himself rather ill. Emma is disgusted. In the following days, Emma rehashes the ball over and over again in her mind. She tries to remember everything about it.", "analysis": ""} |
The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting
wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense
green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees
set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron,
syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of
green along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge;
through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs
scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered
hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel
lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old
chateau.
Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants
appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering his arm to the
doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule.
It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of
footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church.
Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery
overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one
could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the
drawing room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces,
their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled
silently as they made their strokes.
On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at
the bottom names written in black letters. She read: "Jean-Antoine
d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la
Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October,
1587." And on another: "Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de
la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St.
Michael, wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of
May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693." One could
hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered
over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the
horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where
there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares
framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the
painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over
and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a
well-rounded calf.
The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the
Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on
an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her
a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook
nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair
a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young
woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers
in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.
At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down
at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the
dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness.
Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a
blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes
of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silver dish covers
reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal
covered with light steam reflected from one to the other pale rays;
bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in
the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a
bishop's mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped
roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open
baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke
was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and
frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offering ready carved
dishes between the shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon
gave you the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid
with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed
motionless on the room full of life.
Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their
glasses.
But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent
over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an
old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes
were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He
was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on
a time favourite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil
hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said,
the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and
Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels,
bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his
family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the
dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes
turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something
extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens!
Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt
it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted
pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than
elsewhere.
The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the ball.
Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her
debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser,
and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed.
Charles's trousers were tight across the belly.
"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said.
"Dancing?" repeated Emma.
"Yes!"
"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place.
Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added.
Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish
dressing.
He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes
seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards the ears, shone
with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk,
with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of
pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with
green.
Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.
"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me."
One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She
went downstairs restraining herself from running.
Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing.
She sat down on a form near the door.
The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up
and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line
of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling
faces, and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed
hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh
at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets
trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms.
The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape,
bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of mytosotis, jasmine, pomegranate
blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places,
mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.
Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the
tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and
waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and,
swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight
movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate
phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other
instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis
d'or that were being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room;
then all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note,
feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted;
the same eyes falling before you met yours again.
A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here
and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished
themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their
differences in age, dress, or face.
Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,
brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate
pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that
is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the
veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite
nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low
cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they
wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave
forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air
of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young.
In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and
through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality,
the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised
and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society
of loose women.
A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy
with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.
They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoly,
Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum
by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation
full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very
young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romolus,"
and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained
that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors
that had disfigured the name of his horse.
The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim.
Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair
and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary
turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed
against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux
came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in
a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly,
skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But
in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until
then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She
was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest.
She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand
in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her
teeth.
A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing.
"Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has
fallen behind the sofa?"
The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw
the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle,
into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan, offered it to the lady
respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began
smelling her bouquet.
After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups a la
bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la Trafalgar, and all sorts of
cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one
after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners of the muslin
curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through
the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were still
left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their
tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door.
*With almond milk
At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.
Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the
Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a
dozen persons.
One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and
whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time
to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and
that she would get through it very well.
They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them
was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like
a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress
caught against his trousers.
Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to
his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a
more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with
her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for
a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but
more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the
wall and covered her eyes with her hands.
When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three
waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool.
She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.
Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body,
her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved,
his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how to
waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.
Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or
rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed.
Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His "knees were going
up into his body." He had spent five consecutive hours standing
bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without
understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief
that he pulled off his boots.
Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.
The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the
damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still
murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to
prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to
give up.
Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the chateau,
trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the
evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated,
blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and
cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.
There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten
minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor.
Next, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a
small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and
they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling
with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from
over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing.
The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the
outhouses of the chateau. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took
her to see the stables.
Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the
horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when
anyone went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness room
shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was
piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the
whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.
Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The
dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels
being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and
Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.
Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge
of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little
horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose
reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened
on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it.
They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen
with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emma thought she
recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the
movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the
trot or gallop.
A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces
that had broken.
But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the
ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with
a green silk border and beblazoned in the centre like the door of a
carriage.
"There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening
after dinner."
"Why, do you smoke?" she asked.
"Sometimes, when I get a chance."
He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.
When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper.
Nastasie answered rudely.
"Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you
warning."
For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.
Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.
"How good it is to be at home again!"
Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl.
She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him
company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest
acquaintance in the place.
"Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last.
"Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied.
Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being
made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding,
spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.
"You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully.
He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the
pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back
of the cupboard.
The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden, up
and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier,
before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things
of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed
already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day
before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard
had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that
a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was
resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down
to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of
the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against
wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced.
The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma.
Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah!
I was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago."
And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance.
She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries
and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret
remained with her.
| 5,172 | Part 1, Chapter 8 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-8 | The chateau is everything Emma could have dreamt of. It's gorgeous and extravagantly beautiful. Emma is profoundly impressed by the whole thing and notices every detail. At dinner, Emma sees that many of the ladies take wine at dinner . Emma is fascinated by an old, unattractive man, the Duc de Laverdiere; rumor has it that he had been Marie Antoinette's lover. Emma gets her first taste of champagne, pomegranates, and pineapple. Everything here seems better than it is at home. We get the feeling that she finally feels she's getting what she deserves. Getting dressed for the ball, Emma and Charles have a little spat. Charles wants to dance, but Emma claims it's ridiculous, saying that people will laugh at him. On this night, Emma looks better than ever. Charles, taken with her beauty, attempts to kiss her, but she just shoos him away. The ball is like one of Emma's romantic daydreams. It's filled with beautiful women in gorgeous dresses and jewels, and - to Emma's excitement - with beautiful men, too. Everything about these gorgeous guys radiates wealth, from their clear, white complexions to their well-cut clothes. Emma and Charles are clearly in a brand new world. Emma sees some peasants looking in through the windows, and is reminded of her former life on the farm at Les Bertaux. These new visions of luxury and beauty totally sweep her off her feet, and she begins to wonder if she ever really was a simple country girl. Emma witnesses a lady and gentleman exchange a secret love note. Hours into the ball, a second gourmet meal is served. After this, people start to leave. By 3am, it's time for the last dance, a waltz. Emma dances with a man Flaubert simply calls the Viscount, despite the fact that she doesn't really know how to waltz. She stumbles, then watches the Viscount resume the dance with another lady. Charles, who's been watching a game of whist at the card table all night, takes Emma up to bed, complaining all the way about his tired legs. Emma stays up late, looking out the window and hoping to prolong her stay in this fantastical other world. Eventually she lets herself fall asleep. In the morning, the remaining guests eat a quick breakfast, then walk around the chateau's extensive grounds. Charles and Emma pack up their buggy, say their thank yous, and head back to Tostes. During the drive home, they encounter a party of riders on horseback. One of them, Emma thinks, is the Viscount. Shortly thereafter, Charles has to fix something on the buggy. While he's outside, he finds a green silk cigar case. Home again, Emma is really in a foul mood. She fires the maid, Nastasie, because dinner isn't ready on time. The word that comes to mind is "irrational." Charles, on the other hand, is happy to be home. He's a little sad to see Nastasie go, since she's gone through a lot with him, but doesn't want to argue with his wife. After dinner, Charles tries to act like an aristocratic man by smoking one of the cigars he found in the silk case. Embarrassingly, he makes himself rather ill. Emma is disgusted. In the following days, Emma rehashes the ball over and over again in her mind. She tries to remember everything about it. | null | 809 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/10.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_9_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 1 | part 2, chapter 1 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-1", "summary": "Welcome to Emma and Charles's new home! Yonville-l'Abbaye, their new town, is a small step up from Tostes. It's a market town in the Neufchatel region of France, not too far from Rouen . The town is bordered by farmland, and it actually sounds fairly attractive. Flaubert, ever the party pooper, describes it as \"characterless,\" and claims that it makes the worst Neufchatel cheese in the whole district . Despite new improvements in roads and trade routes, Yonville is still really slow and old-fashioned. We can already tell that this doesn't bode well for Emma. The actual town is pretty simple; it has a nice house or two, a church and graveyard, some brandy distilleries and cider presses, and an inn. Most notably, it's also home to a very peculiar building: Monsieur Homais' Pharmacy. It sounds like a pretty exciting place, covered in signs advertising the pharmacist's products. Apparently that's all there is to see in Yonville. Our sense of dread increases. Emma is so not going to like this... The church's caretaker , Lestiboudois, is in the practice of planting crops right up to the cemetery, a rather sketchy thing, if you ask us. The priest claims half-jokingly that he's \"feeding on the dead\" - creepy! All in all, we get the picture - nothing ever changes in Yonville. It's not exactly the booming metropolis Emma dreams of. On the day of the Bovary's arrival, the innkeeper, Madame Lefrancois, is busy preparing everything for the coming week. She's all in a tizzy because she's got a lot of food to prepare, both for her regular boarders, and for Charles and Emma. As she's in the midst of preparations, Monsieur Homais pays her a little visit. He immediately appears to be quite an arrogant guy. Monsieur Homais and Madame Lefrancois have a somewhat aggressive conversation. They chat about town affairs, including a rival bar, and about the inn's boarders. Among them are an oddly dull man named Binet and some young man called Leon. Binet enters on cue, ready for his dinner. He seems like a normal guy, but is really, really boring. Monsieur Homais obviously isn't a huge fan. The town priest stops by to pick up his umbrella. He and Monsieur Homais clearly have some kind of antagonistic relationship , since Homais bursts out in a big anti-clerical rant after he leaves. Homais clearly regards himself as quite an intellectual. He's immoderately proud of himself. Finally, the Hirondelle pulls up with the Bovarys inside. The driver, Hivert, is immediately besieged by questions from the townspeople . Hivert explains the Hirondelle's tardiness: Emma's beloved greyhound, Djali, ran away and they had to stop to look for her. She was nowhere to be found. A local merchant, Monsieur Lheureux, who was along for the ride, attempts to console Emma by telling her that Djali will find her way home.", "analysis": ""} |
Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not
even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen,
between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley
watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after
turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout
that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.
We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of
the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it
makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies--all on
the left is pasture land, all of the right arable. The meadow stretches
under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of
the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising,
broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. The
water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the colour of the
roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle
with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver.
Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of
Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top
to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain tracks, and these
brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the grey colour of
the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in
the neighboring country.
Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France,
a bastard land whose language is without accent and its landscape is
without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel
cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is
costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full
of sand and flints.
Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but
about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to
that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their
way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of
its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping
up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and
the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread
riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along the banks like a
cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side.
At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with
young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the
place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards
full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries
scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to
the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach
down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses
have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the
plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree
sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small
swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread
steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower,
the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of
ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a
blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts
outside that partly block the way. Then across an open space appears a
white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger
on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps;
scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the
finest in the place.
*The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of
notaries.
The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther
down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds
it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of graves that the old
stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the
grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was
rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof
is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows
in its blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a
loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their
wooden shoes.
The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon
the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with
a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr.
So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the
confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in
a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and
with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a
copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior,"
overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the
perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted.
The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts,
occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town
hall, constructed "from the designs of a Paris architect," is a sort of
Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On
the ground-floor are three Ionic columns and on the first floor a
semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a
Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other
the scales of Justice.
But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the
chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand
lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front
throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across
them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist
leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with
inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy,
Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine,
Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths,
hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the
breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then at
the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the
word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about
half-way up once more repeats "Homais" in gold letters on a black
ground.
Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only
one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops
short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand and
the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached.
At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall
was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all
the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore,
continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who is at once
gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the
parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to
plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows
smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to
rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.
"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curie at last said to him one
day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time;
but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and
even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally.
Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed
at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the
church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from
the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like lumps of white amadou,
rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of
the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its
poodle mane.
On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow
Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated
great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The
meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee
made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the
doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with
bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for
brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the
long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of
plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was
being chopped.
From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the
servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.
A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and
wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the
chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he
appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head
in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.
"Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water
bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to
offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers
are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has
been left before the front door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when
it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur
Homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk
eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she went on,
looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand.
"That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais. "You would
buy another."
"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow.
"Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again
you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want
narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now; everything is
changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!"
The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on--
"You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one
were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or
the sufferers from the Lyons floods--"
"It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the
landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as
long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've feathered
our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'Cafe Francais' closed
with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!" she went
on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding
the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six
visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!"
"Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?"
"Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes
six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for
punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He'd
rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so
particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes
at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he
eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!"
"Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and
an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector."
Six o'clock struck. Binet came in.
He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin
body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of
his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead,
flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth
waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round,
well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking
out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair
whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a
garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose
hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a
fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin
rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist
and the egotism of a bourgeois.
He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out
first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet
remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and
took off his cap in his usual way.
"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said
the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady.
"He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the
cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes in the
evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a
dab fish and never said a word."
"Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that
makes the society-man."
"Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady.
"Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he, parts! In his own line it is
possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on--
"Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a
doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become
whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in
history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something.
Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the
bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had
put it behind my ear!"
Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle"
were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into
the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his
face was rubicund and his form athletic.
"What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?" asked the landlady, as she
reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed
with their candles in a row. "Will you take something? A thimbleful of
Cassis*? A glass of wine?"
*Black currant liqueur.
The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that
he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after
asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the
evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.
When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the
square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very unbecoming. This
refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy;
all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days
of the tithe.
The landlady took up the defence of her curie.
"Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year
he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six
trusses at once, he is so strong."
"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to
fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have
the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a
good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals."
"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion."
The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have
more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling.
I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a
Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below
to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't
need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my
pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one
can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the
eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of
Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith
of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't
admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a
cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies
uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd
in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws,
which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in
turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them."
He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over
the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town
council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a
distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled
with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground,
and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door.
It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt,
prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders.
The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the
coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the
old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed
away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came
down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.
Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all
spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert
did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place
in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for
the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his
mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and
all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels,
which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of
his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.
An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across
the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had
even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight
of her; but it had been necessary to go on.
Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of this misfortune.
Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with
her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs
recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said had
been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another
had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four
rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve
years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street
as he was going to dine in town.
| 5,241 | Part 2, Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-1 | Welcome to Emma and Charles's new home! Yonville-l'Abbaye, their new town, is a small step up from Tostes. It's a market town in the Neufchatel region of France, not too far from Rouen . The town is bordered by farmland, and it actually sounds fairly attractive. Flaubert, ever the party pooper, describes it as "characterless," and claims that it makes the worst Neufchatel cheese in the whole district . Despite new improvements in roads and trade routes, Yonville is still really slow and old-fashioned. We can already tell that this doesn't bode well for Emma. The actual town is pretty simple; it has a nice house or two, a church and graveyard, some brandy distilleries and cider presses, and an inn. Most notably, it's also home to a very peculiar building: Monsieur Homais' Pharmacy. It sounds like a pretty exciting place, covered in signs advertising the pharmacist's products. Apparently that's all there is to see in Yonville. Our sense of dread increases. Emma is so not going to like this... The church's caretaker , Lestiboudois, is in the practice of planting crops right up to the cemetery, a rather sketchy thing, if you ask us. The priest claims half-jokingly that he's "feeding on the dead" - creepy! All in all, we get the picture - nothing ever changes in Yonville. It's not exactly the booming metropolis Emma dreams of. On the day of the Bovary's arrival, the innkeeper, Madame Lefrancois, is busy preparing everything for the coming week. She's all in a tizzy because she's got a lot of food to prepare, both for her regular boarders, and for Charles and Emma. As she's in the midst of preparations, Monsieur Homais pays her a little visit. He immediately appears to be quite an arrogant guy. Monsieur Homais and Madame Lefrancois have a somewhat aggressive conversation. They chat about town affairs, including a rival bar, and about the inn's boarders. Among them are an oddly dull man named Binet and some young man called Leon. Binet enters on cue, ready for his dinner. He seems like a normal guy, but is really, really boring. Monsieur Homais obviously isn't a huge fan. The town priest stops by to pick up his umbrella. He and Monsieur Homais clearly have some kind of antagonistic relationship , since Homais bursts out in a big anti-clerical rant after he leaves. Homais clearly regards himself as quite an intellectual. He's immoderately proud of himself. Finally, the Hirondelle pulls up with the Bovarys inside. The driver, Hivert, is immediately besieged by questions from the townspeople . Hivert explains the Hirondelle's tardiness: Emma's beloved greyhound, Djali, ran away and they had to stop to look for her. She was nowhere to be found. A local merchant, Monsieur Lheureux, who was along for the ride, attempts to console Emma by telling her that Djali will find her way home. | null | 756 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/11.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_10_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 2 | part 2, chapter 2 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-2", "summary": "Emma, Charles, Felicite, and Monsieur Lheureux get out of the Hirondelle for the Bovarys' first glimpse of Yonville. Monsieur Homais is on hand to introduce himself. Emma checks out the inn. Meanwhile, a blond young man checks her out. Who is this guy, you may ask? Flaubert tells us. It turns out that this is the Monsieur Leon mentioned earlier. He's a clerk who works for the notary in town. He, like Emma, is a bored young person trapped in a town full of aging, dull people. The dinner party, comprised of Emma, Charles, Homais, and Leon, make polite chitter chatter about their trip, and about the town. Homais goes off on a long spiel about Yonville. We realize that his primary mode of communication is probably by long spiel. Leon and Emma are clearly on the same wavelength - one that nobody else is on. They seem to have similar ideas and interests. It turns out that Leon is an amateur musician, like Emma. Monsieur Homais, with whom the young clerk lives, claims that Leon is a beautiful singer. Emma is intrigued. Emma and Leon have a little moment, in which he reveals that he loves German music, \"the kind that makes you dream\" - what an Emma-like thing to say! He also tells her he's going away to Paris to study to be lawyer. Homais and Charles have obviously been conversing on their own. Homais attempts to include everyone in the conversation; Emma and Leon aren't interested, and soon get caught up in their private conversation again. Like Emma, Leon is a big reader, and it seems like they have pretty similar thoughts about literature, as well. Homais tries to break into their conversation again, offering the use of his personal library to Emma. Emma and Leon are sitting so close that he has his feet on one of the rungs of her chair. After dinner, the guests all go their separate ways. Emma and Charles go into their new house for the first time. It doesn't sound too thrilling. We are unsurprised. Emma philosophically muses that, since her life so far hasn't been too hot, it has to get better.", "analysis": ""} |
Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and
they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly
since night set in.
Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his
respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render
them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had
ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.
When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney.
With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and
having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black
boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the
whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the
fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now
and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind
through the half-open door.
On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her
silently.
As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the
notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who
was the second habitue of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his
dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom
he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early,
he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure
from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with
delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine
in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour
where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the
table laid for four.
Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza;
then, turning to his neighbour--
"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in
our 'Hirondelle.'"
"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like
change of place."
"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same
places."
"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the
saddle"--
"But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it
seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added.
"Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is not very
hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us
the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay
pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases
of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a
few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a
serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of
scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our
peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur
Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your
science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse
to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the
doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad,
and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I
have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade
at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or
otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a
matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of
Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on
the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous
vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle
in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say,
nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and
which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together
all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say,
and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when
there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender
insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered
on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to
say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled
themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like
breezes from Russia."
"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?" continued
Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man.
"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on
the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I
go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset."
"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but
especially by the side of the sea."
"Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon.
"And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the
mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of
which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?"
"It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. "A cousin
of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could
not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the
waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of
incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices,
and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such
spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I
no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire
his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some
imposing site."
"You play?" she asked.
"No, but I am very fond of music," he replied.
"Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted Homais,
bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the
other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I
heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor."
Leon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's where he had a small room on the
second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his
landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to
him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He
was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary
was not known exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a
good deal of show.
Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?"
"Oh, German music; that which makes you dream."
"Have you been to the opera?"
"Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish
reading for the bar."
"As I had the honour of putting it to your husband," said the chemist,
"with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find
yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the
most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a
doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen.
Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a
laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He
was a gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden,
by the side of the water, he had an arbour built just for the purpose of
drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be
able--"
"My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has
been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room
reading."
"Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by
one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against
the window and the lamp is burning?"
"What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon
him.
"One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we
traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with
the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the
adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were
yourself palpitating beneath their costumes."
"That is true! That is true?" she said.
"Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague
idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from
afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?"
"I have experienced it," she replied.
"That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more
tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears."
"Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on the
contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one.
I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are
in nature."
"In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart,
miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all
the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble
characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself,
living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville
affords so few resources."
"Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always subscribed to a
lending library."
"If madame will do me the honour of making use of it", said the chemist,
who had just caught the last words, "I have at her disposal a library
composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter
Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons'; and in addition I receive various
periodicals, among them the 'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage
to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel,
Yonville, and vicinity."
For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant
Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags,
brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly
left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against
the wall with its hooks.
Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the
bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small
blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar,
and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently
sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while
Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague
conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to
the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of
novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where
she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked
of everything till to the end of dinner.
When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room in the
new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was
asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was
waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw
stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had
taken in his other hand the cure's umbrella, they started.
The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the
earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was
only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost
immediately, and the company dispersed.
As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster
fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the
wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish
light passed through the curtainless windows.
She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields,
half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along
the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were
scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses
on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men who had brought the
furniture had left everything about carelessly.
This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place.
The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her
arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth.
And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in
her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in
the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life
lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be
better.
| 3,296 | Part 2, Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-2 | Emma, Charles, Felicite, and Monsieur Lheureux get out of the Hirondelle for the Bovarys' first glimpse of Yonville. Monsieur Homais is on hand to introduce himself. Emma checks out the inn. Meanwhile, a blond young man checks her out. Who is this guy, you may ask? Flaubert tells us. It turns out that this is the Monsieur Leon mentioned earlier. He's a clerk who works for the notary in town. He, like Emma, is a bored young person trapped in a town full of aging, dull people. The dinner party, comprised of Emma, Charles, Homais, and Leon, make polite chitter chatter about their trip, and about the town. Homais goes off on a long spiel about Yonville. We realize that his primary mode of communication is probably by long spiel. Leon and Emma are clearly on the same wavelength - one that nobody else is on. They seem to have similar ideas and interests. It turns out that Leon is an amateur musician, like Emma. Monsieur Homais, with whom the young clerk lives, claims that Leon is a beautiful singer. Emma is intrigued. Emma and Leon have a little moment, in which he reveals that he loves German music, "the kind that makes you dream" - what an Emma-like thing to say! He also tells her he's going away to Paris to study to be lawyer. Homais and Charles have obviously been conversing on their own. Homais attempts to include everyone in the conversation; Emma and Leon aren't interested, and soon get caught up in their private conversation again. Like Emma, Leon is a big reader, and it seems like they have pretty similar thoughts about literature, as well. Homais tries to break into their conversation again, offering the use of his personal library to Emma. Emma and Leon are sitting so close that he has his feet on one of the rungs of her chair. After dinner, the guests all go their separate ways. Emma and Charles go into their new house for the first time. It doesn't sound too thrilling. We are unsurprised. Emma philosophically muses that, since her life so far hasn't been too hot, it has to get better. | null | 505 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/12.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_11_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 3 | part 2, chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-3", "summary": "The next morning, Emma sees Leon through her bedroom window; they bow to each other. Leon, hopeful that the Bovarys will turn up for dinner at the inn again, can't wait for six o'clock. However, dinnertime rolls around, and Emma is nowhere to be found. He's deeply disappointed. Apparently, Leon isn't exactly a lady's man. His conversation with Emma the previous night was the most intimate situation he's ever been in with a \"lady.\" Everyone in the town likes him for his many fine qualities, but he felt a different kind of connection with Emma. Homais turns out to be a very, very attentive neighbor. He gives Emma all kinds of assistance with the house, and is oh-so-friendly. However, he's not exactly Ned Flanders. It seems that his kindly guy-next-door act is a front; he'd been accused previously of illegally practicing medicine without any certification, and was threatened with legal action. A lot of townspeople, including the mayor, are out to get him, so he's careful to keep Charles on his side. Speaking of Charles, the poor guy isn't so happy. He doesn't have any patients yet, and spends most of his time hanging about the house. He's worried about money - the move from Tostes was expensive, and all the money that Emma brought with her to the marriage is gone. The only thing that cheers Charles up is the thought of Emma's pregnancy. He feels that his whole life is complete now that a baby is on the horizon. Emma, on the other hand, traversed a whole range of emotions, from astonished to bitter, before settling on indifferent. She decides that if she must have a baby, it should be a boy, so it can have the power to escape the rules that govern women. Instead, it's a girl. Emma passes out, presumably from disappointment, as well as the rigors of childbirth. Madame Homais and Madame Lefrancois rush in to see how things are going. Everyone is excited except Emma. Emma can't even think up a name for the poor kid. She has all kinds of romantic ideas about what she'd like to call the daughter . Homais has all kinds of crazy ideas, naturally, having named his children all kinds of crazy things. Emma eventually settles haphazardly on \"Berthe.\" Little Berthe is baptized. Her godfather is Homais, since Emma's dad couldn't make it for the birth, and her godmother is old Madame Bovary, who's visiting with her husband. Charles's father gets along pretty well with Emma, who's interested in his stories of travel in the army. Charles's mom is worried that her husband will be a bad influence upon Emma, and they peace out pretty quickly. One day, as Emma is going to visit the baby , she runs into Leon. She invites him to come with her, which causes quite the scandal among the gossips of the town. The wetnurse lives in an unsavory little cottage. Leon is thrown off by the image before him, of the beautiful lady in a fancy dress surrounded by squalor. The baby makes a spectacular entrance by promptly spitting up on Emma. The visitors head out. As they're leaving, Madame Rollet comes up and wheedles the promise of some brandy out of Emma. Emma and Leon head back to Yonville. They obviously have an intense connection already. When they get back to town, Emma heads home, while Leon keeps wandering, pondering his boredom and the dullness of the other people he knows in town. He has quite the crush on our young Madame Bovary.", "analysis": ""} |
The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She
had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and
reclosed the window.
Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going
to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The
dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he
had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." How
then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of
things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually
shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and
dissimulation.
At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to the arguments
of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable
thing for a young man. Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in
water-colours, could read the key of G, and readily talked literature
after dinner when he did not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him
for his education; Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for
he often took the little Homais into the garden--little brats who were
always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their
mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin, the
chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been
taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time
as a servant.
The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary
information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own cider
merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly
placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a
supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the
sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked
after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year,
according to the taste of the customers.
The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the
chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it
all.
He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article I, which
forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise medicine; so that,
after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen
to see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the magistrate
receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was
in the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard
the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise
great locks that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled as if he were
about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons,
his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was
obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover
his spirits.
Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and
he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his
back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous,
everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his
attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later
on, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him "the
paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to
have a chat with the Doctor.
Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours
without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep, or watched
his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a
workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been
left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had
spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the
moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped
away in two years.
Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from
Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster cure, who falling out
of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand
fragments on the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came
to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her
confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of
the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment
of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and
her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one
another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her
armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her,
passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to
make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of
caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having
begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human
life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity.
Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be
delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not
being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a
swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit
of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the
whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing
anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that
stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the
very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated.
As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to
think of him more consecutively.
She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him
George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected
revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he
may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste
of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once
inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and
legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a
string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws
her, some conventionality that restrains.
She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was
rising.
"It is a girl!" said Charles.
She turned her head away and fainted.
Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d'Or, almost
immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as man of
discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the
half-opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it well made.
Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a
name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian
endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde
pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better.
Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma opposed
this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted
outsiders.
"Monsieur Leon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking about it
the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very much in
fashion just now."
But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a
sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that
recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it
was on this system that he had baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon
represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to
romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the
French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere
with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of
sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination
and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the
ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded
all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic
over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported,
but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for
their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in
which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with
both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour.
At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyessard she had heard
the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was
chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested
to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment,
to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of
marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that
he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there
was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much excitement.
Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-time began singing "Le Dieu des bonnes
gens." Monsieur Leon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary, senior, who
was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary,
senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing
it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery
of the first of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old
Bovary replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux"; the cure
wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they
succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on
with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.
Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the
natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore
in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the
habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant
to the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his
son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his
daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne.
The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the
world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier
times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had
partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs,
or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look
out for yourself."
Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and
fearing that her husband might in the long-run have an immoral influence
upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure.
Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was
not the man to respect anything.
One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little
girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and, without
looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were
yet passed, she set out for the Rollets' house, situated at the extreme
end of the village, between the highroad and the fields.
It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the slate
roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to
strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy wind was blowing;
Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she
was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to
rest.
At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighbouring door with a
bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the
shade in front of the Lheureux's shop under the projecting grey awning.
Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was
beginning to grow tired.
"If--" said Leon, not daring to go on.
"Have you any business to attend to?" she asked.
And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same
evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's
wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was
compromising herself."
To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving
the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little
houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were
in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the
sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in
the hedges one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or
tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two,
side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining
his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges
fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.
They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it.
Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath the
dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright
against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of
lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here
and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags,
knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse
linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared
with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was
pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula,
the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their
business, left in the country.
"Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep."
The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its
farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a
kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which
was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door,
shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand,
near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu
Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and
bits of amadou.
Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame" blowing her
trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus
and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.
Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the
wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked
herself to and fro.
Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this
beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty.
Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been
an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who
had just been sick over her collar.
The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show.
"She gives me other doses," she said: "I am always a-washing of her. If
you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have
a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't
trouble you then."
"Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet," and
she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.
The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the
time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.
"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you
might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a
month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk."
After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had gone a
little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned
round. It was the nurse.
"What is it?"
Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began
talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year
that the captain--
"Oh, be quick!" said Emma.
"Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "I'm afraid
he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men--"
"But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you some. You
bother me!"
"Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he
has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him."
"Do make haste, Mere Rollet!"
"Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking
too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes
begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub your little
one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue."
Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She walked
fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of
her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat
had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and
carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one
wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to
trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing
desk.
They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the
bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls
whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift,
and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the
current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like
streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a
water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced
with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed
each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in
the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the
dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard
nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the
path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's dress rustling round
her.
The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were
hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up
between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary,
as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow
dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its
fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.
They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected
shortly at the Rouen theatre.
"Are you going?" she asked.
"If I can," he answered.
Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full
of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial
phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the
whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices.
Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of
speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like
tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn
softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication
without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.
In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to
step on large green stones put here and there in the mud.
She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and
tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent
forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling
into the puddles of water.
When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the
little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.
Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the
briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went
out.
He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of
the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and watched
the sky through his fingers.
"How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!"
He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais
for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely
absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red
whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements,
although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had
impressed the clerk.
As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle
as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins,
weeping for other's woes, letting everything go in her household, and
detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so
common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although
she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each
other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a
woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than
the gown.
And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three
publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his
two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands
and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable
companions.
But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's stood
out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to
see a vague abyss.
In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the
druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him
again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being
indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.
| 5,723 | Part 2, Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-3 | The next morning, Emma sees Leon through her bedroom window; they bow to each other. Leon, hopeful that the Bovarys will turn up for dinner at the inn again, can't wait for six o'clock. However, dinnertime rolls around, and Emma is nowhere to be found. He's deeply disappointed. Apparently, Leon isn't exactly a lady's man. His conversation with Emma the previous night was the most intimate situation he's ever been in with a "lady." Everyone in the town likes him for his many fine qualities, but he felt a different kind of connection with Emma. Homais turns out to be a very, very attentive neighbor. He gives Emma all kinds of assistance with the house, and is oh-so-friendly. However, he's not exactly Ned Flanders. It seems that his kindly guy-next-door act is a front; he'd been accused previously of illegally practicing medicine without any certification, and was threatened with legal action. A lot of townspeople, including the mayor, are out to get him, so he's careful to keep Charles on his side. Speaking of Charles, the poor guy isn't so happy. He doesn't have any patients yet, and spends most of his time hanging about the house. He's worried about money - the move from Tostes was expensive, and all the money that Emma brought with her to the marriage is gone. The only thing that cheers Charles up is the thought of Emma's pregnancy. He feels that his whole life is complete now that a baby is on the horizon. Emma, on the other hand, traversed a whole range of emotions, from astonished to bitter, before settling on indifferent. She decides that if she must have a baby, it should be a boy, so it can have the power to escape the rules that govern women. Instead, it's a girl. Emma passes out, presumably from disappointment, as well as the rigors of childbirth. Madame Homais and Madame Lefrancois rush in to see how things are going. Everyone is excited except Emma. Emma can't even think up a name for the poor kid. She has all kinds of romantic ideas about what she'd like to call the daughter . Homais has all kinds of crazy ideas, naturally, having named his children all kinds of crazy things. Emma eventually settles haphazardly on "Berthe." Little Berthe is baptized. Her godfather is Homais, since Emma's dad couldn't make it for the birth, and her godmother is old Madame Bovary, who's visiting with her husband. Charles's father gets along pretty well with Emma, who's interested in his stories of travel in the army. Charles's mom is worried that her husband will be a bad influence upon Emma, and they peace out pretty quickly. One day, as Emma is going to visit the baby , she runs into Leon. She invites him to come with her, which causes quite the scandal among the gossips of the town. The wetnurse lives in an unsavory little cottage. Leon is thrown off by the image before him, of the beautiful lady in a fancy dress surrounded by squalor. The baby makes a spectacular entrance by promptly spitting up on Emma. The visitors head out. As they're leaving, Madame Rollet comes up and wheedles the promise of some brandy out of Emma. Emma and Leon head back to Yonville. They obviously have an intense connection already. When they get back to town, Emma heads home, while Leon keeps wandering, pondering his boredom and the dullness of the other people he knows in town. He has quite the crush on our young Madame Bovary. | null | 854 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/13.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_12_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 4 | part 2, chapter 4 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-4", "summary": "Once the winter arrives, Emma moves into the parlor from her room. She sits and people-watches all day. Twice a day, she sees Leon go back and forth to and from his office. Monsieur Homais continues to be an attentive neighbor; he stops by every day around dinner time to discuss the daily news with Charles and to give Emma household tips. After this evening chat, Justin comes in to fetch his master. Homais pokes fun at the boy for having a crush on Felicite. The pharmacist also scolds Justin for eavesdropping all the time. On Sundays, the Homais household entertains the few townspeople Monsieur Homais hasn't alienated. Leon and the Bovarys always come. On these occasions, Leon is always by Emma's side, talking to her, coaching her at card games, and looking at magazines with her. Something is obviously going on between Emma and Leon. Charles, unsuspecting as ever, has no idea. At this point, Emma herself doesn't fully realize it. Leon is careful to include Charles in his thoughts, as to avoid suspicions. He gives the officier de sante a splendid phrenological head model for his birthday . Leon is always willing to get things for Emma, from the latest books to a bushel of cacti. Emma and Leon each have little gardens outside their windows, from which they look at each other while tending the plants. To show her gratitude, Emma has a gorgeous velvet bedspread sent over to Leon...it seems like something of an extravagant present. Everyone else is sure that the pair are lovers. Leon idiotically reinforces this idea by talking about Emma 24/7. Even poor Binet gets so sick of him that he snaps at the boy one day. Ah, l'amour! Leon is tortured by his love for Emma, and tries to figure out how to possibly tell her. He can't bring himself to do it. Emma, on the other hand, doesn't get all worked up; she doesn't even try and see if she is or isn't in love with him. Flaubert ominously ends the chapter, though, with the suggestion that one day she'll crack and her love will be out of control.", "analysis": ""} |
When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the
sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was
on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the
looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she could see
the villagers pass along the pavement.
Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Emma could hear
him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man
glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without
turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her
left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she
often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past.
She would get up and order the table to be laid.
Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on
tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase,
"Good evening, everybody." Then, when he had taken his seat at the table
between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter
consulted his as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked
of "what was in the paper."
Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end
to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories
of individual catastrophes that had occurred in France or abroad. But
the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some
remarks on the dishes before him.
Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the
tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the
manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning.
He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner.
Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars,
excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs;
he knew also all the latest inventions in economic stoves, together with
the art of preserving cheese and of curing sick wines.
At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop.
Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Felicite was
there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's
house.
"The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the devil
take me if I don't believe he's in love with your servant!"
But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his
constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could
not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called
him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the arm-chairs,
and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too
large.
Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his
scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated
various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be
there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took
her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that
she wore over her boots when there was snow.
First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais
played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her advice.
Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of
her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made
to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up. From her
turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually
paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then her dress fell
on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the
ground. When Leon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it,
he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one.
When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played
dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table,
turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration". She had brought her ladies'
journal with her. Leon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings
together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages. She
often begged him to read her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a
languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love
passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais
was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six.
Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in
front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the
cinders; the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading.
Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the
gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances
with their balancing-poles. Leon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his
sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation
seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard.
Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce
of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did
not trouble himself about it.
On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked
with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of
the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him
at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses
fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on
his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.
She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the
pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other
tending their flowers at their windows.
Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for
on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was
bright, one could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile of
Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be
heard at the Lion d'Or.
One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug in velvet and
wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur
Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief;
every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the
clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be his
lover.
He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and
of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him--
"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?"
He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to
her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the
shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire.
Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put
it off to times that he again deferred.
Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution
soon deserted him in Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in,
invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient
in the neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went
out. Her husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Emma,
she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come
suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies,
which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf,
and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on
the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she
would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a
rent in the wall of it.
| 1,955 | Part 2, Chapter 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-4 | Once the winter arrives, Emma moves into the parlor from her room. She sits and people-watches all day. Twice a day, she sees Leon go back and forth to and from his office. Monsieur Homais continues to be an attentive neighbor; he stops by every day around dinner time to discuss the daily news with Charles and to give Emma household tips. After this evening chat, Justin comes in to fetch his master. Homais pokes fun at the boy for having a crush on Felicite. The pharmacist also scolds Justin for eavesdropping all the time. On Sundays, the Homais household entertains the few townspeople Monsieur Homais hasn't alienated. Leon and the Bovarys always come. On these occasions, Leon is always by Emma's side, talking to her, coaching her at card games, and looking at magazines with her. Something is obviously going on between Emma and Leon. Charles, unsuspecting as ever, has no idea. At this point, Emma herself doesn't fully realize it. Leon is careful to include Charles in his thoughts, as to avoid suspicions. He gives the officier de sante a splendid phrenological head model for his birthday . Leon is always willing to get things for Emma, from the latest books to a bushel of cacti. Emma and Leon each have little gardens outside their windows, from which they look at each other while tending the plants. To show her gratitude, Emma has a gorgeous velvet bedspread sent over to Leon...it seems like something of an extravagant present. Everyone else is sure that the pair are lovers. Leon idiotically reinforces this idea by talking about Emma 24/7. Even poor Binet gets so sick of him that he snaps at the boy one day. Ah, l'amour! Leon is tortured by his love for Emma, and tries to figure out how to possibly tell her. He can't bring himself to do it. Emma, on the other hand, doesn't get all worked up; she doesn't even try and see if she is or isn't in love with him. Flaubert ominously ends the chapter, though, with the suggestion that one day she'll crack and her love will be out of control. | null | 503 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/14.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_13_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 5 | part 2, chapter 5 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-5", "summary": "The usual quartet is out on an odd and incredibly boring field trip. They're visiting a new spinning mill just outside town, along with two of Homais' unfortunately named children, Athalie and Napoleon. The main attraction is generally unattractive. Homais, as usual, chats up a storm. Everyone else is somewhat pensive. Emma reflects suddenly upon how irritating Charles is, even when he's doing nothing. Leon, on the other hand, looks particularly lovely to her. She begins to realize that something is happening between them. Napoleon ruins the moment by generally being bratty. He's painted his shoes white with a pile of lime that's lying around the mill. Charles and Justin attempt to get rid of it. That evening, Emma thinks about the day - and about Leon. She can't stop envisioning his face, his mannerisms, the sound of his voice. Finally, an epiphany: Leon loves her! Once she admits this to herself, Emma goes into full-out dramatic Love Overdrive. She laments fate, lolls around the house swooning left and right, and drifts about in a blissful haze. Generally, she does everything she's read about in books. The next day, Monsieur Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant stops by for a visit. He is quite clever and sounds, from Flaubert's description, like a pretty shady character. Nobody knows what he was up to before he came to Yonville. The merchant knows exactly what buttons to press with Emma. He talks up her elegance and refinement, then offers her a selection of dainty items to choose from. She sticks by her guns and says she doesn't need anything, but the seed has been planted - Emma, naturally, wants pretty things. Lheureux also slyly tells Emma that if she needs money, she can always borrow it from him...which doesn't sound like such a great idea, if you ask us. Emma congratulates herself on being so frugal, but she still can't stop thinking of Monsieur Lheureux's pretty wares. Leon shows up, nervous and on edge. He wants to say something to her about his feelings, but chickens out yet again. Awkwardness ensues. In the wake of the realization that she and Leon are in love, Emma attempts briefly to reform herself - she goes all serious and tries to clean up her act. Emma's good girl facade fools everyone, even Leon. He begins to wonder how he'd even hoped to get close to her. In his mind, she becomes even more spectacular and flawless. Everyone admires Emma for her elegance and character. Now that she's playing the good housewife, she floats along easily in Yonville society. However, on the inside, she conceals passionate feelings. We're talking serious angst, here. When she's alone, she can only think of Leon - actually, these fantasies are more enjoyable than his presence, which leaves her unsatisfied. Emma wishes Leon would notice that she's in love with him, but she's either too lazy or too scared to make anything happen herself. She consoles herself by striking dramatic poses in the mirror and prides herself on her \"virtue.\" All of Emma's secret troubles build up to the boiling point, and she strikes out, complaining about the littlest things, like a door left open or a dish she doesn't enjoy. She is also incredibly irritated by Charles's dopey lack of awareness; he's still sure that he's making her perfectly happy. She feels underappreciated, and makes Charles the focus of all her aggression. Emma's depression returns from time to time. Felicite tries to comfort her, telling her that she once knew another girl who suffered from a similar problem - it was cured by marriage. Unfortunately for Emma, her sadness was brought on by her marriage to Charles.", "analysis": ""} |
It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling.
They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Leon,
gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and a
half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give
them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas
on his shoulder.
Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great
piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and
stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a
quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The
building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the
roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed
with corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind.
Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance
of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the
thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick
such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use.
Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and
she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale
splendour. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over
his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look
of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating
to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the
bearer.
While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of
depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale
seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and
his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the
lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large
blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more
beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.
"Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist.
And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of
lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was
being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes
with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his.
"Ah!" she said to herself, "he carried a knife in his pocket like a
peasant."
The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.
In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour's, and when
Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began
with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that
lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from
her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had
down there, Leon standing up with one hand behind his cane, and with
the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She
thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she
recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the
sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her
lips as if for a kiss--
"Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked herself; "but
with whom? With me?"
All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of
the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back,
stretching out her arms.
Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had not willed it!
And why not? What prevented it?"
When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened,
and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then
asked carelessly what had happened that evening.
"Monsieur Leon," he said, "went to his room early."
She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a
new delight.
The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lherueux, the
draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but
bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of
the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a
decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the
keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been
formerly; a pedlar said some, a banker at Routot according to others.
What was certain was that he made complex calculations in his head that
would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always
held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who
invites.
After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down
a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with
many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without
gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract
a "fashionable lady"; he emphasized the words; yet she had only to
command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might
wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for
he went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the
best houses. You could speak of him at the "Trois Freres," at the "Barbe
d'Or," or at the "Grand Sauvage"; all these gentlemen knew him as
well as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show
madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to
the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered
collars from the box.
Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything," she said.
Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves,
several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and
finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in open work by convicts.
Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure
bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma's look, who was walking up
and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove
some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread
out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the
green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little
stars.
"How much are they?"
"A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no hurry;
whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews."
She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur
Lheureux's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly--
"Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got
on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!"
Emma smiled.
"I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, "that
it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some,
if need be."
She made a gesture of surprise.
"Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to go far to
find you some, rely on that."
And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the "Cafe
Francais," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.
"What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his
whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than
a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! Those sort of people,
madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. Still
it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off."
And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's
patients.
"It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the floor,
"that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the thing. One of these
days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my
back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble
servant." And he closed the door gently.
Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she
was a long time over it; everything was well with her.
"How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.
She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Leon. She got up and took
from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be hemmed. When
he came in she seemed very busy.
The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes,
whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near
the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She
stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with
her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence,
as he would have been by her speech.
"Poor fellow!" she thought.
"How have I displeased her?" he asked himself.
At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these days, to
go to Rouen on some office business.
"Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?"
"No," she replied.
"Why?"
"Because--"
And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread.
This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers.
A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it.
"Then you are giving it up?" he went on.
"What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to
look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many
duties that must be considered first?"
She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected anxiety.
Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!"
The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his behalf
astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on his praises,
which he said everyone was singing, especially the chemist.
"Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma.
"Certainly," replied the clerk.
And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance
generally made them laugh.
"What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife does not
trouble about her appearance."
Then she relapsed into silence.
It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners,
everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church
regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity.
She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite brought her
in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared
she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion,
and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outburst which would have
reminded anyone but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Notre Dame de
Paris."
When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire.
His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was
quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the night-caps arranged in piles
of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn
in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not
understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when
Leon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,
his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his eyes
moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this
woman with the slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his
forehead: "What madness!" he said to himself. "And how to reach her!"
And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all
hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on
an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly
attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she
rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent
manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure
feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because
they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion
rejoices.
Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black
hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always
silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely
touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine
destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved,
that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder
in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the
marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist
said--
"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a
sub-prefecture."
The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the
poor her charity.
But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with
the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose torment those chaste
lips said nothing. She was in love with Leon, and sought solitude that
she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his
form troubled the voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at
the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and
afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended
in sorrow.
Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after he had
gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his comings
and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find
an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's wife seemed happy to her
to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon
this house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip their
red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised
her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident,
that she might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess it, and
she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.
What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of
shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was
past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of being able to say to
herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking
resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she
was making.
Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy
of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of
turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself
to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by
an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had
not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow
home.
What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her
anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an
imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose
sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all
felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of
that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides.
On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that
resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented
it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair,
and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own
gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity
drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires.
She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better
right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised
sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and
she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she
was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.
Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the
temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life; but at once a
vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.
"Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become of me?
What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?"
She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with
flowing tears.
"Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in
during these crises.
"It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it would
worry him."
"Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere
Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at
Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her
standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a
winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was
a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do
anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went
off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his
rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle.
Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say."
"But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it began."
| 4,425 | Part 2, Chapter 5 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-5 | The usual quartet is out on an odd and incredibly boring field trip. They're visiting a new spinning mill just outside town, along with two of Homais' unfortunately named children, Athalie and Napoleon. The main attraction is generally unattractive. Homais, as usual, chats up a storm. Everyone else is somewhat pensive. Emma reflects suddenly upon how irritating Charles is, even when he's doing nothing. Leon, on the other hand, looks particularly lovely to her. She begins to realize that something is happening between them. Napoleon ruins the moment by generally being bratty. He's painted his shoes white with a pile of lime that's lying around the mill. Charles and Justin attempt to get rid of it. That evening, Emma thinks about the day - and about Leon. She can't stop envisioning his face, his mannerisms, the sound of his voice. Finally, an epiphany: Leon loves her! Once she admits this to herself, Emma goes into full-out dramatic Love Overdrive. She laments fate, lolls around the house swooning left and right, and drifts about in a blissful haze. Generally, she does everything she's read about in books. The next day, Monsieur Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant stops by for a visit. He is quite clever and sounds, from Flaubert's description, like a pretty shady character. Nobody knows what he was up to before he came to Yonville. The merchant knows exactly what buttons to press with Emma. He talks up her elegance and refinement, then offers her a selection of dainty items to choose from. She sticks by her guns and says she doesn't need anything, but the seed has been planted - Emma, naturally, wants pretty things. Lheureux also slyly tells Emma that if she needs money, she can always borrow it from him...which doesn't sound like such a great idea, if you ask us. Emma congratulates herself on being so frugal, but she still can't stop thinking of Monsieur Lheureux's pretty wares. Leon shows up, nervous and on edge. He wants to say something to her about his feelings, but chickens out yet again. Awkwardness ensues. In the wake of the realization that she and Leon are in love, Emma attempts briefly to reform herself - she goes all serious and tries to clean up her act. Emma's good girl facade fools everyone, even Leon. He begins to wonder how he'd even hoped to get close to her. In his mind, she becomes even more spectacular and flawless. Everyone admires Emma for her elegance and character. Now that she's playing the good housewife, she floats along easily in Yonville society. However, on the inside, she conceals passionate feelings. We're talking serious angst, here. When she's alone, she can only think of Leon - actually, these fantasies are more enjoyable than his presence, which leaves her unsatisfied. Emma wishes Leon would notice that she's in love with him, but she's either too lazy or too scared to make anything happen herself. She consoles herself by striking dramatic poses in the mirror and prides herself on her "virtue." All of Emma's secret troubles build up to the boiling point, and she strikes out, complaining about the littlest things, like a door left open or a dish she doesn't enjoy. She is also incredibly irritated by Charles's dopey lack of awareness; he's still sure that he's making her perfectly happy. She feels underappreciated, and makes Charles the focus of all her aggression. Emma's depression returns from time to time. Felicite tries to comfort her, telling her that she once knew another girl who suffered from a similar problem - it was cured by marriage. Unfortunately for Emma, her sadness was brought on by her marriage to Charles. | null | 896 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/15.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_14_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 6 | part 2, chapter 6 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-6", "summary": "Poor Emma. It's springtime, and she finally attempts to do something to change her life. Remembering how much she loved the convent school, she goes to church to talk to Father Bournisien. She finds the priest much preoccupied by the schoolboys he's in charge of. He's something of an irritable and unpleasant man. Emma flat-out tells the priest that she's suffering. He assumes that her suffering is physical, and asks if Charles has prescribed anything for it. When Emma attempts to explain her situation, he gets distracted by the boys again, and breaks off the conversation to yell at them. This is hopeless. The priest obviously has nothing to offer Emma - they talk for a while longer, their conversation punctuated by the children. Father Bournisien eventually just dismisses Emma, telling her to go home and have a cup of tea. She leaves, disgruntled. When she gets home, the stillness of the house seems to mock her. Berthe tries to come over and hug her mother. Emma , angrily pushes the little girl away. Pushing a baby? Come on, Emma. This is a new low. Poor Berthe falls and hits her head on the dresser. She starts to bleed, and Emma freaks out. She feels terrible. Charles comes home, and Emma tells him that the baby fell over while she was playing. He takes care of the injury and tells Emma not to worry. Emma feels bad for a while, but her anxiety eventually wears off. She looks at Berthe dispassionately, thinking about how ugly the child is. Charles, in the meanwhile, has been visiting the Homais family. Mr. and Mrs. Homais. try to cheer him up in a truly warped way, by talking about the various dangers that children face in their everyday lives. The Homais kids live in a totally child-safe household without sharp knives and with bars on the windows. Leon is also around. Charles pulls him aside - the clerk worries that the doctor suspects his feelings for Emma. Luckily for Leon, Charles is still the same old well-intentioned buffoon he always was. He actually wants Leon to go into Rouen for him and make some inquiries about getting a portrait of Charles made. It turns out that Leon goes into the city every week - nobody knows why. Homais suspects that the young man has a secret lover there . Nobody can figure out what Leon's deal is. Madame Lefrancois notices that he's started leaving food on his plate at dinner. Binet suggests that Leon should take up carpentry to improve his disposition . Leon's boredom with Yonville and angst about his love for Emma are at a breaking point. However, he's also afraid of moving away. In the end, though, he decides to leave right away for Paris, to start his studies in the big city. Soon enough it's time to go. The Homais give Leon a tearful seeing-off, but before he leaves, he goes to bid Charles and Emma farewell. Charles isn't at home, so he and Emma have a tense parting moment. He kisses baby Berthe goodbye, then he and Emma are left alone. They shake hands awkwardly - the tension is palpable. Leon leaves Yonville, accompanied by the notary, Monsieur Guillaumin. After he's gone, Emma mopes around, wondering where he is. Monsieur Homais comes over to visit as usual, and they discuss Leon's fate in Paris. Homais and Charles are worried that Leon will be corrupted by the city, or else catch some horrible disease. Emma is distressed. Soon enough, though, Homais acts as though nothing has happened. He heads back home merrily.", "analysis": ""} |
One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been
watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard
the Angelus ringing.
It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a
warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like
women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars
of the arbour and away beyond the river seen in the fields, meandering
through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between
the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler
and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches.
In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing
could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its
peaceful lamentation.
With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost
themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered
the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the
altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked
to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here
and there by the stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over
their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the
gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense.
Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the
down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she
went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that
her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it.
On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order not
to shorten his day's labour, he preferred interrupting his work,
then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own
convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads
of catechism hour.
Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the
cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their
clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the
newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but
stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom.
The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure
made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the
humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the
great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on
the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the
air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow
nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was
burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a
distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of
the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and
the corners.
"Where is the cure?" asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who was
amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it.
"He is just coming," he answered.
And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbe Bournisien appeared;
the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.
"These young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!"
Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with is
foot, "They respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught sight of Madame
Bovary, "Excuse me," he said; "I did not recognise you."
He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing
the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.
The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the
lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at the hem.
Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines
of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his
neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was
dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of
his greyish beard. He had just dined and was breathing noisily.
"How are you?" he added.
"Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill."
"Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These first warm days weaken
one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all, we are born to suffer,
as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think of it?"
"He!" she said with a gesture of contempt.
"What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he prescribe
something for you?"
"Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I need."
But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the
kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs
of cards.
"I should like to know--" she went on.
"You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "I'll warm
your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma, "He's Boudet the carpenter's
son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he
could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes
for a joke I call him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to
Maromme) and I even say 'Mon Riboudet.' Ha! Ha! 'Mont Riboudet.' The
other day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he
condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?"
She seemed not to hear him. And he went on--
"Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest
people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he added with a
thick laugh, "and I of the soul."
She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said, "you
solace all sorrows."
"Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to
Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell.
All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon me! Longuemarre and
Boudet! Bless me! Will you leave off?"
And with a bound he ran into the church.
The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over
the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were
just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly
distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of
their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their
knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them
there.
"Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton
handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are
much to be pitied."
"Others, too," she replied.
"Assuredly. Town-labourers, for example."
"It is not they--"
"Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I
assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread."
"But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she
spoke, "those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have no--"
"Fire in the winter," said the priest.
"Oh, what does that matter?"
"What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and
food--for, after all--"
"My God! my God!" she sighed.
"It is indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bovary; drink
a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water
with a little moist sugar."
"Why?" And she looked like one awaking from a dream.
"Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I thought
you felt faint." Then, bethinking himself, "But you were asking me
something? What was it? I really don't remember."
"I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma.
And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the
cassock. They looked at one another face to face without speaking.
"Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty first, you
know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The first communion will
soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after all. So after
Ascension Day I keep them recta* an extra hour every Wednesday. Poor
children! One cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord, as,
moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his Divine
Son. Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband."
*On the straight and narrow path.
And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached
the door.
Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with a
heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two
hands half-open behind him.
Then she turned on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on a pivot,
and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices
of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her.
"Are you a Christian?"
"Yes, I am a Christian."
"What is a Christian?"
"He who, being baptized-baptized-baptized--"
She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and
when she was in her room threw herself into an arm-chair.
The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations.
The furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to
lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out,
the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of
all things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was
there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted
shoes, and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her
apron-strings.
"Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her hand.
The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on
them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a
small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron.
"Leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably.
Her face frightened the child, who began to scream.
"Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow.
Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting
her cheek, which began to bleed, against it. Madame Bovary sprang to
lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her
might, and she was just going to curse herself when Charles appeared. It
was the dinner-hour; he had come home.
"Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell down
while she was playing, and has hurt herself."
Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for
some sticking plaster.
Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished
to remain alone to look after the child. Then watching her sleep, the
little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid
to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little.
Berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed.
Her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. Big tears
lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one
could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew
the skin obliquely.
"It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly this child is!"
When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from the chemist's shop,
whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the
sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle.
"I assure you it's nothing." he said, kissing her on the forehead.
"Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill."
He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had not seemed
much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to
"keep up his spirits." Then they had talked of the various dangers that
threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. Madame Homais knew
something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin
full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and
her good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives were not
sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows
and strong bars across the fireplace; the little Homais, in spite of
their spirit, could not stir without someone watching them; at the
slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until
they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded
head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais'; her
husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences
of such compression to the intellectual organs. He even went so far as
to say to her, "Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?"
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 bent 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.
Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched
the clouds. They gathered around the sunset on the side of Rouen and
then swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great
rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy,
while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust
of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered
against the green leaves.
Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in
the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed
away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia.
"Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought.
Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner.
"Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!"
"So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair; "Any news
at home?"
"Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. You know
women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be
wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more
malleable than ours."
"Poor Leon!" said Charles. "How will he live at Paris? Will he get used
to it?"
Madame Bovary sighed.
"Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "The outings at
restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly
enough, I assure you."
"I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary.
"Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although he'll have to do
like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don't know what
a life those dogs lead in the Latin quarter with actresses. Besides,
students are thought a great deal of in Paris. Provided they have a few
accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even
ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which
subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches."
"But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down there--"
"You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of the
medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket
there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. An individual
presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, and whom one
would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself;
offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more
intimate; he takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house,
introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and
three-fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you
into some pernicious step.
"That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking especially of
illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the
provinces."
Emma shuddered.
"Because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and of the
perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. And then the
water at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at restaurants, all the
spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever
people may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have always
preferred plain living; it is more healthy. So when I was studying
pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boarding house; I dined with the
professors."
And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal
likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was
wanted.
"Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! I can't go out for a
minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling and toiling.
What drudgery!" Then, when he was at the door, "By the way, do you know
the news?"
"What news?"
"That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising his eyebrows and
assuming one of his most serious expression, "that the agricultural
meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this year at
Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumour, at all events, is going the round. This
morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the utmost importance
for our district. But we'll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you;
Justin has the lantern."
| 6,302 | Part 2, Chapter 6 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-6 | Poor Emma. It's springtime, and she finally attempts to do something to change her life. Remembering how much she loved the convent school, she goes to church to talk to Father Bournisien. She finds the priest much preoccupied by the schoolboys he's in charge of. He's something of an irritable and unpleasant man. Emma flat-out tells the priest that she's suffering. He assumes that her suffering is physical, and asks if Charles has prescribed anything for it. When Emma attempts to explain her situation, he gets distracted by the boys again, and breaks off the conversation to yell at them. This is hopeless. The priest obviously has nothing to offer Emma - they talk for a while longer, their conversation punctuated by the children. Father Bournisien eventually just dismisses Emma, telling her to go home and have a cup of tea. She leaves, disgruntled. When she gets home, the stillness of the house seems to mock her. Berthe tries to come over and hug her mother. Emma , angrily pushes the little girl away. Pushing a baby? Come on, Emma. This is a new low. Poor Berthe falls and hits her head on the dresser. She starts to bleed, and Emma freaks out. She feels terrible. Charles comes home, and Emma tells him that the baby fell over while she was playing. He takes care of the injury and tells Emma not to worry. Emma feels bad for a while, but her anxiety eventually wears off. She looks at Berthe dispassionately, thinking about how ugly the child is. Charles, in the meanwhile, has been visiting the Homais family. Mr. and Mrs. Homais. try to cheer him up in a truly warped way, by talking about the various dangers that children face in their everyday lives. The Homais kids live in a totally child-safe household without sharp knives and with bars on the windows. Leon is also around. Charles pulls him aside - the clerk worries that the doctor suspects his feelings for Emma. Luckily for Leon, Charles is still the same old well-intentioned buffoon he always was. He actually wants Leon to go into Rouen for him and make some inquiries about getting a portrait of Charles made. It turns out that Leon goes into the city every week - nobody knows why. Homais suspects that the young man has a secret lover there . Nobody can figure out what Leon's deal is. Madame Lefrancois notices that he's started leaving food on his plate at dinner. Binet suggests that Leon should take up carpentry to improve his disposition . Leon's boredom with Yonville and angst about his love for Emma are at a breaking point. However, he's also afraid of moving away. In the end, though, he decides to leave right away for Paris, to start his studies in the big city. Soon enough it's time to go. The Homais give Leon a tearful seeing-off, but before he leaves, he goes to bid Charles and Emma farewell. Charles isn't at home, so he and Emma have a tense parting moment. He kisses baby Berthe goodbye, then he and Emma are left alone. They shake hands awkwardly - the tension is palpable. Leon leaves Yonville, accompanied by the notary, Monsieur Guillaumin. After he's gone, Emma mopes around, wondering where he is. Monsieur Homais comes over to visit as usual, and they discuss Leon's fate in Paris. Homais and Charles are worried that Leon will be corrupted by the city, or else catch some horrible disease. Emma is distressed. Soon enough, though, Homais acts as though nothing has happened. He heads back home merrily. | null | 873 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/17.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_16_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 8 | part 2, chapter 8 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-8", "summary": "It's a big day for little Yonville - the town fair. Everyone in the town is up early to set up for it. Binet, who doubles as the captain of the fire brigade, is all gussied up. The whole town is looking its best. The only person who's not too thrilled about all of this is Madame Lefrancois. Homais stops to chat with her, and she cheers up a little when she finds out that he's on the fair advisory committee . Homais keeps talking, but his audience is not listening. We follow Madame Lefrancois' gaze and see what has put her in such a foul mood - the town's other tavern, her rival, is full of singing people. These good days won't last too long, though; she tells Homais that she heard that Tellier, the barkeep, was in such great debt to Monsieur Lheureux that the tavern was going to be shut down the following week. From the perspective of these gossiping neighbors, we see Emma and Rodolphe a little ways off, talking to Monsieur Lheureux. Rodolphe is obviously planning on making his move already - unlike Leon, he's a pretty smooth operator. Homais goes over to say hello, but Rodolphe manages to avoid him. He regards Emma as they walk along - he's pleased with what he sees. Monsieur Lheureux attempts to follow them and maintain their conversation, but they get rid of him quickly. Rodolphe immediately launches his attack and starts flirting openly with Emma once they're alone. The townspeople are assembled for various agricultural competitions. Rodolphe is supposed to participate in the judging, but he has other things on his mind. He turns all his attention to Emma, who responds eagerly to him. He knows exactly what buttons to push - they talk about the frustrations of provincial life, the loneliness of existence...basically, all of Emma's favorite subjects. Their conversation is interrupted by the entrance of the fire brigade and the start of the awards ceremony. A government official, Monsieur Lieuvain, arrives to dole out the prizes; he gives a long, long, loooong speech about the government, the country. While this is going on, Emma and Rodolphe continue their intimate conversation. Rodolphe claims that the only true duty is to enjoy what's beautiful about life, and reject the conventions of society. Emma feebly tries to argue that society's moral standards are important, but Rodolphe shoots her down promptly. He's the clear winner here; Emma is toast. Monsieur Lieuvain, in the meanwhile, just keeps talking and talking. He's full of governmental rhetoric, but he's basically not talking about anything. Despite this fact, the whole town is enraptured by him. Rodolphe quickly wins Emma over. All of her feelings about Leon, the Viscount at the ball, and her loneliness come rushing back, and re-focus on Rodolphe. She's smitten. Finally, Monsieur Lieuvain wraps up his speech. Another speech begins, and Rodolphe continues to woo Emma all the while. Agricultural prizes are given for things as diverse as pigs, liquid manure , and drainage. Simultaneously , Rodolphe declares his love for Emma. The prizes, and the wooing, conclude with the awarding of a prize for long service, which is awarded to a confused little old woman. Flaubert describes this woman, Catherine Leroux, with rather excruciating detail; she's obviously been broken down by years of hard work. She says that she will give her prize money to the priest, which offends Homais. Following this ludicrous ceremony, a big feast begins. The townspeople, in a frenzy of communal gluttony, all stuff themselves. Rodolphe isn't interested in the food - he's thinking of Emma and of the pleasure he'll get from her in the future. Emma is off with Charles and the Homais family. The grand finale of the festival is a display of fireworks - unfortunately, they're too damp, and they barely go off. The evening ends rather anti-climactically, and everyone drifts back home. Homais proceeds to write an enthusiastic, over-the-top article about the fiesta, and publish it in a Rouen paper.", "analysis": ""} |
At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the
solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the
preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been hung with garlands
of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the
middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was
to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful
farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was
none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet
was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and,
tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless
that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into
his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement.
As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel,
both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One
saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and re-pass
alternately; there was no end to it, and it constantly began again.
There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had
scoured their houses the evening before; tri-coloured flags hung from
half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely
weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured
neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved
with the motley colours the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue
smocks. The neighbouring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses,
pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their dresses, turned
up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their part, in order to save
their hats, kept their handkerchiefs around them, holding one corner
between their teeth.
The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village.
People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time
to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women
with their gloves, who were going out to see the fete. What was most
admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a
platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were
against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles,
each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with
inscriptions in gold letters.
On one was written, "To Commerce"; on the other, "To Agriculture"; on
the third, "To Industry"; and on the fourth, "To the Fine Arts."
But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of
Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she
muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas
booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under
a tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place!
Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a
cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!"
The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers,
beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown.
"Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat widow asked
where he was going--
"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, I who am always more cooped up in my
laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese."
"What cheese?" asked the landlady.
"Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished to convey
to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home like a recluse.
To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--"
"Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously.
"Yes, I am going," replied the druggist, astonished. "Am I not a member
of the consulting commission?"
Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying
with a smile--
"That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you?
Do you understand anything about it?"
"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist--that is to say,
a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the
knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies,
it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in
fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the
analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is
all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?"
The landlady did not answer. Homais went on--
"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled
the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the
composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the
atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters,
the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not.
And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to
direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals,
the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know
botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are
the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive
and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them
there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace
with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the
alert to find out improvements."
The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francois" and the chemist
went on--
"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they
would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus lately I
myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages,
entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with some
New Reflections on the Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural Society
of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among
its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if my
work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame
Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.
"Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop
as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her
breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands
at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "Well, it won't
last long," she added. "It'll be over before a week."
Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and
whispered in his ear--
"What! you didn't know it? There is to be an execution in next week.
It's Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed him with bills."
"What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the druggist, who always found
expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.
Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from
Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she detested
Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak."
"There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to
Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur
Boulanger's arm."
"Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her my
respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure
under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was
calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off
rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously
to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his
frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind.
Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame
Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her,
said in a rough tone--
"It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist."
She pressed his elbow.
"What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he looked at her out
of the corner of his eyes.
Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood
out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it
like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked
straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered
by the cheek-bones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the
delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils.
Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white
teeth were seen between her lips.
"Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe.
Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur
Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter
into the conversation.
"What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!"
And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, whilst at the
slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your
pardon!" and raised his hat.
When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road
up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him
Madame Bovary. He called out--
"Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently."
"How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing.
"Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as
to-day I have the happiness of being with you--"
Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine
weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had
sprung up again.
"Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to
furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place."
He added, "Shall I pick some? What do you think?"
"Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little.
"H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe.
The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with their
great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get
out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue
stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelt of milk, when one
passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand,
and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to
the banquet tent.
But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other
entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks.
The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a
confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in
the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the
cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass,
slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats
that buzzed round them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by the
halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils looking
towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and
flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then
came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded
animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some
sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart,
outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull,
muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and who moved no more than
if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope.
Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps,
examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One
who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he
walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de
la Panville. As soon as he recognised Rodolphe he came forward quickly,
and smiling amiably, said--
"What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?"
Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had
disappeared--
"Ma foi!*" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his."
*Upon my word!
And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily,
showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in
front of some fine beast, which Madame Bovary did not at all admire.
He noticed this, and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their
dresses; then he apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that
incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think
they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations
of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for
social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric
shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his
waistcoat of grey ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at
the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters.
These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on
horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his
straw hat on one side.
"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country--"
"It's waste of time," said Emma.
"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people
is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!"
Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed,
the illusions lost there.
"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."
"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted."
"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to
wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the
sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were
not better to join those sleeping there!"
"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them."
"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he
accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.
But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great
pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen
with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the
ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger,
who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to
all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning
the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew
which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for
these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the
thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.
Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to
himself--
"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim
in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone! Oh, how I would
have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything,
overcome everything!"
"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied."
"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.
"For, after all," she went on, "you are free--" she hesitated, "rich--"
"Do not mock me," he replied.
And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a
cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell
towards the village.
It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the
members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to
begin the meeting or still wait.
At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by
two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily.
Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to
imitate him. All ran towards the enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A
few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed
to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their
harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town
hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed,
beating drums and marking time.
"Present!" shouted Binet.
"Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march."
And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting
loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns
were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman
in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft
of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most
benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were
half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his
sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognised the
mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able
to come. He himself was a councillor at the prefecture; then he added
a few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the
other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face,
their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round,
the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and
the crowd. The councillor pressing his little cocked hat to his
breast repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled,
stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the
monarchy and the honour that was being done to Yonville.
Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the
coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door
of the "Lion d'Or", where a number of peasants collected to look at the
carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one
by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet
arm-chairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.
All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned
by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers
emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows.
All the waist-coats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches
had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone
rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of
their trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than
the leather of their heavy boots.
The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between
the pillars while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting
on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all
those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back
every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion
with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to
the small steps of the platform.
"I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his
place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something
rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty
effect."
"To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor took
everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and
he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art."
Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first
floor of the town hall, to the "council-room," and, as it was empty,
he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He
fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch,
and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each
other.
There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying.
At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain,
and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had
collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began--
"Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on
the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will, I am sure, be
shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the
higher administration, to the government to the monarch, gentle men, our
sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private
prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at
once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils
of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well
as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts?"
"I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further."
"Why?" said Emma.
But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an extraordinary
pitch. He declaimed--
"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined
our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man
himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled
lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins,
when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations."
"Well, someone down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then
I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad
reputation--"
"Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma.
"No! It is dreadful, I assure you."
"But, gentlemen," continued the councillor, "if, banishing from my
memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back
to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there?
Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means
of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state,
establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centres have
recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in
all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France
breathes once more!"
"Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they
are right."
"How so?" she asked.
"What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly
tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions
and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all
sorts of fantasies, of follies."
Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has voyaged over
strange lands, and went on--
"We have not even this distraction, we poor women!"
"A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it."
"But is it ever found?" she asked.
"Yes; one day it comes," he answered.
"And this is what you have understood," said the councillor.
"You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of a work
that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress and morality,
you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more
redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!"
"It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when
one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice
cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your
life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There
is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen
each other in dreams!"
(And he looked at her.) "In fine, here it is, this treasure so sought
after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts,
one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from
darkness into light."
And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his
hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it
fall on Emma's. She took hers away.
"And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who is so blind,
so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices
of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural
populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the
country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a
word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence,
vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced
intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus
contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to
the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of
duty--"
"Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word.
They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with
foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty,
duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the
beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the
ignominy that it imposes upon us."
"Yet--yet--" objected Madame Bovary.
"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one
beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of
poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?"
"But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the
world and accept its moral code."
"Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conventional, that
of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that
makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthly, like the mass
of imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is
about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue
heavens that give us light."
Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief.
He continued--
"And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses
of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of
subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen,
who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country,
brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by
means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour,
and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the
baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it
not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant
flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish
ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even
necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected
on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the
ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow
for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should
never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different
products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother,
lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple
tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let
us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and
to which I will more particularly call your attention."
He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide
open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him
with staring eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed
his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between
his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable.
The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in
their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the
platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with
out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could
hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his
helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of
Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on
his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled
beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little
face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and
sleepiness.
The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk
leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors,
and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by
the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur
Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of
phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the
crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the
bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In
fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and
these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down
some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.
Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice,
speaking rapidly--
"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single
sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest
sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do
meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend together. Yet they will
make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon
each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years,
they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they
are born one for the other."
His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards
Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes
small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the
perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy.
Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had
waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an
odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes
the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant
back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the
horizon, the old diligence, the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending
the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this
yellow carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this
route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him
opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it
seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of
the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away,
that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent
of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced
through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust
of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which
suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink
in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves,
she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while
athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the
crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He
said--"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of
routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism.
"Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good
manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine
races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in
leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise
with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble
domestics, whose hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into
consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues,
and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it
encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just
demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful
sacrifices."
Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning
another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor,
but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by
more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise
of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture
more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had
always contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was
talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of
society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns
in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had
put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and
in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur
Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little
Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing
Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his cabbages, and the
Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the
young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible
attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence.
"Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance
willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that
flow but to unite; our special bents of mind had driven us towards each
other."
And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.
"For good farming generally!" cried the president.
"Just now, for example, when I went to your house."
"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."
"Did I know I should accompany you?"
"Seventy francs."
"A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained."
"Manures!"
"And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!"
"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"
"For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a
charm."
"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."
"And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you."
"For a merino ram!"
"But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow."
"To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame."
"Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I
not?"
"Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg,
sixty francs!"
Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering
like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but, whether she was trying
to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure; she made a
movement with her fingers. He exclaimed--
"Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand
that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!"
A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the
table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women
were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.
"Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on:
"Flemish manure-flax-growing-drainage-long leases-domestic service."
Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme
desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without an effort,
their fingers intertwined.
"Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere, for
fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value,
twenty-five francs!"
"Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councillor.
She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering--
"Go up!"
"Don't be afraid!"
"Oh, how stupid she is!"
"Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache.
"Yes; here she is."
"Then let her come up!"
Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid
bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she
wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her
pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered
russet apple. And from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two
large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of washing
the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that
they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and
by dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble
witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of
monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion
weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had
caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she
found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by
the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the
councillor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run
away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at
her.
Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of
servitude.
"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the
councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president;
and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he
repeated in a fatherly tone--"Approach! approach!"
"Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began
shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal!
Twenty-five francs! For you!"
Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude
spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her
muttering "I'll give it to our cure up home, to say some masses for me!"
"What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary.
The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had
been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into
the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the
animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green-crown on
their horns.
The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the
town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the
battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's
arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about
alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.
The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that
they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for
forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one
stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a
whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated
above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against
the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard
nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty
plates, his neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled
his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing
noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips;
her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the
folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all
infinity before him in the vistas of the future.
He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with
her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the
danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and
give some advice to Binet.
The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess
of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would
not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon
biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meagre Roman-candle
went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the
cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma
silently nestled against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she
watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe
gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.
They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops of rain began
to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.
At this moment the councillor's carriage came out from the inn.
His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from
the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his
body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.
"Truly," said the druggist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously
against drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door
of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the names of all those who during
the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics,
one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to
in case of need. But excuse me!"
*Specifically for that.
And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to
see his lathe again.
"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your
men, or to go yourself--"
"Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!"
"Do not be uneasy," said the druggist, when he returned to his friends.
"Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No
sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest."
"Ma foi! I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never
mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fete."
Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very
beautiful!"
And having bowed to one another, they separated.
Two days later, in the "Final de Rouen," there was a long article on the
show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next morning.
"Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this
crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical
sun pouring its heat upon our heads?"
Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government
was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand
reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on
the entry of the councillor, he did not forget "the martial air of our
militia;" nor "our most merry village maidens;" nor the "bald-headed old
men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of
our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the
drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury,
and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais,
chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society.
When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of
the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced the son,
the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed
his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good
housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.
"About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard
brought together the principal personages of the fete. The greatest
cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur
Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays,
Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin
sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant
fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a
veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our
little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of
a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' Let us state that no untoward
event disturbed this family meeting." And he added "Only the absence
of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests understand progress in
another fashion. Just as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!"
| 11,574 | Part 2, Chapter 8 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-8 | It's a big day for little Yonville - the town fair. Everyone in the town is up early to set up for it. Binet, who doubles as the captain of the fire brigade, is all gussied up. The whole town is looking its best. The only person who's not too thrilled about all of this is Madame Lefrancois. Homais stops to chat with her, and she cheers up a little when she finds out that he's on the fair advisory committee . Homais keeps talking, but his audience is not listening. We follow Madame Lefrancois' gaze and see what has put her in such a foul mood - the town's other tavern, her rival, is full of singing people. These good days won't last too long, though; she tells Homais that she heard that Tellier, the barkeep, was in such great debt to Monsieur Lheureux that the tavern was going to be shut down the following week. From the perspective of these gossiping neighbors, we see Emma and Rodolphe a little ways off, talking to Monsieur Lheureux. Rodolphe is obviously planning on making his move already - unlike Leon, he's a pretty smooth operator. Homais goes over to say hello, but Rodolphe manages to avoid him. He regards Emma as they walk along - he's pleased with what he sees. Monsieur Lheureux attempts to follow them and maintain their conversation, but they get rid of him quickly. Rodolphe immediately launches his attack and starts flirting openly with Emma once they're alone. The townspeople are assembled for various agricultural competitions. Rodolphe is supposed to participate in the judging, but he has other things on his mind. He turns all his attention to Emma, who responds eagerly to him. He knows exactly what buttons to push - they talk about the frustrations of provincial life, the loneliness of existence...basically, all of Emma's favorite subjects. Their conversation is interrupted by the entrance of the fire brigade and the start of the awards ceremony. A government official, Monsieur Lieuvain, arrives to dole out the prizes; he gives a long, long, loooong speech about the government, the country. While this is going on, Emma and Rodolphe continue their intimate conversation. Rodolphe claims that the only true duty is to enjoy what's beautiful about life, and reject the conventions of society. Emma feebly tries to argue that society's moral standards are important, but Rodolphe shoots her down promptly. He's the clear winner here; Emma is toast. Monsieur Lieuvain, in the meanwhile, just keeps talking and talking. He's full of governmental rhetoric, but he's basically not talking about anything. Despite this fact, the whole town is enraptured by him. Rodolphe quickly wins Emma over. All of her feelings about Leon, the Viscount at the ball, and her loneliness come rushing back, and re-focus on Rodolphe. She's smitten. Finally, Monsieur Lieuvain wraps up his speech. Another speech begins, and Rodolphe continues to woo Emma all the while. Agricultural prizes are given for things as diverse as pigs, liquid manure , and drainage. Simultaneously , Rodolphe declares his love for Emma. The prizes, and the wooing, conclude with the awarding of a prize for long service, which is awarded to a confused little old woman. Flaubert describes this woman, Catherine Leroux, with rather excruciating detail; she's obviously been broken down by years of hard work. She says that she will give her prize money to the priest, which offends Homais. Following this ludicrous ceremony, a big feast begins. The townspeople, in a frenzy of communal gluttony, all stuff themselves. Rodolphe isn't interested in the food - he's thinking of Emma and of the pleasure he'll get from her in the future. Emma is off with Charles and the Homais family. The grand finale of the festival is a display of fireworks - unfortunately, they're too damp, and they barely go off. The evening ends rather anti-climactically, and everyone drifts back home. Homais proceeds to write an enthusiastic, over-the-top article about the fiesta, and publish it in a Rouen paper. | null | 1,012 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/18.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_17_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 9 | part 2, chapter 9 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-9", "summary": "Six weeks have passed since the fair. Rodolphe hasn't seen Emma again; at first, he just didn't want to show up to see her right away, and decided to go on a hunting trip. However, this trip lasted a lot longer than he'd planned and, now that he's back, he's worried that he missed his window of opportunity. He decides to give it a shot anyway and visit Emma, hoping that absence has indeed made the heart grow fonder. Again, he's right. He can immediately tell that Emma's still totally into him. He plays his absence up melodramatically, claiming that he had to tear himself away from her. Rodolphe is a total drama king , and he theatrically wins Emma over with highfalutin' words and extravagant declarations of passion. Emma is totally swept off her feet by Rodolphe's calculated attack. She allows herself to bask in the glow of his romantic words. However, as he continues to ham it up, they hear Charles arrive at the house. The two lovers immediately switch back into polite neighbor mode. Rodolphe, ever the resourceful one, asks Charles if it might do Emma some good to take up horseback riding to improve her health. Of course, he will accompany her himself. Charles thinks this is a splendid idea, and he and Rodolphe make all the arrangements. Emma, in a contrary mood, resists - however, Charles convinces her by saying that she can order a new riding outfit. The next day, Rodolphe shows up promptly at noon on horseback, with a second horse in tow for Emma. After a brief warning about safety from Monsieur Homais, they're off. The pair ride off into the countryside. They get a good view of the village from up higher - to Emma, Yonville has never looked so small and miserable. They venture deeper and deeper into the forest. They dismount and Rodolphe ties up the horses so they can walk into the woods unhampered. As they go, he keeps his eyes on the sliver of white stocking that show between her skirt and boots - to him, it seems like naked skin. Rodolphe and Emma reach a clearing and, once they're settled down, he starts to woo her once more...this time more seriously. Emma puts up some resistance - but not too much. She gives in to his advances and, as Flaubert says, \"abandons\" herself to him. We all know what that means. After the deed is done, Rodolphe and Emma head back to Yonville slowly. Everything seems different to her now. Rodolphe is legitimately charmed by her - after all, she's quite lovely. Emma feels as though everyone is looking at her as they ride through town. At dinner, Charles tells her that he's purchased a horse of her very own. Little does he know what's really going on... Emma escapes from dinner early and goes upstairs to think over her situation in privacy. She even thinks she looks different - and she feels as though her real life is finally starting. From the next day on, Emma and Rodolphe are committed to each other . They do the stereotypical things people having affairs do - exchange notes, have secret rendezvous, etc. Emma is blissfully happy. She even runs out in the early morning and races over to La Huchette to see her lover. After this risky business goes on for a while, Rodolphe protests that she's getting too careless. Is he really concerned, or can it be that he's getting sick of her? Hmm...", "analysis": ""} |
Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he
appeared.
The day after the show he had said to himself--"We mustn't go back too
soon; that would be a mistake."
And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he
had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned thus--
"If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience to see me
again love me more. Let's go on with it!"
And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the
room, he saw Emma turn pale.
She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain along
the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on
which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the
meshes of the coral.
Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first
conventional phrases.
"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."
"Seriously?" she cried.
"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it
was because I did not want to come back."
"Why?"
"Can you not guess?"
He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing.
He went on--
"Emma!"
"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.
"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not
to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and
that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the
world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of
another!"
He repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands.
"Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair.
Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far
that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what
force impelled me towards you. For one does not struggle against Heaven;
one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which
is beautiful, charming, adorable."
It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself,
and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly
and fully at this glowing language.
"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least
I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night-every night-I
arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its glimmering in the moon,
the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp,
a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never
knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!"
She turned towards him with a sob.
"Oh, you are good!" she said.
"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one
word--only one word!"
And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground; but
a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the
door of the room was not closed.
"How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humour
a whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and
Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles
came in.
"Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him.
The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into
obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself
together a little.
"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health."
Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's
palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if
riding would not be good.
"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to
follow it up."
And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered
one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit
he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered
from giddiness.
"I'll call around," said Bovary.
"No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient
for you."
"Ah! very good! I thank you."
And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur
Boulanger's kind offer?"
She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally
declared that perhaps it would look odd.
"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a
pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong."
"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?"
"You must order one," he answered.
The riding-habit decided her.
When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his
wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.
The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two
saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin
side-saddle.
Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she
had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his
appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white
corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.
Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also
came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice.
"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are
mettlesome."
She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the windowpanes
to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered
with a wave of her whip.
"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all,
prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear.
As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop.
Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her
figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out,
she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in
her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head;
they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses
stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.
It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds
hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent
asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the
clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of
Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls and
the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and
never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the
height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake
sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there
stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose
above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.
By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered
in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco,
deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the
horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.
Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned
away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine
trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy.
The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.
Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.
"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.
"Do you think so?" she said.
"Forward! forward!" he continued.
He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot.
Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup.
Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. At other
times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt
his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no
longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots
of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were
grey, fawn, or golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves.
Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the
hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks.
They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in
front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way,
although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her,
saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white
stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.
She stopped. "I am tired," she said.
"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"
Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her
veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face
appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure
waves.
"But where are we going?"
He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round
him biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice
had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe
began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her
with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy.
Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on
the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the words, "Are not our
destinies now one?"
"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!" She rose
to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having gazed
at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said
hurriedly--
"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back."
He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:
"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"
Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he
advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered:
"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!"
"If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became
respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He
said--
"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were
mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in
a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to live! I must have
your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!"
And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to disengage
herself. He supported her thus as they walked along.
But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.
"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!"
He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness
on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds.
At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide
themselves.
"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!"
"Why? Emma! Emma!"
"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder.
The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw
back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with
a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him--
The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the
branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves
or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying
about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something
sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose
beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a
stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she
heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she
heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing
nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his
penknife one of the two broken bridles.
They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again
the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same
stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her
something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved
in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand
to kiss it.
She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee
bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed by the fresh
air in the red of the evening.
On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People
looked at her from the windows.
At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to
hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there
with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.
"Emma!" he said.
"What?"
"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an old cob,
still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that could be bought; I
am sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might please
you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell me?"
She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later--
"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.
"Yes. Why?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"
And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up
in her room.
At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches,
Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves
rustled and the reeds whistled.
But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never
had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something
subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover!
a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her.
So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness
of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all
would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed
her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary
existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the
interspaces of these heights.
Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the
lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with
the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were,
an actual part of these imaginings, and realised the love-dream of her
youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had
so envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not
suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up
burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse,
without anxiety, without trouble.
The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one
another She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with
kisses; and she looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to
call her again by her name--to say that he loved her They were in the
forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some woodenshoe maker. The walls
were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated
side by side on a bed of dry leaves.
From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening.
Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a
fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there,
that she always found fault with as too short.
One morning, when Charles had gone out before day break, she was seized
with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go quickly to La
Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while
everyone was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she
soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps,
without looking behind her.
Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognised her lover's house. Its
two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn.
Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must
be the chateau She entered--it was if the doors at her approach had
opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to
the corridor. Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end
of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry.
"You here? You here?" he repeated. "How did you manage to come? Ah! your
dress is damp."
"I love you," she answered, throwing her arms about his neck.
This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles went out
early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led
to the waterside.
But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls
alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall
she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across
ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling; and clogging her thin
shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the
meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out
of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a
fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe
still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room.
The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter
softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops
of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around
her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to his
breast.
Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables,
combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his
shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that
lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a
bottle of water.
It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then Emma cried.
She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than
herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come
unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.
"What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!"
At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming
imprudent--that she was compromising herself.
| 4,876 | Part 2, Chapter 9 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-9 | Six weeks have passed since the fair. Rodolphe hasn't seen Emma again; at first, he just didn't want to show up to see her right away, and decided to go on a hunting trip. However, this trip lasted a lot longer than he'd planned and, now that he's back, he's worried that he missed his window of opportunity. He decides to give it a shot anyway and visit Emma, hoping that absence has indeed made the heart grow fonder. Again, he's right. He can immediately tell that Emma's still totally into him. He plays his absence up melodramatically, claiming that he had to tear himself away from her. Rodolphe is a total drama king , and he theatrically wins Emma over with highfalutin' words and extravagant declarations of passion. Emma is totally swept off her feet by Rodolphe's calculated attack. She allows herself to bask in the glow of his romantic words. However, as he continues to ham it up, they hear Charles arrive at the house. The two lovers immediately switch back into polite neighbor mode. Rodolphe, ever the resourceful one, asks Charles if it might do Emma some good to take up horseback riding to improve her health. Of course, he will accompany her himself. Charles thinks this is a splendid idea, and he and Rodolphe make all the arrangements. Emma, in a contrary mood, resists - however, Charles convinces her by saying that she can order a new riding outfit. The next day, Rodolphe shows up promptly at noon on horseback, with a second horse in tow for Emma. After a brief warning about safety from Monsieur Homais, they're off. The pair ride off into the countryside. They get a good view of the village from up higher - to Emma, Yonville has never looked so small and miserable. They venture deeper and deeper into the forest. They dismount and Rodolphe ties up the horses so they can walk into the woods unhampered. As they go, he keeps his eyes on the sliver of white stocking that show between her skirt and boots - to him, it seems like naked skin. Rodolphe and Emma reach a clearing and, once they're settled down, he starts to woo her once more...this time more seriously. Emma puts up some resistance - but not too much. She gives in to his advances and, as Flaubert says, "abandons" herself to him. We all know what that means. After the deed is done, Rodolphe and Emma head back to Yonville slowly. Everything seems different to her now. Rodolphe is legitimately charmed by her - after all, she's quite lovely. Emma feels as though everyone is looking at her as they ride through town. At dinner, Charles tells her that he's purchased a horse of her very own. Little does he know what's really going on... Emma escapes from dinner early and goes upstairs to think over her situation in privacy. She even thinks she looks different - and she feels as though her real life is finally starting. From the next day on, Emma and Rodolphe are committed to each other . They do the stereotypical things people having affairs do - exchange notes, have secret rendezvous, etc. Emma is blissfully happy. She even runs out in the early morning and races over to La Huchette to see her lover. After this risky business goes on for a while, Rodolphe protests that she's getting too careless. Is he really concerned, or can it be that he's getting sick of her? Hmm... | null | 832 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/19.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_18_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 10 | part 2, chapter 10 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-10", "summary": "This warning from Rodolphe begins to worry Emma - and one day, she encounters Binet illegally duck hunting. He has his own worries, since he's breaking the law, but Emma begins to fear that he will tell everyone he saw her gadding about in the wee hours of the morning. She stresses out about this all day. In the evening, Charles insists that they go get something to perk herself up from Monsieur Homais. While they're at the pharmacist's, they happen to run into Binet, who makes a knowing comment about the humid weather, referencing their encounter that morning in the mist. This alarms Emma. She's relieved when Binet leaves. The Binet incident makes Emma and Rodolphe rethink their meeting strategy. They decide that Rodolphe will look for a safe place to meet. In the meanwhile, they meet late at night in the back garden of the Bovarys' house, after Charles has gone to sleep . Leon is all but forgotten by this time. One night, Emma hears someone coming, and worries that it's Charles. She asks Rodolphe if he has pistols with which to defend himself against her husband. Rodolphe finds this concern absurd and in poor taste. In fact, he's beginning to find many of Emma's demands and goings-on rather vulgar. Emma's ridiculously romantic fantasies run wild with Rodolphe. She makes him exchange little tokens of love and locks of hair, and demands that they get a real wedding ring as a symbol of their devotion. All of this irritates Rodolphe, but he's still drawn to her - he can't believe how pretty and charming she can be. However, he stops putting forth as much effort soon enough, and their affair loses its initial quality of excitement and oomph. By the time spring rolls around, the affair has cooled to a markedly un-steamy temperature. The two of them are like a married couple. Monsieur Rouault sends his customary anniversary turkey to celebrate the healing of his broken leg. With it comes a letter - reading it reminds Emma of the days of her childhood in the country. Looking back, those days seem idyllic to her now. She wonders what has made her adult life so difficult. For a brief moment, looking at her innocent young daughter, Emma actually loves little Berthe. Rodolphe is definitely sick of Emma by now. They treat each other indifferently - Emma in an attempt to win him back and Rodolphe because he genuinely feels like their affair is over. Rejected and dejected, Emma repents for her adulterous actions - she even goes so far as to wish she could love Charles. In addition, Homais happens to give Charles the opportunity to become a more interesting man at this fortuitous time...", "analysis": ""} |
Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had
intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he
was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or
even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house she
looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the
horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She
listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped
short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.
One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the
long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out
sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the
edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked
on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had
gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes,
trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for
wild ducks.
"You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed; "When one sees a
gun, one should always give warning."
The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for
a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting except in boats,
Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them,
and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But
this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he
congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness. At sight of
Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a
conversation.
"It isn't warm; it's nipping."
Emma answered nothing. He went on--
"And you're out so early?"
"Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse where my
child is."
"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me,
since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the
bird at the mouth of the gun--"
"Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on her
heel.
"Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub.
Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he
would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the
worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the little
Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one
was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet,
then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he
would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her
brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before
her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.
Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of
distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she
caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again. He was standing
in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was
saying--
"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol."
"Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then to
Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't
worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the
stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor," (for the chemist
much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by
it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now,
take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from
the little room; you know very well that the arm-chairs are not to be
taken out of the drawing-room."
And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting away from the
counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid.
"Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; I'm
ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid,
isn't it?"
Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some
copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting things.
Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying--
"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp."
"Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are
people who like it."
She was stifling.
"And give me--"
"Will he never go?" thought she.
"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax,
and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the
varnished leather of my togs."
The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared,
Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat
down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a
footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near
her papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on
labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time
to time, were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low
words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil.
"And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais.
"Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in
his waste-book.
"Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice.
"Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the druggist.
But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard
nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh.
"How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais.
"Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied.
So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma
wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to
find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one.
All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night
he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the
gate, which Charles thought lost.
To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She
jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a
mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild
with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled
him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up
a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But
Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too.
"Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time."
"Yes, I am coming," she answered.
Then, as the candles dazzled him; he turned to the wall and fell asleep.
She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. Rodolphe had a large
cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm round her waist, he
drew her without a word to the end of the garden.
It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Leon
had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought
of him now.
The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they
heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling
of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the
darkness, and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and
swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The
cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips
seemed to them deeper; their eyes that they could hardly see, larger;
and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on
their souls sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied
vibrations.
When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room
between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen
candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down
there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the
whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not
refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma.
She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions
more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of
approaching steps in the alley.
"Someone is coming!" she said.
He blew out the light.
"Have you your pistols?"
"Why?"
"Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma.
"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his sentence
with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger."
She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort
of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised her.
Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had
spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for
he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called
devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had taken a great vow
that he did not think in the best of taste.
Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on
exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she
was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union.
She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature.
Then she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his!
Rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled
him with caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she
sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon--
"I am sure that above there together they approve of our love."
But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such
ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for
him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride
and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense
disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it
was lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up
appearances, and insensibly his ways changed.
He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry,
nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their great love,
which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of
a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it.
She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe
concealed his indifference less and less.
She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she
did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation
of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their
voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual
seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him.
Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having
succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the
end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another
like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame.
It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance
of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter.
Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following
lines:--
"My Dear Children--I hope this will find you well, and that this one
will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little more tender,
if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time, for a change,
I'll give you a turkeycock, unless you have a preference for some dabs;
and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I
have had an accident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one
windy night among the trees. The harvest has not been overgood either.
Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult
now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor Emma."
Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped
his pen to dream a little while.
"For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other day at
the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned
away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be pitied with such
a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I heard from a pedlar, who,
travelling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth
drawn, that Bovary was as usual working hard. That doesn't surprise me;
and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if
he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the
stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So much
the better, my dear children, and may God send you every imaginable
happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little
grand-daughter, Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for
her in the garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it
is to have jam made for her by and bye, that I will keep in the cupboard
for her when she comes.
"Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my
son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best
compliments, your loving father.
"Theodore Rouault."
She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The spelling
mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma followed the
kindly thought that cackled right through it like a hen half hidden
in the hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from
the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her
dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth
to take up the tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on
the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of
a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the
summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when anyone
passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive,
and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her
window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been
at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions!
Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's
life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage,
and her love--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like
a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his
road.
But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary
catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking
round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer.
An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot; the fire burned;
beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was
bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter.
In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst
of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach
at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt.
Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she
lent forward, beating the air with both her arms.
"Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How I love
you, my poor child! How I love you!"
Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at
once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings,
her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the
return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying
a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite
thunderstricken at this excess of tenderness.
That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual.
"That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim:"
And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed
herself cold and almost contemptuous.
"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!"
And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the
handkerchief she took out.
Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if
it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her
no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much
embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the druggist came just in
time to provide her with an opportunity.
| 4,311 | Part 2, Chapter 10 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-10 | This warning from Rodolphe begins to worry Emma - and one day, she encounters Binet illegally duck hunting. He has his own worries, since he's breaking the law, but Emma begins to fear that he will tell everyone he saw her gadding about in the wee hours of the morning. She stresses out about this all day. In the evening, Charles insists that they go get something to perk herself up from Monsieur Homais. While they're at the pharmacist's, they happen to run into Binet, who makes a knowing comment about the humid weather, referencing their encounter that morning in the mist. This alarms Emma. She's relieved when Binet leaves. The Binet incident makes Emma and Rodolphe rethink their meeting strategy. They decide that Rodolphe will look for a safe place to meet. In the meanwhile, they meet late at night in the back garden of the Bovarys' house, after Charles has gone to sleep . Leon is all but forgotten by this time. One night, Emma hears someone coming, and worries that it's Charles. She asks Rodolphe if he has pistols with which to defend himself against her husband. Rodolphe finds this concern absurd and in poor taste. In fact, he's beginning to find many of Emma's demands and goings-on rather vulgar. Emma's ridiculously romantic fantasies run wild with Rodolphe. She makes him exchange little tokens of love and locks of hair, and demands that they get a real wedding ring as a symbol of their devotion. All of this irritates Rodolphe, but he's still drawn to her - he can't believe how pretty and charming she can be. However, he stops putting forth as much effort soon enough, and their affair loses its initial quality of excitement and oomph. By the time spring rolls around, the affair has cooled to a markedly un-steamy temperature. The two of them are like a married couple. Monsieur Rouault sends his customary anniversary turkey to celebrate the healing of his broken leg. With it comes a letter - reading it reminds Emma of the days of her childhood in the country. Looking back, those days seem idyllic to her now. She wonders what has made her adult life so difficult. For a brief moment, looking at her innocent young daughter, Emma actually loves little Berthe. Rodolphe is definitely sick of Emma by now. They treat each other indifferently - Emma in an attempt to win him back and Rodolphe because he genuinely feels like their affair is over. Rejected and dejected, Emma repents for her adulterous actions - she even goes so far as to wish she could love Charles. In addition, Homais happens to give Charles the opportunity to become a more interesting man at this fortuitous time... | null | 643 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/22.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_21_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 13 | part 2, chapter 13 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-13", "summary": "His mind made up, Rodolphe returns home to La Huchette and sits down to write a farewell letter to Emma. He sifts through the various tokens of love affairs past that he's accumulated through many years of being a ladies' man. All of the women he's had in the past blur together in his mind - now Emma is just one of them. Rodolphe gets down to business. He writes a truly melodramatic, ostentatiously noble letter to Emma, telling her that he can't allow himself to ruin her life, blah blah blah. Suddenly the \"fate\" that supposedly brought them together before is now responsible for tearing them apart. To avoid having to face her again, he writes that he's going on a long trip. The letter finished, Rodolphe is quite proud of himself. He even puts some false tearstains on the paper. This guy is just too much. The next day, Rodolphe wakes up late, and has Girard, one of his servants, take the letter to Emma, concealed in the bottom of a basket of apricots. Upon receiving basket, Emma is overcome with emotion - she finds the letter, immediately understands what its purpose is, and rushes to her room to read it. Charles is there, so she flees madly, running to the attic. There, she forces herself to finish the horrible letter. Her feelings are all over the place - she feels desperately as though she might as well hurl herself out the window onto the pavement below. Fortunately, Charles calls her from downstairs. She returns to herself, shocked that she narrowly avoided death. It's dinnertime. Felicite comes to fetch her mistress; Emma is forced to go downstairs and go through with the farce of eating. It's torture. To make matters worse, Charles even brings up Rodolphe, mentioning that he'd heard from Girard that the gentleman is going on a trip. Then, just when Emma doesn't think that things can possibly be more horrible, Felicite brings in the basket of apricots. Charles eats one, and tries to force Emma to, as well. This is too much to handle - Emma almost swoons. Charles tries to calm her, but then she sees Rodolphe's carriage pass by the window. She passes out. Monsieur Homais runs over when he hears chaos break out in the Bovary house. He brings some vinegar back to revive the unconscious woman. Emma comes back from her faint briefly - Charles, freaking out, tries to get her to hold Berthe. Emma promptly passes out again. Charles puts Emma to bed. He and Homais try and determine what could have possibly brought on this attack. Homais puts it down to the scent of the apricots. Emma stays sick for a really long time. Charles stays by her side for forty-three days in a row - like we said, a really long time. He calls in backup; Dr. Canivet is called, as well as Charles's old teacher, Dr. Lariviere. Emma doesn't say anything or give any indication of what's causing all of this. By the middle of October, Emma feels well enough to sit up in bed - she starts to eat a little bit, and even gets out of bed for a few hours of the day. She recovers slowly, then relapses. Charles worries that she may have cancer. To make it even worse, there's no money.", "analysis": ""} |
No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau
under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But when he had
the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting
on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded
into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly
placed a distance between them.
To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the
bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters
from women, and from it came an odour of dry dust and withered
roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a
handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he
had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature
given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her
languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this
image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma's features little
by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the
painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other.
Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations
relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business
notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In
order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the
others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and
things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and
hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box,
broke when it was opened.
Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style
of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or
jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love,
others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain
gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered
nothing at all.
In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each
other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalised
them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself
for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into
his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to
the cupboard, saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!" Which summed
up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard,
had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that
which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like
them, leave a name carved upon the wall.
"Come," said he, "let's begin."
He wrote--
"Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life."
"After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her
interest; I am honest."
"Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an
abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were
coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. Ah!
unhappy that we are--insensate!"
Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.
"If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would stop
nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one
could make women like that listen to reason!" He reflected, then went
on--
"I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound
devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is
the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. Lassitude
would have come to us, and who knows if I should not even have had the
atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since
I should have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come
to you tortures me, Emma. Forget me! Why did I ever know you? Why were
you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate."
"That's a word that always tells," he said to himself.
"Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees,
certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in that
case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at once your
charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable
woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. Nor had I
reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal
happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the
consequences."
"Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much
the worse; it must be stopped!"
"The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would have
persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet questions,
calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult to you! Oh! And I, who would
place you on a throne! I who bear with me your memory as a talisman! For
I am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you.
I am going away. Whither I know not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always.
Preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name
to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers."
The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to, shut the window,
and when he had sat down again--
"I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt
me up."
"I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have wished to
flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again.
No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later on we shall talk together
very coldly of our old love. Adieu!"
And there was a last "adieu" divided into two words! "A Dieu!" which he
thought in very excellent taste.
"Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself. "'Yours devotedly?' No!
'Your friend?' Yes, that's it."
"Your friend."
He re-read his letter. He considered it very good.
"Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "She'll think me harder
than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can't
cry; it isn't my fault." Then, having emptied some water into a glass,
Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the
paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he
came upon the one "Amor nel cor."
"That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never mind!"
After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.
The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late),
Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put his letter at
the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his
ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Bovary. He made use of this
means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season fruits
or game.
"If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that I have gone on
a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands.
Get along and take care!"
Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the
apricots, and walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound
galoshes, made his way to Yonville.
Madame Bovary, when he got to her house, was arranging a bundle of linen
on the kitchen-table with Felicite.
"Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you--from the master."
She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for
some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he
himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a
present could so move anyone. At last he went out. Felicite remained.
She could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting room as if to take
the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found
the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her,
Emma flew to her room terrified.
Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and
she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and
ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her
fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second floor she stopped
before the attic door, which was closed.
Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish
it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! "Ah, no!
here," she thought, "I shall be all right."
Emma pushed open the door and went in.
The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples,
stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew
back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap.
Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it was lost
to sight. Down below, underneath her, the village square was empty; the
stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were
motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower storey, rose a
kind of humming with strident modulations. It was Binet turning.
She leant against the embrasure of the window, and reread the letter
with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the
more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled
him with her arms, and throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast
like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven
intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth might
crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was
free. She advanced, looking at the paving-stones, saying to herself,
"Come! come!"
The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of
her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the
oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on
end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging,
surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air
was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself
be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice
calling her.
"Emma! Emma!" cried Charles.
She stopped.
"Wherever are you? Come!"
The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint
with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a
hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite.
"Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table."
And she had to go down to sit at table.
She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as
if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to
this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance
of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find
it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent
a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was
afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced
these words in a strange manner:
"We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems."
"Who told you?" she said, shuddering.
"Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "Why,
Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe Francais. He has
gone on a journey, or is to go."
She gave a sob.
"What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time
to time for a change, and, ma foi, I think he's right, when one has a
fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend.
He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--"
He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She put
back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles,
without noticing his wife's colour, had them brought to him, took one,
and bit into it.
"Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!"
And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently.
"Do just smell! What an odour!" he remarked, passing it under her nose
several times.
"I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the
spasm passed; then--
"It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down
and go on eating." For she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her,
attending to her, that she should not be left alone.
Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the
apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate.
Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma
uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground.
In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for
Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by
Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma had recognised him
by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the
twilight.
The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house ran thither. The
table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and
cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles was calling for help;
Berthe, scared, was crying; and Felicite, whose hands trembled, was
unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively.
"I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the
druggist.
Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle--
"I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person for
you!"
"Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it is your Charles, who
loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss her!"
The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But
turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice "No, no! no one!"
She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stretched
at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open,
motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from
her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow.
Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist,
near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the
serious occasions of life.
"Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "I think the paroxysm
is past."
"Yes, she is resting a little now," answered Charles, watching her
sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!"
Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles answered that
she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots.
"Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it might be that the
apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to
certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both
in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the
importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their
ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a
thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more
delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt
hartshorn, of new bread--"
"Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a low voice.
"And not only," the druggist went on, "are human beings subject to such
anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly
aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called
catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example
whose authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at
present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into
convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even
makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at Guillaume
Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could produce such
ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is extremely curious, is it not?"
"Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to him.
"This shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign
self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system.
With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I confess, very
susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend to you, my dear
friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence
of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless
physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification.
Then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked
upon?"
"In what way? How?" said Bovary.
"Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the question,' as
I lately read in a newspaper."
But Emma, awaking, cried out--
"The letter! the letter!"
They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain-fever had
set in.
For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his
patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse,
putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as
Neufchatel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again.
He called Monsieur Canivet into consultation; he sent for Dr. Lariviere,
his old master, from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was
Emma's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even
seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after
all their troubles.
About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by
pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her
strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon,
and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his
arm, for a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing
beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers,
and leaning against Charles's shoulder. She smiled all the time.
They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She drew
herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. She looked
far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great
bonfires of grass smoking on the hills.
"You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary. And, pushing her
gently to make her go into the arbour, "Sit down on this seat; you'll be
comfortable."
"Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice.
She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness
recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more
complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the
head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the
first signs of cancer.
And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters.
| 5,013 | Part 2, Chapter 13 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-13 | His mind made up, Rodolphe returns home to La Huchette and sits down to write a farewell letter to Emma. He sifts through the various tokens of love affairs past that he's accumulated through many years of being a ladies' man. All of the women he's had in the past blur together in his mind - now Emma is just one of them. Rodolphe gets down to business. He writes a truly melodramatic, ostentatiously noble letter to Emma, telling her that he can't allow himself to ruin her life, blah blah blah. Suddenly the "fate" that supposedly brought them together before is now responsible for tearing them apart. To avoid having to face her again, he writes that he's going on a long trip. The letter finished, Rodolphe is quite proud of himself. He even puts some false tearstains on the paper. This guy is just too much. The next day, Rodolphe wakes up late, and has Girard, one of his servants, take the letter to Emma, concealed in the bottom of a basket of apricots. Upon receiving basket, Emma is overcome with emotion - she finds the letter, immediately understands what its purpose is, and rushes to her room to read it. Charles is there, so she flees madly, running to the attic. There, she forces herself to finish the horrible letter. Her feelings are all over the place - she feels desperately as though she might as well hurl herself out the window onto the pavement below. Fortunately, Charles calls her from downstairs. She returns to herself, shocked that she narrowly avoided death. It's dinnertime. Felicite comes to fetch her mistress; Emma is forced to go downstairs and go through with the farce of eating. It's torture. To make matters worse, Charles even brings up Rodolphe, mentioning that he'd heard from Girard that the gentleman is going on a trip. Then, just when Emma doesn't think that things can possibly be more horrible, Felicite brings in the basket of apricots. Charles eats one, and tries to force Emma to, as well. This is too much to handle - Emma almost swoons. Charles tries to calm her, but then she sees Rodolphe's carriage pass by the window. She passes out. Monsieur Homais runs over when he hears chaos break out in the Bovary house. He brings some vinegar back to revive the unconscious woman. Emma comes back from her faint briefly - Charles, freaking out, tries to get her to hold Berthe. Emma promptly passes out again. Charles puts Emma to bed. He and Homais try and determine what could have possibly brought on this attack. Homais puts it down to the scent of the apricots. Emma stays sick for a really long time. Charles stays by her side for forty-three days in a row - like we said, a really long time. He calls in backup; Dr. Canivet is called, as well as Charles's old teacher, Dr. Lariviere. Emma doesn't say anything or give any indication of what's causing all of this. By the middle of October, Emma feels well enough to sit up in bed - she starts to eat a little bit, and even gets out of bed for a few hours of the day. She recovers slowly, then relapses. Charles worries that she may have cancer. To make it even worse, there's no money. | null | 803 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/24.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_23_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 15 | part 2, chapter 15 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-15", "summary": "The opera is Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, a tragedy in which an unfortunate heroine is driven mad because she's forced to marry the wrong man. Perhaps not the best choice for Emma... Emma and Charles take a stroll before the opera, and when they finally settle down in their seats, Emma feels satisfied for the first time in a long while. Waiting for the show to start, she admires her fellow audience-members. The opera immediately transports Emma back to the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott she enjoyed as a girl . She feels the music reverberate in her soul - it sounds like the old Emma is back. The famous tenor recommended by Homais, Edgar Lagardy, makes a dramatic entrance onstage. Emma is struck by his appearance, and the whole audience falls for him. Emma sees her own story in the narrative that unfolds before her. She thinks that nobody has ever loved her the way that the hero and heroine love each other. Charles doesn't really get what's going on, and he keeps bugging Emma with questions. She's not amused. A wedding scene unfolds on stage, and Emma thinks of her own wedding - she wishes that she, like the opera's heroine, had resisted and not married Charles. As things get more and more dramatic onstage, they also get more and more dramatic in Emma's mind. She imagines what it would be like to be the lover of Lagardy, the tenor. She is swept up in the fantasy of running away with the singer across Europe when the curtain falls; it's intermission. Charles runs off clumsily to get Emma something to drink. On his way back, he manages to spill the drink on a very upset lady, but makes it back to Emma somehow. Charles has big news. While he was away, he saw someone we haven't encountered for a while: Leon Dupuis. Before Charles even finishes telling Emma about his encounter, Leon himself shows up in their box. He and Emma shake hands and start catching up; just then, Act III of the opera begins. Emma is no longer interested in the drama onstage, now that there's some drama sitting right next to her. All of her pre-Rodolphe feelings start to return. Leon obviously feels something, too - he suggests that they leave the theatre and go elsewhere to talk. Charles, who's actually kind of into the opera now, doesn't want to go, but Emma insists. At a cafe, they eat ice cream and make small talk. Leon attempts to show off by discussing music - he claims that Lagardy isn't all he's cracked up to be. Charles, who's still bummed about missing the end of the performance, suggests that perhaps Emma might like to stay in Rouen by herself for a couple of days and see the opera again. Leon, of course, encourages this. Emma demurely makes no promises - she smiles oddly, knowing that something's up with Leon. She and Charles will decide overnight what she should do. The old friends part ways, with the clerk promising to visit Yonville soon.", "analysis": ""} |
The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between
the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills
repeated in quaint letters "Lucie de Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc." The
weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the
curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads;
and now and then a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the
border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses.
A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air
that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from
the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black warehouses where they made
casks.
For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to have a
little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in
his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his
stomach.
Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She
involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the
right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the
reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger
the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the
dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent
forward with the air of a duchess.
The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their
cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing.
They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of
business; but "business" was not forgotten; they still talked cottons,
spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen,
inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like
silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting
about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink
or applegreen cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them leaning
on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow
gloves.
Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the
ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over
the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and
first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins
squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But three
knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass
instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a
country-scene.
It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to
the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing
a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked
the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. Another appeared;
they went away, and the hunters started afresh. She felt herself
transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott.
She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes
re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel helping
her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase,
while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with
the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies,
and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her
nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery,
the actors, the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the
velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated
amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a young
woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. She was
left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the
warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She
plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life,
would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy
appeared.
He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of
marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly
clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against
his left thigh, and he cast round laughing looks showing his white
teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night
on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love
with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for
other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his
artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into
his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his
person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable
coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis
than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan
nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the
toreador.
From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his arms,
he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of
rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes
escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward
to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was
filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn
out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the
drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognised all the intoxication
and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna
seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that
charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had
loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit
night when they said, "To-morrow! to-morrow!" The theatre rang with
cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of
the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they
uttered the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the
vibrations of the last chords.
"But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?"
"No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!"
"Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on
before said, 'I love Lucie and she loves me!' Besides, he went off with
her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn't he--the
ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?"
Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began
in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master
Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucie,
thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that
he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered
very much with the words.
"What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be quiet!"
"Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "I like
to understand things."
"Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently.
Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms
in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed
of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the
little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like
this woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous,
without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if
in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the
disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some
great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty
blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that
happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire.
She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So,
striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this
reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to
please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when
at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a
black cloak.
His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the
instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury,
dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal
provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie uttered her shrill plaint,
Arthur at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the
bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the
women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were
all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and
stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. The
outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with
jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left
with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of
his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought must have an
inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion.
All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part
that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the
character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant,
extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had
willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With
him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled from
capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the
flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each
evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work she would
have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung
for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked
at her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was
certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength,
as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out,
"Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour
and all my dreams!"
The curtain fell.
The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the
fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the
crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her arm-chair with
palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing that she would faint, ran
to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water.
He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were
jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and
he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short
sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered
cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband,
who was a millowner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was with
her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured
taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement.
At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath--
"Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a
crowd--SUCH a crowd!"
He added--
"Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Leon!"
"Leon?"
"Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects." And as he finished
these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box.
He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Bovary
extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will.
She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon
the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window.
But soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an
effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a
few hurried words.
"Ah, good-day! What! you here?"
"Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning.
"So you are at Rouen?"
"Yes."
"And since when?"
"Turn them out! turn them out!" People were looking at them. They were
silent.
But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests,
the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all
were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous
and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at the
druggist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour,
the tete-a-tete by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so
protracted, so discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless
forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances
had brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her, leaning
with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt
herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon
her hair.
"Does this amuse you?" said he, bending over her so closely that the end
of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly--
"Oh, dear me, no, not much."
Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an
ice somewhere.
"Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this is
going to be tragic."
But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of the
singer seemed to her exaggerated.
"She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was listening.
"Yes--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of his
pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion.
Then with a sigh Leon said--
"The heat is--"
"Unbearable! Yes!"
"Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary.
"Yes, I am stifling; let us go."
Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and
all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside
the windows of a cafe.
First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted Charles
from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Leon; and the
latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large
office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different
in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere
Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to
say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end.
People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or
shouting at the top of their voices, "O bel ange, ma Lucie!*" Then Leon,
playing the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tambourini,
Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and, compared with them, Lagardy, despite his
grand outbursts, was nowhere.
*Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie.
"Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet,
"they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. I regret leaving
before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me."
"Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance."
But Charles replied that they were going back next day. "Unless," he
added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone, kitten?"
And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented
itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the
last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then Charles insisted--
"You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are wrong if
you feel that this is doing you the least good."
The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood
discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his purse; the
clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of
silver that he made chink on the marble.
"I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the money which you are--"
The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat
said--
"It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow at six o'clock?"
Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but
that nothing prevented Emma--
"But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I am not sure--"
"Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel." Then to
Leon, who was walking along with them, "Now that you are in our part of
the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then."
The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover,
to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And they parted
before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the clock in the cathedral
struck half-past eleven.
Part III
| 4,395 | Part 2, Chapter 15 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-15 | The opera is Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, a tragedy in which an unfortunate heroine is driven mad because she's forced to marry the wrong man. Perhaps not the best choice for Emma... Emma and Charles take a stroll before the opera, and when they finally settle down in their seats, Emma feels satisfied for the first time in a long while. Waiting for the show to start, she admires her fellow audience-members. The opera immediately transports Emma back to the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott she enjoyed as a girl . She feels the music reverberate in her soul - it sounds like the old Emma is back. The famous tenor recommended by Homais, Edgar Lagardy, makes a dramatic entrance onstage. Emma is struck by his appearance, and the whole audience falls for him. Emma sees her own story in the narrative that unfolds before her. She thinks that nobody has ever loved her the way that the hero and heroine love each other. Charles doesn't really get what's going on, and he keeps bugging Emma with questions. She's not amused. A wedding scene unfolds on stage, and Emma thinks of her own wedding - she wishes that she, like the opera's heroine, had resisted and not married Charles. As things get more and more dramatic onstage, they also get more and more dramatic in Emma's mind. She imagines what it would be like to be the lover of Lagardy, the tenor. She is swept up in the fantasy of running away with the singer across Europe when the curtain falls; it's intermission. Charles runs off clumsily to get Emma something to drink. On his way back, he manages to spill the drink on a very upset lady, but makes it back to Emma somehow. Charles has big news. While he was away, he saw someone we haven't encountered for a while: Leon Dupuis. Before Charles even finishes telling Emma about his encounter, Leon himself shows up in their box. He and Emma shake hands and start catching up; just then, Act III of the opera begins. Emma is no longer interested in the drama onstage, now that there's some drama sitting right next to her. All of her pre-Rodolphe feelings start to return. Leon obviously feels something, too - he suggests that they leave the theatre and go elsewhere to talk. Charles, who's actually kind of into the opera now, doesn't want to go, but Emma insists. At a cafe, they eat ice cream and make small talk. Leon attempts to show off by discussing music - he claims that Lagardy isn't all he's cracked up to be. Charles, who's still bummed about missing the end of the performance, suggests that perhaps Emma might like to stay in Rouen by herself for a couple of days and see the opera again. Leon, of course, encourages this. Emma demurely makes no promises - she smiles oddly, knowing that something's up with Leon. She and Charles will decide overnight what she should do. The old friends part ways, with the clerk promising to visit Yonville soon. | null | 711 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/25.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_24_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 1 | part 3, chapter 1 | null | {"name": "Part 3, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-1", "summary": "A lot of things happened to Leon in Paris. First of all, he studied law. Secondly, he studied women. He's no longer the same shy boy he was before. All along, he held on to a vague hope that someday he and Emma might actually get together, even while he had new experiences with other women. This new Leon is resolved to \"possess\" Emma. He's determined and much craftier than he used to be. He follows Emma and Charles to their inn, then returns the next morning to scout out the situation. He discovers Emma in the hotel room...alone. Leon has become something of a sweet-talker over the past few years. Perhaps he's not at the same level as Rodolphe, but he's getting up there. He and Emma talk and talk about the various sorrows of their lives. Sigh. Same old, same old. Noticeably, Emma doesn't say anything about loving another man, and Leon doesn't say anything about kind of forgetting Emma. Both of them make dramatic claims, each saying that life is miserable without the other. Basically, this love scene is just one big string of complaints - there's nothing romantic about that. Finally, Leon gives in and says out loud that he was in love with her. All of a sudden the tension is broken, and old feelings come rushing out, created anew by their current proximity. Emma is startled by how much she remembers - she feels old and experienced. They talk until night falls. Leon suggests that they could start over again, but Emma, attempting to be noble, says that she's too old and he's too young . It's late - they've even missed the opera. Leon gets up to leave, but convinces Emma to meet him one more time. She makes their meeting point the famous Rouen cathedral. That night, Emma writes a farewell letter of her own, explaining to Leon why they can't be together. However, she can't send it, since she doesn't have his address. She decides to give it to him in person. Before the rendezvous, Leon primps nervously. He even buys Emma flowers, and goes to meet her at the cathedral. There, he's met not by Emma, but by a cathedral guide, who attempts to give Leon a tour. Emma's late, and Leon grows more anxious. Finally, she arrives. She starts to give him the letter, but is seized by the desire to pray. Leon is both charmed and irritated. As they're about to leave, the guide comes up and offers to give them a tour again. Emma, concerned for her virtue, desperately says yes. They follow the guide, not listening, through the cathedral and back to where they started. Before they get to the tower, Leon basically hurls a coin at the poor guide and pulls Emma away with him. The guide doesn't get the picture - he just keeps coming back. The couple flees the cathedral rather comically. Outside, Leon sends a little street kid to find a cab for them. Awkwardly, they wait alone - there's a kind of aggressive tension between them. The cab arrives. They get in as the cathedral guy yells at them from the church door, and Leon tells the driver to go wherever he wants. The following is one of the most famous scenes of the novel. We see the cab rushing through Rouen aimlessly; we can't see inside it, but we can, however, guess what's going on...Leon keeps yelling up to the driver to keep going; he and Emma stay concealed in the cab. The poor cab driver is tired and certainly weirded out. His horses are exhausted, and everyone's demoralized. The passengers, however, give no sign. Around mid-afternoon, a hand is seen throwing scraps of paper out the window; we assume it's Emma bidding farewell to the well-intentioned farewell letter. Finally, in the early evening, the cab stops. Emma calmly steps out of it and walks away.", "analysis": ""} |
Monsieur Leon, while studying law, had gone pretty often to the
dancing-rooms, where he was even a great success amongst the grisettes,
who thought he had a distinguished air. He was the best-mannered of the
students; he wore his hair neither too long nor too short, didn't spend
all his quarter's money on the first day of the month, and kept on good
terms with his professors. As for excesses, he had always abstained from
them, as much from cowardice as from refinement.
Often when he stayed in his room to read, or else when sitting of an
evening under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg, he let his Code fall to
the ground, and the memory of Emma came back to him. But gradually this
feeling grew weaker, and other desires gathered over it, although it
still persisted through them all. For Leon did not lose all hope; there
was for him, as it were, a vague promise floating in the future, like a
golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree.
Then, seeing her again after three years of absence his passion
reawakened. He must, he thought, at last make up his mind to possess
her. Moreover, his timidity had worn off by contact with his gay
companions, and he returned to the provinces despising everyone who had
not with varnished shoes trodden the asphalt of the boulevards. By
the side of a Parisienne in her laces, in the drawing-room of some
illustrious physician, a person driving his carriage and wearing many
orders, the poor clerk would no doubt have trembled like a child; but
here, at Rouen, on the harbour, with the wife of this small doctor
he felt at his ease, sure beforehand he would shine. Self-possession
depends on its environment. We don't speak on the first floor as on the
fourth; and the wealthy woman seems to have, about her, to guard her
virtue, all her banknotes, like a cuirass in the lining of her corset.
On leaving the Bovarys the night before, Leon had followed them
through the streets at a distance; then having seen them stop at the
"Croix-Rouge," he turned on his heel, and spent the night meditating a
plan.
So the next day about five o'clock he walked into the kitchen of the
inn, with a choking sensation in his throat, pale cheeks, and that
resolution of cowards that stops at nothing.
"The gentleman isn't in," answered a servant.
This seemed to him a good omen. He went upstairs.
She was not disturbed at his approach; on the contrary, she apologised
for having neglected to tell him where they were staying.
"Oh, I divined it!" said Leon.
He pretended he had been guided towards her by chance, by, instinct. She
began to smile; and at once, to repair his folly, Leon told her that he
had spent his morning in looking for her in all the hotels in the town
one after the other.
"So you have made up your mind to stay?" he added.
"Yes," she said, "and I am wrong. One ought not to accustom oneself to
impossible pleasures when there are a thousand demands upon one."
"Oh, I can imagine!"
"Ah! no; for you, you are a man!"
But men too had had their trials, and the conversation went off into
certain philosophical reflections. Emma expatiated much on the misery of
earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in which the heart remains
entombed.
To show off, or from a naive imitation of this melancholy which called
forth his, the young man declared that he had been awfully bored during
the whole course of his studies. The law irritated him, other vocations
attracted him, and his mother never ceased worrying him in every one
of her letters. As they talked they explained more and more fully the
motives of their sadness, working themselves up in their progressive
confidence. But they sometimes stopped short of the complete exposition
of their thought, and then sought to invent a phrase that might express
it all the same. She did not confess her passion for another; he did not
say that he had forgotten her.
Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls after masked
balls; and no doubt she did not recollect the rendezvous of old when she
ran across the fields in the morning to her lover's house. The noises
of the town hardly reached them, and the room seemed small, as if
on purpose to hem in their solitude more closely. Emma, in a dimity
dressing-gown, leant her head against the back of the old arm-chair; the
yellow wall-paper formed, as it were, a golden background behind her,
and her bare head was mirrored in the glass with the white parting in
the middle, and the tip of her ears peeping out from the folds of her
hair.
"But pardon me!" she said. "It is wrong of me. I weary you with my
eternal complaints."
"No, never, never!"
"If you knew," she went on, raising to the ceiling her beautiful eyes,
in which a tear was trembling, "all that I had dreamed!"
"And I! Oh, I too have suffered! Often I went out; I went away. I
dragged myself along the quays, seeking distraction amid the din of the
crowd without being able to banish the heaviness that weighed upon me.
In an engraver's shop on the boulevard there is an Italian print of one
of the Muses. She is draped in a tunic, and she is looking at the
moon, with forget-me-nots in her flowing hair. Something drove me there
continually; I stayed there hours together." Then in a trembling voice,
"She resembled you a little."
Madame Bovary turned away her head that he might not see the
irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips.
"Often," he went on, "I wrote you letters that I tore up."
She did not answer. He continued--
"I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought I
recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the carriages
through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil like yours."
She seemed resolved to let him go on speaking without interruption.
Crossing her arms and bending down her face, she looked at the rosettes
on her slippers, and at intervals made little movements inside the satin
of them with her toes.
At last she sighed.
"But the most wretched thing, is it not--is to drag out, as I do, a
useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we
should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice."
He started off in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having
himself an incredible longing for self-sacrifice that he could not
satisfy.
"I should much like," she said, "to be a nurse at a hospital."
"Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere any
calling--unless perhaps that of a doctor."
With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Emma interrupted him to speak of
her illness, which had almost killed her. What a pity! She should not be
suffering now! Leon at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening
he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug
with velvet stripes he had received from her. For this was how they
would have wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were now
adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always
thins out the sentiment.
But at this invention of the rug she asked, "But why?"
"Why?" He hesitated. "Because I loved you so!" And congratulating
himself at having surmounted the difficulty, Leon watched her face out
of the corner of his eyes.
It was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds across. The
mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed to be lifted from her
blue eyes; her whole face shone. He waited. At last she replied--
"I always suspected it."
Then they went over all the trifling events of that far-off existence,
whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up in one word. They
recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the
furniture of her room, the whole of her house.
"And our poor cactuses, where are they?"
"The cold killed them this winter."
"Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them again as
of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down upon your blinds,
and I saw your two bare arms passing out amongst the flowers."
"Poor friend!" she said, holding out her hand to him.
Leon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep
breath--
"At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that
took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to see you; but you, no
doubt, do not remember it."
"I do," she said; "go on."
"You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out, standing on
the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with small blue flowers; and
without any invitation from you, in spite of myself, I went with you.
Every moment, however, I grew more and more conscious of my folly, and
I went on walking by you, not daring to follow you completely, and
unwilling to leave you. When you went into a shop, I waited in the
street, and I watched you through the window taking off your gloves and
counting the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache's;
you were let in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy
door that had closed after you."
Madame Bovary, as she listened to him, wondered that she was so old. All
these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out her life; it was
like some sentimental immensity to which she returned; and from time to
time she said in a low voice, her eyes half closed--
"Yes, it is true--true--true!"
They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the Beauvoisine
quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and large empty hotels.
They no longer spoke, but they felt as they looked upon each other a
buzzing in their heads, as if something sonorous had escaped from the
fixed eyes of each of them. They were hand in hand now, and the past,
the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were confounded in the
sweetness of this ecstasy. Night was darkening over the walls, on which
still shone, half hidden in the shade, the coarse colours of four bills
representing four scenes from the "Tour de Nesle," with a motto in
Spanish and French at the bottom. Through the sash-window a patch of
dark sky was seen between the pointed roofs.
She rose to light two wax-candles on the drawers, then she sat down
again.
"Well!" said Leon.
"Well!" she replied.
He was thinking how to resume the interrupted conversation, when she
said to him--
"How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such sentiments to
me?"
The clerk said that ideal natures were difficult to understand. He from
the first moment had loved her, and he despaired when he thought of the
happiness that would have been theirs, if thanks to fortune, meeting her
earlier, they had been indissolubly bound to one another.
"I have sometimes thought of it," she went on.
"What a dream!" murmured Leon. And fingering gently the blue binding of
her long white sash, he added, "And who prevents us from beginning now?"
"No, my friend," she replied; "I am too old; you are too young. Forget
me! Others will love you; you will love them."
"Not as you!" he cried.
"What a child you are! Come, let us be sensible. I wish it."
She showed him the impossibility of their love, and that they must
remain, as formerly, on the simple terms of a fraternal friendship.
Was she speaking thus seriously? No doubt Emma did not herself know,
quite absorbed as she was by the charm of the seduction, and the
necessity of defending herself from it; and contemplating the young
man with a moved look, she gently repulsed the timid caresses that his
trembling hands attempted.
"Ah! forgive me!" he cried, drawing back.
Emma was seized with a vague fear at this shyness, more dangerous to her
than the boldness of Rodolphe when he advanced to her open-armed. No man
had ever seemed to her so beautiful. An exquisite candour emanated from
his being. He lowered his long fine eyelashes, that curled upwards.
His cheek, with the soft skin reddened, she thought, with desire of her
person, and Emma felt an invincible longing to press her lips to it.
Then, leaning towards the clock as if to see the time--
"Ah! how late it is!" she said; "how we do chatter!"
He understood the hint and took up his hat.
"It has even made me forget the theatre. And poor Bovary has left me
here especially for that. Monsieur Lormeaux, of the Rue Grand-Pont, was
to take me and his wife."
And the opportunity was lost, as she was to leave the next day.
"Really!" said Leon.
"Yes."
"But I must see you again," he went on. "I wanted to tell you--"
"What?"
"Something--important--serious. Oh, no! Besides, you will not go; it is
impossible. If you should--listen to me. Then you have not understood
me; you have not guessed--"
"Yet you speak plainly," said Emma.
"Ah! you can jest. Enough! enough! Oh, for pity's sake, let me see you
once--only once!"
"Well--" She stopped; then, as if thinking better of it, "Oh, not here!"
"Where you will."
"Will you--" She seemed to reflect; then abruptly, "To-morrow at eleven
o'clock in the cathedral."
"I shall be there," he cried, seizing her hands, which she disengaged.
And as they were both standing up, he behind her, and Emma with her head
bent, he stooped over her and pressed long kisses on her neck.
"You are mad! Ah! you are mad!" she said, with sounding little laughs,
while the kisses multiplied.
Then bending his head over her shoulder, he seemed to beg the consent of
her eyes. They fell upon him full of an icy dignity.
Leon stepped back to go out. He stopped on the threshold; then he
whispered with a trembling voice, "Tomorrow!"
She answered with a nod, and disappeared like a bird into the next room.
In the evening Emma wrote the clerk an interminable letter, in which she
cancelled the rendezvous; all was over; they must not, for the sake of
their happiness, meet again. But when the letter was finished, as she
did not know Leon's address, she was puzzled.
"I'll give it to him myself," she said; "he will come."
The next morning, at the open window, and humming on his balcony, Leon
himself varnished his pumps with several coatings. He put on white
trousers, fine socks, a green coat, emptied all the scent he had into
his handkerchief, then having had his hair curled, he uncurled it again,
in order to give it a more natural elegance.
"It is still too early," he thought, looking at the hairdresser's
cuckoo-clock, that pointed to the hour of nine. He read an old fashion
journal, went out, smoked a cigar, walked up three streets, thought it
was time, and went slowly towards the porch of Notre Dame.
It was a beautiful summer morning. Silver plate sparkled in the
jeweller's windows, and the light falling obliquely on the cathedral
made mirrors of the corners of the grey stones; a flock of birds
fluttered in the grey sky round the trefoil bell-turrets; the square,
resounding with cries, was fragrant with the flowers that bordered its
pavement, roses, jasmines, pinks, narcissi, and tube-roses, unevenly
spaced out between moist grasses, catmint, and chickweed for the birds;
the fountains gurgled in the centre, and under large umbrellas, amidst
melons, piled up in heaps, flower-women, bare-headed, were twisting
paper round bunches of violets.
The young man took one. It was the first time that he had bought flowers
for a woman, and his breast, as he smelt them, swelled with pride, as if
this homage that he meant for another had recoiled upon himself.
But he was afraid of being seen; he resolutely entered the church. The
beadle, who was just then standing on the threshold in the middle of the
left doorway, under the "Dancing Marianne," with feather cap, and rapier
dangling against his calves, came in, more majestic than a cardinal, and
as shining as a saint on a holy pyx.
He came towards Leon, and, with that smile of wheedling benignity
assumed by ecclesiastics when they question children--
"The gentleman, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? The gentleman
would like to see the curiosities of the church?"
"No!" said the other.
And he first went round the lower aisles. Then he went out to look at
the Place. Emma was not coming yet. He went up again to the choir.
The nave was reflected in the full fonts with the beginning of the
arches and some portions of the glass windows. But the reflections of
the paintings, broken by the marble rim, were continued farther on upon
the flag-stones, like a many-coloured carpet. The broad daylight from
without streamed into the church in three enormous rays from the three
opened portals. From time to time at the upper end a sacristan passed,
making the oblique genuflexion of devout persons in a hurry. The crystal
lustres hung motionless. In the choir a silver lamp was burning, and
from the side chapels and dark places of the church sometimes rose
sounds like sighs, with the clang of a closing grating, its echo
reverberating under the lofty vault.
Leon with solemn steps walked along by the walls. Life had never seemed
so good to him. She would come directly, charming, agitated, looking
back at the glances that followed her, and with her flounced dress, her
gold eyeglass, her thin shoes, with all sorts of elegant trifles that he
had never enjoyed, and with the ineffable seduction of yielding virtue.
The church like a huge boudoir spread around her; the arches bent down
to gather in the shade the confession of her love; the windows shone
resplendent to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she
might appear like an angel amid the fumes of the sweet-smelling odours.
But she did not come. He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell upon a
blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets. He looked at
it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fishes and the
button-holes of the doublets, while his thoughts wandered off towards
Emma.
The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individual who
took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He seemed to him
to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a
sort, and almost committing sacrilege.
But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined
cloak--it was she! Leon rose and ran to meet her.
Emma was pale. She walked fast.
"Read!" she said, holding out a paper to him. "Oh, no!"
And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin,
where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray.
The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless
experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a
rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness;
then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end.
Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden
resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine
aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle. She
breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases,
and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the
tumult of her heart.
She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward,
hurriedly saying--
"Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? Madame would like to
see the curiosities of the church?"
"Oh, no!" cried the clerk.
"Why not?" said she. For she clung with her expiring virtue to the
Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs--anything.
Then, in order to proceed "by rule," the beadle conducted them right to
the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with his cane a large
circle of block-stones without inscription or carving--
"This," he said majestically, "is the circumference of the beautiful
bell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds. There was not its
equal in all Europe. The workman who cast it died of the joy--"
"Let us go on," said Leon.
The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to the chapel of
the Virgin, he stretched forth his arm with an all-embracing gesture
of demonstration, and, prouder than a country squire showing you his
espaliers, went on--
"This simple stone covers Pierre de Breze, lord of Varenne and of
Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who died at
the battle of Montlhery on the 16th of July, 1465."
Leon bit his lips, fuming.
"And on the right, this gentleman all encased in iron, on the
prancing horse, is his grandson, Louis de Breze, lord of Breval and of
Montchauvet, Count de Maulevrier, Baron de Mauny, chamberlain to the
king, Knight of the Order, and also governor of Normandy; died on the
23rd of July, 1531--a Sunday, as the inscription specifies; and below,
this figure, about to descend into the tomb, portrays the same person.
It is not possible, is it, to see a more perfect representation of
annihilation?"
Madame Bovary put up her eyeglasses. Leon, motionless, looked at her,
no longer even attempting to speak a single word, to make a gesture,
so discouraged was he at this two-fold obstinacy of gossip and
indifference.
The everlasting guide went on--
"Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de
Poitiers, Countess de Breze, Duchess de Valentinois, born in 1499, died
in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is the Holy Virgin. Now
turn to this side; here are the tombs of the Ambroise. They were both
cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister under Louis
thousand gold crowns for the poor."
And without stopping, still talking, he pushed them into a chapel
full of balustrades, some put away, and disclosed a kind of block that
certainly might once have been an ill-made statue.
"Truly," he said with a groan, "it adorned the tomb of Richard Coeur de
Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, sir,
who reduced it to this condition. They had buried it for spite in the
earth, under the episcopal seat of Monsignor. See! this is the door by
which Monsignor passes to his house. Let us pass on quickly to see the
gargoyle windows."
But Leon hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized Emma's
arm. The beadle stood dumfounded, not able to understand this untimely
munificence when there were still so many things for the stranger to
see. So calling him back, he cried--
"Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!"
"No, thank you!" said Leon.
"You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less
than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it--"
Leon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly
two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would
vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong
cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like
the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier.
"But where are we going?" she said.
Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Bovary
was already, dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they
heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Leon
turned back.
"Sir!"
"What is it?"
And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing
against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works
"which treated of the cathedral."
"Idiot!" growled Leon, rushing out of the church.
A lad was playing about the close.
"Go and get me a cab!"
The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they
were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.
"Ah! Leon! Really--I don't know--if I ought," she whispered. Then with a
more serious air, "Do you know, it is very improper--"
"How so?" replied the clerk. "It is done at Paris."
And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her.
Still the cab did not come. Leon was afraid she might go back into the
church. At last the cab appeared.
"At all events, go out by the north porch," cried the beadle, who was
left alone on the threshold, "so as to see the Resurrection, the Last
Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-flames."
"Where to, sir?" asked the coachman.
"Where you like," said Leon, forcing Emma into the cab.
And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue Grand-Pont,
crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoleon, the Pont Neuf, and
stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille.
"Go on," cried a voice that came from within.
The cab went on again, and as soon as it reached the Carrefour
Lafayette, set off down-hill, and entered the station at a gallop.
"No, straight on!" cried the same voice.
The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours, trotted
quietly beneath the elm-trees. The coachman wiped his brow, put his
leather hat between his knees, and drove his carriage beyond the side
alley by the meadow to the margin of the waters.
It went along by the river, along the towing-path paved with sharp
pebbles, and for a long while in the direction of Oyssel, beyond the
isles.
But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatremares, Sotteville, La
Grande-Chaussee, the Rue d'Elbeuf, and made its third halt in front of
the Jardin des Plantes.
"Get on, will you?" cried the voice more furiously.
And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the
Quai'des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the bridge, by
the Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital gardens, where old
men in black coats were walking in the sun along the terrace all green
with ivy. It went up the Boulevard Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard
Cauchoise, then the whole of Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills.
It came back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, wandered
about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont
Gargan, at La Rougue-Marc and Place du Gaillardbois; in the Rue
Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien,
Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise--in front of the Customs, at the "Vieille
Tour," the "Trois Pipes," and the Monumental Cemetery. From time to time
the coachman, on his box cast despairing eyes at the public-houses.
He could not understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these
individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at
once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his
perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up
against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and
almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and depression.
And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the
streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken
eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds
drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb,
and tossing about like a vessel.
Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun
beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared hand passed
beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps
of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off lighted like white
butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom.
At about six o'clock the carriage stopped in a back street of the
Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out, who walked with her veil down,
and without turning her head.
| 7,284 | Part 3, Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-1 | A lot of things happened to Leon in Paris. First of all, he studied law. Secondly, he studied women. He's no longer the same shy boy he was before. All along, he held on to a vague hope that someday he and Emma might actually get together, even while he had new experiences with other women. This new Leon is resolved to "possess" Emma. He's determined and much craftier than he used to be. He follows Emma and Charles to their inn, then returns the next morning to scout out the situation. He discovers Emma in the hotel room...alone. Leon has become something of a sweet-talker over the past few years. Perhaps he's not at the same level as Rodolphe, but he's getting up there. He and Emma talk and talk about the various sorrows of their lives. Sigh. Same old, same old. Noticeably, Emma doesn't say anything about loving another man, and Leon doesn't say anything about kind of forgetting Emma. Both of them make dramatic claims, each saying that life is miserable without the other. Basically, this love scene is just one big string of complaints - there's nothing romantic about that. Finally, Leon gives in and says out loud that he was in love with her. All of a sudden the tension is broken, and old feelings come rushing out, created anew by their current proximity. Emma is startled by how much she remembers - she feels old and experienced. They talk until night falls. Leon suggests that they could start over again, but Emma, attempting to be noble, says that she's too old and he's too young . It's late - they've even missed the opera. Leon gets up to leave, but convinces Emma to meet him one more time. She makes their meeting point the famous Rouen cathedral. That night, Emma writes a farewell letter of her own, explaining to Leon why they can't be together. However, she can't send it, since she doesn't have his address. She decides to give it to him in person. Before the rendezvous, Leon primps nervously. He even buys Emma flowers, and goes to meet her at the cathedral. There, he's met not by Emma, but by a cathedral guide, who attempts to give Leon a tour. Emma's late, and Leon grows more anxious. Finally, she arrives. She starts to give him the letter, but is seized by the desire to pray. Leon is both charmed and irritated. As they're about to leave, the guide comes up and offers to give them a tour again. Emma, concerned for her virtue, desperately says yes. They follow the guide, not listening, through the cathedral and back to where they started. Before they get to the tower, Leon basically hurls a coin at the poor guide and pulls Emma away with him. The guide doesn't get the picture - he just keeps coming back. The couple flees the cathedral rather comically. Outside, Leon sends a little street kid to find a cab for them. Awkwardly, they wait alone - there's a kind of aggressive tension between them. The cab arrives. They get in as the cathedral guy yells at them from the church door, and Leon tells the driver to go wherever he wants. The following is one of the most famous scenes of the novel. We see the cab rushing through Rouen aimlessly; we can't see inside it, but we can, however, guess what's going on...Leon keeps yelling up to the driver to keep going; he and Emma stay concealed in the cab. The poor cab driver is tired and certainly weirded out. His horses are exhausted, and everyone's demoralized. The passengers, however, give no sign. Around mid-afternoon, a hand is seen throwing scraps of paper out the window; we assume it's Emma bidding farewell to the well-intentioned farewell letter. Finally, in the early evening, the cab stops. Emma calmly steps out of it and walks away. | null | 938 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/26.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_25_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 2 | part 3, chapter 2 | null | {"name": "Part 3, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-2", "summary": "Emma returns to the inn, and finds that she's missed the Hirondelle, which was there to pick her up earlier. She hires a cab and catches up to the stagecoach. She returns home. Once there, Felicite sends her next door to the Homais house, saying that it's urgent. It's jam making day in Yonville, a particularly hectic time. At chez Homais, Emma discovers the pharmacist's family in an uproar. It turns out that Justin almost made a fatal mistake - he almost used a pan for jam that was dangerously close to the jar of arsenic. Homais is unbelievably angry; his wife and the children freak out, as though they'd already been poisoned. Emma observes all this, as Homais goes through the whole chain of events again. Poor Justin. Things just go from bad to worse for him. As Homais shakes him back and forth angrily, a book falls out of his pocket. Not just any book...a book called Conjugal Love. With pictures. The children are struck dumb, and Homais snatches it away furiously. At this point, Emma successfully breaks into the conversation. She asks what's wrong. Homais bluntly tells her that her father-in-law, the elder Monsieur Bovary, is dead. Emma goes to find Charles as Homais cools down a bit, still grumbling. Charles has been waiting for his wife, and tearfully greets her with a hug and kiss. Emma, remembering Leon, is grossed out by her husband. She responds with an extraordinary lack of sympathy. Charles, poor man, just thinks that Emma is struck by grief, when in reality, she just doesn't know what to say, and doesn't feel anything. Hippolyte limps in, bringing Emma's bags. Emma is embarrassed as ever by his presence, a symbol of Charles's failures. The next day, Charles's mother arrives. Mother and son are debilitated by grief; Emma is unmoved. Instead, she's daydreaming about Leon. Monsieur Lheureux, who seems to have an incredible radar system for knowing the absolute worst time for stopping by, stops by. The merchant and Emma step aside to discuss business. Lheureux slyly proposes another lending arrangement - knowing that Emma is a fool with money, he wants Charles to give her power of attorney , so he can deal with her. Soon enough, he returns with yards of black fabric for a mourning dress. Lheureux keeps pushing Emma about the whole power of attorney business, which she doesn't really understand. However, she figures things out soon enough. As soon as Charles's mother leaves, Emma goes into financier mode. She has a document drawn up by the notary, which gives her control over the family's money and loans. Charles is amazed by what seems like Emma's common sense. She slyly suggests that they should have someone else look over the notarized document before they sign it - and Charles himself sends her to Rouen to meet with Leon. She's gone for three days.", "analysis": ""} |
On reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the
diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had at
last started.
Yet nothing forced her to go; but she had given her word that she would
return that same evening. Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her
heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is for some women at
once the chastisement and atonement of adultery.
She packed her box quickly, paid her bill, took a cab in the yard,
hurrying on the driver, urging him on, every moment inquiring about
the time and the miles traversed. He succeeded in catching up the
"Hirondelle" as it neared the first houses of Quincampoix.
Hardly was she seated in her corner than she closed her eyes, and opened
them at the foot of the hill, when from afar she recognised Felicite,
who was on the lookout in front of the farrier's shop. Hivert pulled
in his horses and, the servant, climbing up to the window, said
mysteriously--
"Madame, you must go at once to Monsieur Homais. It's for something
important."
The village was silent as usual. At the corner of the streets were small
pink heaps that smoked in the air, for this was the time for jam-making,
and everyone at Yonville prepared his supply on the same day. But in
front of the chemist's shop one might admire a far larger heap, and that
surpassed the others with the superiority that a laboratory must have
over ordinary stores, a general need over individual fancy.
She went in. The large arm-chair was upset, and even the "Fanal de
Rouen" lay on the ground, outspread between two pestles. She pushed open
the lobby door, and in the middle of the kitchen, amid brown jars full
of picked currants, of powdered sugar and lump sugar, of the scales on
the table, and of the pans on the fire, she saw all the Homais, small
and large, with aprons reaching to their chins, and with forks in their
hands. Justin was standing up with bowed head, and the chemist was
screaming--
"Who told you to go and fetch it in the Capharnaum."
"What is it? What is the matter?"
"What is it?" replied the druggist. "We are making preserves; they are
simmering; but they were about to boil over, because there is too
much juice, and I ordered another pan. Then he, from indolence, from
laziness, went and took, hanging on its nail in my laboratory, the key
of the Capharnaum."
It was thus the druggist called a small room under the leads, full of
the utensils and the goods of his trade. He often spent long hours there
alone, labelling, decanting, and doing up again; and he looked upon
it not as a simple store, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there
afterwards issued, elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses,
infusions, lotions, and potions, that would bear far and wide his
celebrity. No one in the world set foot there, and he respected it so,
that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers,
was the spot where he displayed his pride, the Capharnaum was the refuge
where, egoistically concentrating himself, Homais delighted in the
exercise of his predilections, so that Justin's thoughtlessness seemed
to him a monstrous piece of irreverence, and, redder than the currants,
he repeated--
"Yes, from the Capharnaum! The key that locks up the acids and caustic
alkalies! To go and get a spare pan! a pan with a lid! and that I
shall perhaps never use! Everything is of importance in the delicate
operations of our art! But, devil take it! one must make distinctions,
and not employ for almost domestic purposes that which is meant for
pharmaceutical! It is as if one were to carve a fowl with a scalpel; as
if a magistrate--"
"Now be calm," said Madame Homais.
And Athalie, pulling at his coat, cried "Papa! papa!"
"No, let me alone," went on the druggist "let me alone, hang it! My
word! One might as well set up for a grocer. That's it! go it! respect
nothing! break, smash, let loose the leeches, burn the mallow-paste,
pickle the gherkins in the window jars, tear up the bandages!"
"I thought you had--" said Emma.
"Presently! Do you know to what you exposed yourself? Didn't you see
anything in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer,
articulate something."
"I--don't--know," stammered the young fellow.
"Ah! you don't know! Well, then, I do know! You saw a bottle of blue
glass, sealed with yellow wax, that contains a white powder, on which I
have even written 'Dangerous!' And do you know what is in it? Arsenic!
And you go and touch it! You take a pan that was next to it!"
"Next to it!" cried Madame Homais, clasping her hands. "Arsenic! You
might have poisoned us all."
And the children began howling as if they already had frightful pains in
their entrails.
"Or poison a patient!" continued the druggist. "Do you want to see me
in the prisoner's dock with criminals, in a court of justice? To see
me dragged to the scaffold? Don't you know what care I take in managing
things, although I am so thoroughly used to it? Often I am horrified
myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes
us, and the absurd legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles'
sword over our heads."
Emma no longer dreamed of asking what they wanted her for, and the
druggist went on in breathless phrases--
"That is your return for all the kindness we have shown you! That is how
you recompense me for the really paternal care that I lavish on you! For
without me where would you be? What would you be doing? Who provides
you with food, education, clothes, and all the means of figuring one day
with honour in the ranks of society? But you must pull hard at the oar
if you're to do that, and get, as, people say, callosities upon your
hands. Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.*"
* The worker lives by working, do what he will.
He was so exasperated he quoted Latin. He would have quoted Chinese
or Greenlandish had he known those two languages, for he was in one
of those crises in which the whole soul shows indistinctly what it
contains, like the ocean, which, in the storm, opens itself from the
seaweeds on its shores down to the sands of its abysses.
And he went on--
"I am beginning to repent terribly of having taken you up! I should
certainly have done better to have left you to rot in your poverty and
the dirt in which you were born. Oh, you'll never be fit for anything
but to herd animals with horns! You have no aptitude for science! You
hardly know how to stick on a label! And there you are, dwelling with me
snug as a parson, living in clover, taking your ease!"
But Emma, turning to Madame Homais, "I was told to come here--"
"Oh, dear me!" interrupted the good woman, with a sad air, "how am I to
tell you? It is a misfortune!"
She could not finish, the druggist was thundering--"Empty it! Clean it!
Take it back! Be quick!"
And seizing Justin by the collar of his blouse, he shook a book out of
his pocket. The lad stooped, but Homais was the quicker, and, having
picked up the volume, contemplated it with staring eyes and open mouth.
"CONJUGAL--LOVE!" he said, slowly separating the two words. "Ah! very
good! very good! very pretty! And illustrations! Oh, this is too much!"
Madame Homais came forward.
"No, do not touch it!"
The children wanted to look at the pictures.
"Leave the room," he said imperiously; and they went out.
First he walked up and down with the open volume in his hand, rolling
his eyes, choking, tumid, apoplectic. Then he came straight to his
pupil, and, planting himself in front of him with crossed arms--
"Have you every vice, then, little wretch? Take care! you are on a
downward path. Did not you reflect that this infamous book might fall
in the hands of my children, kindle a spark in their minds, tarnish the
purity of Athalie, corrupt Napoleon. He is already formed like a man.
Are you quite sure, anyhow, that they have not read it? Can you certify
to me--"
"But really, sir," said Emma, "you wished to tell me--"
"Ah, yes! madame. Your father-in-law is dead."
In fact, Monsieur Bovary senior had expired the evening before suddenly
from an attack of apoplexy as he got up from table, and by way of
greater precaution, on account of Emma's sensibility, Charles had begged
Homais to break the horrible news to her gradually. Homais had thought
over his speech; he had rounded, polished it, made it rhythmical; it was
a masterpiece of prudence and transitions, of subtle turns and delicacy;
but anger had got the better of rhetoric.
Emma, giving up all chance of hearing any details, left the pharmacy;
for Monsieur Homais had taken up the thread of his vituperations.
However, he was growing calmer, and was now grumbling in a paternal tone
whilst he fanned himself with his skull-cap.
"It is not that I entirely disapprove of the work. Its author was a
doctor! There are certain scientific points in it that it is not ill a
man should know, and I would even venture to say that a man must know.
But later--later! At any rate, not till you are man yourself and your
temperament is formed."
When Emma knocked at the door. Charles, who was waiting for her, came
forward with open arms and said to her with tears in his voice--
"Ah! my dear!"
And he bent over her gently to kiss her. But at the contact of his lips
the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her hand over her
face shuddering.
But she made answer, "Yes, I know, I know!"
He showed her the letter in which his mother told the event without any
sentimental hypocrisy. She only regretted her husband had not received
the consolations of religion, as he had died at Daudeville, in the
street, at the door of a cafe after a patriotic dinner with some
ex-officers.
Emma gave him back the letter; then at dinner, for appearance's sake,
she affected a certain repugnance. But as he urged her to try, she
resolutely began eating, while Charles opposite her sat motionless in a
dejected attitude.
Now and then he raised his head and gave her a long look full of
distress. Once he sighed, "I should have liked to see him again!"
She was silent. At last, understanding that she must say something, "How
old was your father?" she asked.
"Fifty-eight."
"Ah!"
And that was all.
A quarter of an hour after he added, "My poor mother! what will become
of her now?"
She made a gesture that signified she did not know. Seeing her so
taciturn, Charles imagined her much affected, and forced himself to say
nothing, not to reawaken this sorrow which moved him. And, shaking off
his own--
"Did you enjoy yourself yesterday?" he asked.
"Yes."
When the cloth was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma; and as
she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little
all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher--in
a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an
interminable evening! Something stupefying like the fumes of opium
seized her.
They heard in the passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the boards.
It was Hippolyte bringing back Emma's luggage. In order to put it down
he described painfully a quarter of a circle with his stump.
"He doesn't even remember any more about it," she thought, looking at
the poor devil, whose coarse red hair was wet with perspiration.
Bovary was searching at the bottom of his purse for a centime, and
without appearing to understand all there was of humiliation for him
in the mere presence of this man, who stood there like a personified
reproach to his incurable incapacity.
"Hallo! you've a pretty bouquet," he said, noticing Leon's violets on
the chimney.
"Yes," she replied indifferently; "it's a bouquet I bought just now from
a beggar."
Charles picked up the flowers, and freshening his eyes, red with tears,
against them, smelt them delicately.
She took them quickly from his hand and put them in a glass of water.
The next day Madame Bovary senior arrived. She and her son wept much.
Emma, on the pretext of giving orders, disappeared. The following day
they had a talk over the mourning. They went and sat down with their
workboxes by the waterside under the arbour.
Charles was thinking of his father, and was surprised to feel so much
affection for this man, whom till then he had thought he cared little
about. Madame Bovary senior was thinking of her husband. The worst
days of the past seemed enviable to her. All was forgotten beneath the
instinctive regret of such a long habit, and from time to time whilst
she sewed, a big tear rolled along her nose and hung suspended there a
moment. Emma was thinking that it was scarcely forty-eight hours since
they had been together, far from the world, all in a frenzy of joy, and
not having eyes enough to gaze upon each other. She tried to recall the
slightest details of that past day. But the presence of her husband and
mother-in-law worried her. She would have liked to hear nothing, to see
nothing, so as not to disturb the meditation on her love, that, do what
she would, became lost in external sensations.
She was unpicking the lining of a dress, and the strips were scattered
around her. Madame Bovary senior was plying her scissor without looking
up, and Charles, in his list slippers and his old brown surtout that he
used as a dressing-gown, sat with both hands in his pockets, and did not
speak either; near them Berthe, in a little white pinafore, was raking
sand in the walks with her spade. Suddenly she saw Monsieur Lheureux,
the linendraper, come in through the gate.
He came to offer his services "under the sad circumstances." Emma
answered that she thought she could do without. The shopkeeper was not
to be beaten.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I should like to have a private talk
with you." Then in a low voice, "It's about that affair--you know."
Charles crimsoned to his ears. "Oh, yes! certainly." And in his
confusion, turning to his wife, "Couldn't you, my darling?"
She seemed to understand him, for she rose; and Charles said to his
mother, "It is nothing particular. No doubt, some household trifle." He
did not want her to know the story of the bill, fearing her reproaches.
As soon as they were alone, Monsieur Lheureux in sufficiently clear
terms began to congratulate Emma on the inheritance, then to talk of
indifferent matters, of the espaliers, of the harvest, and of his own
health, which was always so-so, always having ups and downs. In fact, he
had to work devilish hard, although he didn't make enough, in spite of
all people said, to find butter for his bread.
Emma let him talk on. She had bored herself so prodigiously the last two
days.
"And so you're quite well again?" he went on. "Ma foi! I saw your
husband in a sad state. He's a good fellow, though we did have a little
misunderstanding."
She asked what misunderstanding, for Charles had said nothing of the
dispute about the goods supplied to her.
"Why, you know well enough," cried Lheureux. "It was about your little
fancies--the travelling trunks."
He had drawn his hat over his eyes, and, with his hands behind his
back, smiling and whistling, he looked straight at her in an unbearable
manner. Did he suspect anything?
She was lost in all kinds of apprehensions. At last, however, he went
on--
"We made it up, all the same, and I've come again to propose another
arrangement."
This was to renew the bill Bovary had signed. The doctor, of course,
would do as he pleased; he was not to trouble himself, especially just
now, when he would have a lot of worry. "And he would do better to give
it over to someone else--to you, for example. With a power of attorney
it could be easily managed, and then we (you and I) would have our
little business transactions together."
She did not understand. He was silent. Then, passing to his trade,
Lheureux declared that madame must require something. He would send her
a black barege, twelve yards, just enough to make a gown.
"The one you've on is good enough for the house, but you want another
for calls. I saw that the very moment that I came in. I've the eye of an
American!"
He did not send the stuff; he brought it. Then he came again to measure
it; he came again on other pretexts, always trying to make himself
agreeable, useful, "enfeoffing himself," as Homais would have said, and
always dropping some hint to Emma about the power of attorney. He never
mentioned the bill; she did not think of it. Charles, at the beginning
of her convalescence, had certainly said something about it to her,
but so many emotions had passed through her head that she no longer
remembered it. Besides, she took care not to talk of any money
questions. Madame Bovary seemed surprised at this, and attributed the
change in her ways to the religious sentiments she had contracted during
her illness.
But as soon as she was gone, Emma greatly astounded Bovary by her
practical good sense. It would be necessary to make inquiries, to look
into mortgages, and see if there were any occasion for a sale by auction
or a liquidation. She quoted technical terms casually, pronounced the
grand words of order, the future, foresight, and constantly exaggerated
the difficulties of settling his father's affairs so much, that at last
one day she showed him the rough draft of a power of attorney to manage
and administer his business, arrange all loans, sign and endorse all
bills, pay all sums, etc. She had profited by Lheureux's lessons.
Charles naively asked her where this paper came from.
"Monsieur Guillaumin"; and with the utmost coolness she added, "I don't
trust him overmuch. Notaries have such a bad reputation. Perhaps we
ought to consult--we only know--no one."
"Unless Leon--" replied Charles, who was reflecting. But it was
difficult to explain matters by letter. Then she offered to make the
journey, but he thanked her. She insisted. It was quite a contest of
mutual consideration. At last she cried with affected waywardness--
"No, I will go!"
"How good you are!" he said, kissing her forehead.
The next morning she set out in the "Hirondelle" to go to Rouen to
consult Monsieur Leon, and she stayed there three days.
| 4,817 | Part 3, Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-2 | Emma returns to the inn, and finds that she's missed the Hirondelle, which was there to pick her up earlier. She hires a cab and catches up to the stagecoach. She returns home. Once there, Felicite sends her next door to the Homais house, saying that it's urgent. It's jam making day in Yonville, a particularly hectic time. At chez Homais, Emma discovers the pharmacist's family in an uproar. It turns out that Justin almost made a fatal mistake - he almost used a pan for jam that was dangerously close to the jar of arsenic. Homais is unbelievably angry; his wife and the children freak out, as though they'd already been poisoned. Emma observes all this, as Homais goes through the whole chain of events again. Poor Justin. Things just go from bad to worse for him. As Homais shakes him back and forth angrily, a book falls out of his pocket. Not just any book...a book called Conjugal Love. With pictures. The children are struck dumb, and Homais snatches it away furiously. At this point, Emma successfully breaks into the conversation. She asks what's wrong. Homais bluntly tells her that her father-in-law, the elder Monsieur Bovary, is dead. Emma goes to find Charles as Homais cools down a bit, still grumbling. Charles has been waiting for his wife, and tearfully greets her with a hug and kiss. Emma, remembering Leon, is grossed out by her husband. She responds with an extraordinary lack of sympathy. Charles, poor man, just thinks that Emma is struck by grief, when in reality, she just doesn't know what to say, and doesn't feel anything. Hippolyte limps in, bringing Emma's bags. Emma is embarrassed as ever by his presence, a symbol of Charles's failures. The next day, Charles's mother arrives. Mother and son are debilitated by grief; Emma is unmoved. Instead, she's daydreaming about Leon. Monsieur Lheureux, who seems to have an incredible radar system for knowing the absolute worst time for stopping by, stops by. The merchant and Emma step aside to discuss business. Lheureux slyly proposes another lending arrangement - knowing that Emma is a fool with money, he wants Charles to give her power of attorney , so he can deal with her. Soon enough, he returns with yards of black fabric for a mourning dress. Lheureux keeps pushing Emma about the whole power of attorney business, which she doesn't really understand. However, she figures things out soon enough. As soon as Charles's mother leaves, Emma goes into financier mode. She has a document drawn up by the notary, which gives her control over the family's money and loans. Charles is amazed by what seems like Emma's common sense. She slyly suggests that they should have someone else look over the notarized document before they sign it - and Charles himself sends her to Rouen to meet with Leon. She's gone for three days. | null | 718 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/27.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_26_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 3 | part 3, chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Part 3, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-3", "summary": "Those three days are like heaven. Emma and Leon stay in a waterfront hotel, doing nothing but enjoying each other's company. Emma is happier than she's been since Rodolphe. One day, on a boat ride, Emma is actually reminded of Rodolphe - the boatman mentions giving a ride to a gentleman of his appearance. She shudders, but gets over it quickly. The holiday has to end, though. Emma tells Leon to send letters to her to the home of Madame Rollet, the former wetnurse. As Leon makes his way home, having deposited Emma at the stagecoach, he wonders idly why she is so determined to get the power of attorney.", "analysis": ""} |
They were three full, exquisite days--a true honeymoon. They were at
the Hotel-de-Boulogne, on the harbour; and they lived there, with drawn
blinds and closed doors, with flowers on the floor, and iced syrups were
brought them early in the morning.
Towards evening they took a covered boat and went to dine on one of the
islands. It was the time when one hears by the side of the dockyard the
caulking-mallets sounding against the hull of vessels. The smoke of
the tar rose up between the trees; there were large fatty drops on the
water, undulating in the purple colour of the sun, like floating plaques
of Florentine bronze.
They rowed down in the midst of moored boats, whose long oblique cables
grazed lightly against the bottom of the boat. The din of the town
gradually grew distant; the rolling of carriages, the tumult of voices,
the yelping of dogs on the decks of vessels. She took off her bonnet,
and they landed on their island.
They sat down in the low-ceilinged room of a tavern, at whose door hung
black nets. They ate fried smelts, cream and cherries. They lay down
upon the grass; they kissed behind the poplars; and they would fain,
like two Robinsons, have lived for ever in this little place, which
seemed to them in their beatitude the most magnificent on earth. It was
not the first time that they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; that
they had heard the water flowing and the wind blowing in the leaves;
but, no doubt, they had never admired all this, as if Nature had
not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful since the
gratification of their desires.
At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores of the islands.
They sat at the bottom, both hidden by the shade, in silence. The square
oars rang in the iron thwarts, and, in the stillness, seemed to mark
time, like the beating of a metronome, while at the stern the rudder
that trailed behind never ceased its gentle splash against the water.
Once the moon rose; they did not fail to make fine phrases, finding the
orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even began to sing--
"One night, do you remember, we were sailing," etc.
Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves, and the winds
carried off the trills that Leon heard pass like the flapping of wings
about him.
She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of the shallop,
through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in. Her black
dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her seem more slender,
taller. Her head was raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards
heaven. At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then she
reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight.
Leon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of scarlet
silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last said--
"Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other day. A lot
of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne,
cornets--everything in style! There was one especially, a tall handsome
man with small moustaches, who was that funny! And they all kept saying,
'Now tell us something, Adolphe--Dolpe,' I think."
She shivered.
"You are in pain?" asked Leon, coming closer to her.
"Oh, it's nothing! No doubt, it is only the night air."
"And who doesn't want for women, either," softly added the sailor,
thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment.
Then, spitting on his hands, he took the oars again.
Yet they had to part. The adieux were sad. He was to send his letters to
Mere Rollet, and she gave him such precise instructions about a double
envelope that he admired greatly her amorous astuteness.
"So you can assure me it is all right?" she said with her last kiss.
"Yes, certainly."
"But why," he thought afterwards as he came back through the streets
alone, "is she so very anxious to get this power of attorney?"
| 1,039 | Part 3, Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-3 | Those three days are like heaven. Emma and Leon stay in a waterfront hotel, doing nothing but enjoying each other's company. Emma is happier than she's been since Rodolphe. One day, on a boat ride, Emma is actually reminded of Rodolphe - the boatman mentions giving a ride to a gentleman of his appearance. She shudders, but gets over it quickly. The holiday has to end, though. Emma tells Leon to send letters to her to the home of Madame Rollet, the former wetnurse. As Leon makes his way home, having deposited Emma at the stagecoach, he wonders idly why she is so determined to get the power of attorney. | null | 160 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/28.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_27_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 4 | part 3, chapter 4 | null | {"name": "Part 3, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-4", "summary": "Leon is just as into the affair as Emma is. He reads her letters voraciously, and gets sick of his job; instead, he thinks about his mistress. One weekend, he misses Emma so much he actually visits Yonville. The townspeople are glad to see him. He stays in the Lion d'Or, Madame Lefrancois's inn, waiting for an opportune moment to see his love. On the second night of his visit, he's finally able to see her - in the same place she used to meet Rodolphe. They lament the difficulty of life...it's so hard to be apart! Emma gets more and more cunning; she meets with Madame Rollet to get her letters, orders tons of new items from Monsieur Lheureux, and even hatches a sly plan to get Charles to send her to Rouen once a week. Under the false pretenses of picking up her music again, she complains about her lack of skill with the piano. She wheedles Charles into agreeing to pay for lessons in Rouen.", "analysis": ""} |
Leon soon put on an air of superiority before his comrades, avoided
their company, and completely neglected his work.
He waited for her letters; he re-read them; he wrote to her. He called
her to mind with all the strength of his desires and of his memories.
Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to see her again grew,
so that at last on Saturday morning he escaped from his office.
When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley below the
church-spire with its tin flag swinging in the wind, he felt that
delight mingled with triumphant vanity and egoistic tenderness that
millionaires must experience when they come back to their native
village.
He went rambling round her house. A light was burning in the kitchen. He
watched for her shadow behind the curtains, but nothing appeared.
Mere Lefrancois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations. She
thought he "had grown and was thinner," while Artemise, on the contrary,
thought him stouter and darker.
He dined in the little room as of yore, but alone, without the
tax-gatherer; for Binet, tired of waiting for the "Hirondelle," had
definitely put forward his meal one hour, and now he dined punctually at
five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old concern "was late."
Leon, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the doctor's door.
Madame was in her room, and did not come down for a quarter of an hour.
The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never stirred out that
evening, nor all the next day.
He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind the garden in the
lane; in the lane, as she had the other one! It was a stormy night, and
they talked under an umbrella by lightning flashes.
Their separation was becoming intolerable. "I would rather die!" said
Emma. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. "Adieu! adieu! When shall I
see you again?"
They came back again to embrace once more, and it was then that
she promised him to find soon, by no matter what means, a regular
opportunity for seeing one another in freedom at least once a week. Emma
never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides, she was full of
hope. Some money was coming to her.
On the strength of it she bought a pair of yellow curtains with large
stripes for her room, whose cheapness Monsieur Lheureux had commended;
she dreamed of getting a carpet, and Lheureux, declaring that it wasn't
"drinking the sea," politely undertook to supply her with one. She could
no longer do without his services. Twenty times a day she sent for him,
and he at once put by his business without a murmur. People could not
understand either why Mere Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and
even paid her private visits.
It was about this time, that is to say, the beginning of winter, that
she seemed seized with great musical fervour.
One evening when Charles was listening to her, she began the same piece
four times over, each time with much vexation, while he, not noticing
any difference, cried--
"Bravo! very goodl You are wrong to stop. Go on!"
"Oh, no; it is execrable! My fingers are quite rusty."
The next day he begged her to play him something again.
"Very well; to please you!"
And Charles confessed she had gone off a little. She played wrong notes
and blundered; then, stopping short--
"Ah! it is no use. I ought to take some lessons; but--" She bit her lips
and added, "Twenty francs a lesson, that's too dear!"
"Yes, so it is--rather," said Charles, giggling stupidly. "But it seems
to me that one might be able to do it for less; for there are artists of
no reputation, and who are often better than the celebrities."
"Find them!" said Emma.
The next day when he came home he looked at her shyly, and at last could
no longer keep back the words.
"How obstinate you are sometimes! I went to Barfucheres to-day. Well,
Madame Liegard assured me that her three young ladies who are at
La Misericorde have lessons at fifty sous apiece, and that from an
excellent mistress!"
She shrugged her shoulders and did not open her piano again. But when
she passed by it (if Bovary were there), she sighed--
"Ah! my poor piano!"
And when anyone came to see her, she did not fail to inform them she
had given up music, and could not begin again now for important reasons.
Then people commiserated her--
"What a pity! she had so much talent!"
They even spoke to Bovary about it. They put him to shame, and
especially the chemist.
"You are wrong. One should never let any of the faculties of nature lie
fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend, that by inducing madame to
study; you are economising on the subsequent musical education of
your child. For my own part, I think that mothers ought themselves to
instruct their children. That is an idea of Rousseau's, still rather
new perhaps, but that will end by triumphing, I am certain of it, like
mothers nursing their own children and vaccination."
So Charles returned once more to this question of the piano. Emma
replied bitterly that it would be better to sell it. This poor piano,
that had given her vanity so much satisfaction--to see it go was to
Bovary like the indefinable suicide of a part of herself.
"If you liked," he said, "a lesson from time to time, that wouldn't
after all be very ruinous."
"But lessons," she replied, "are only of use when followed up."
And thus it was she set about obtaining her husband's permission to go
to town once a week to see her lover. At the end of a month she was even
considered to have made considerable progress.
| 1,429 | Part 3, Chapter 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-4 | Leon is just as into the affair as Emma is. He reads her letters voraciously, and gets sick of his job; instead, he thinks about his mistress. One weekend, he misses Emma so much he actually visits Yonville. The townspeople are glad to see him. He stays in the Lion d'Or, Madame Lefrancois's inn, waiting for an opportune moment to see his love. On the second night of his visit, he's finally able to see her - in the same place she used to meet Rodolphe. They lament the difficulty of life...it's so hard to be apart! Emma gets more and more cunning; she meets with Madame Rollet to get her letters, orders tons of new items from Monsieur Lheureux, and even hatches a sly plan to get Charles to send her to Rouen once a week. Under the false pretenses of picking up her music again, she complains about her lack of skill with the piano. She wheedles Charles into agreeing to pay for lessons in Rouen. | null | 247 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/33.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_32_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 9 | part 3, chapter 9 | null | {"name": "Part 3, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-9", "summary": "Charles throws himself on Emma's corpse, overcome by grief. Homais goes home, invents a story about accidental poisoning to cover up the suicide, and writes it up for the newspaper. When he returns to the Bovarys' house, he finds Charles alone and frightened, Canivet having left him. Homais, with the best of intentions, attempts to distract Charles by talking about the weather. Father Bournisien succeeds in getting Charles to do something about the funeral. He makes extravagantly romantic plans - ones that Emma herself would have appreciated. Charles rebels against God; he curses the heavens for allowing this to happen. The priest and the pharmacist sit up with the corpse all night, holding a vigil for her. The whole time, they argue about religion. Charles's mother arrives in the morning. She attempts to reason with Charles about the expense of the funeral, and he actually stands up to her for the first time. The townspeople come to visit and pay their respects; they're bored, but each is unwilling to be the first to leave. Felicite is hysterical with grief. She, Madame Lefrancois, and old Madame Bovary dress Emma in her wedding gown to prepare her for her coffin. Grotesquely, a stream of black liquid flows out of the dead woman's mouth as they lift her. Homais and Bournisien continue their intellectual discussion. Charles comes in to say his final good bye in private. He reflects upon his memories of their past together, looks at her dead face, and is horrified. The priest and pharmacist lead him away. Homais shakily cuts a few locks of Emma's hair for Charles to keep. Felicite thoughtfully leaves a bottle of brandy and a pastry out for the men - Homais and Father Bournisien need no prompting to drink the alcohol. They part ways after finishing the bottle. Finally, after Emma's body is sealed inside three coffins, her father arrives. He faints immediately.", "analysis": ""} |
There is always after the death of anyone a kind of stupefaction;
so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign
ourselves to believe in it. But still, when he saw that she did not
move, Charles threw himself upon her, crying--
"Farewell! farewell!"
Homais and Canivet dragged him from the room.
"Restrain yourself!"
"Yes." said he, struggling, "I'll be quiet. I'll not do anything. But
leave me alone. I want to see her. She is my wife!"
And he wept.
"Cry," said the chemist; "let nature take her course; that will solace
you."
Weaker than a child, Charles let himself be led downstairs into the
sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went home. On the Place he
was accosted by the blind man, who, having dragged himself as far as
Yonville, in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic pomade, was asking
every passer-by where the druggist lived.
"There now! as if I hadn't got other fish to fry. Well, so much the
worse; you must come later on."
And he entered the shop hurriedly.
He had to write two letters, to prepare a soothing potion for Bovary, to
invent some lie that would conceal the poisoning, and work it up into an
article for the "Fanal," without counting the people who were waiting to
get the news from him; and when the Yonvillers had all heard his story
of the arsenic that she had mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla
cream. Homais once more returned to Bovary's.
He found him alone (Monsieur Canivet had left), sitting in an arm-chair
near the window, staring with an idiotic look at the flags of the floor.
"Now," said the chemist, "you ought yourself to fix the hour for the
ceremony."
"Why? What ceremony?" Then, in a stammering, frightened voice, "Oh, no!
not that. No! I want to see her here."
Homais, to keep himself in countenance, took up a water-bottle on the
whatnot to water the geraniums.
"Ah! thanks," said Charles; "you are good."
But he did not finish, choking beneath the crowd of memories that this
action of the druggist recalled to him.
Then to distract him, Homais thought fit to talk a little horticulture:
plants wanted humidity. Charles bowed his head in sign of approbation.
"Besides, the fine days will soon be here again."
"Ah!" said Bovary.
The druggist, at his wit's end, began softly to draw aside the small
window-curtain.
"Hallo! there's Monsieur Tuvache passing."
Charles repeated like a machine---
"Monsieur Tuvache passing!"
Homais did not dare to speak to him again about the funeral
arrangements; it was the priest who succeeded in reconciling him to
them.
He shut himself up in his consulting-room, took a pen, and after sobbing
for some time, wrote--
"I wish her to be buried in her wedding-dress, with white shoes, and a
wreath. Her hair is to be spread out over her shoulders. Three coffins,
one of oak, one of mahogany, one of lead. Let no one say anything to me.
I shall have strength. Over all there is to be placed a large piece of
green velvet. This is my wish; see that it is done."
The two men were much surprised at Bovary's romantic ideas. The chemist
at once went to him and said--
"This velvet seems to me a superfetation. Besides, the expense--"
"What's that to you?" cried Charles. "Leave me! You did not love her.
Go!"
The priest took him by the arm for a turn in the garden. He discoursed
on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great, was very good: one
must submit to his decrees without a murmur; nay, must even thank him.
Charles burst out into blasphemies: "I hate your God!"
"The spirit of rebellion is still upon you," sighed the ecclesiastic.
Bovary was far away. He was walking with great strides along by the
wall, near the espalier, and he ground his teeth; he raised to heaven
looks of malediction, but not so much as a leaf stirred.
A fine rain was falling: Charles, whose chest was bare, at last began to
shiver; he went in and sat down in the kitchen.
At six o'clock a noise like a clatter of old iron was heard on the
Place; it was the "Hirondelle" coming in, and he remained with his
forehead against the windowpane, watching all the passengers get
out, one after the other. Felicite put down a mattress for him in the
drawing-room. He threw himself upon it and fell asleep.
Although a philosopher, Monsieur Homais respected the dead. So bearing
no grudge to poor Charles, he came back again in the evening to sit up
with the body; bringing with him three volumes and a pocket-book for
taking notes.
Monsieur Bournisien was there, and two large candles were burning at the
head of the bed, that had been taken out of the alcove. The druggist, on
whom the silence weighed, was not long before he began formulating some
regrets about this "unfortunate young woman." and the priest replied
that there was nothing to do now but pray for her.
"Yet," Homais went on, "one of two things; either she died in a state of
grace (as the Church has it), and then she has no need of our prayers;
or else she departed impertinent (that is, I believe, the ecclesiastical
expression), and then--"
Bournisien interrupted him, replying testily that it was none the less
necessary to pray.
"But," objected the chemist, "since God knows all our needs, what can be
the good of prayer?"
"What!" cried the ecclesiastic, "prayer! Why, aren't you a Christian?"
"Excuse me," said Homais; "I admire Christianity. To begin with, it
enfranchised the slaves, introduced into the world a morality--"
"That isn't the question. All the texts-"
"Oh! oh! As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the texts
have been falsified by the Jesuits."
Charles came in, and advancing towards the bed, slowly drew the
curtains.
Emma's head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her
mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her
face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind
of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to
disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if
spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her
knees, and then rose at the tips of her toes, and it seemed to Charles
that infinite masses, an enormous load, were weighing upon her.
The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of the
river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace. Monsieur
Bournisien from time to time blew his nose noisily, and Homais' pen was
scratching over the paper.
"Come, my good friend," he said, "withdraw; this spectacle is tearing
you to pieces."
Charles once gone, the chemist and the cure recommenced their
discussions.
"Read Voltaire," said the one, "read D'Holbach, read the
'Encyclopaedia'!"
"Read the 'Letters of some Portuguese Jews,'" said the other; "read 'The
Meaning of Christianity,' by Nicolas, formerly a magistrate."
They grew warm, they grew red, they both talked at once without
listening to each other. Bournisien was scandalized at such audacity;
Homais marvelled at such stupidity; and they were on the point of
insulting one another when Charles suddenly reappeared. A fascination
drew him. He was continually coming upstairs.
He stood opposite her, the better to see her, and he lost himself in a
contemplation so deep that it was no longer painful.
He recalled stories of catalepsy, the marvels of magnetism, and he
said to himself that by willing it with all his force he might perhaps
succeed in reviving her. Once he even bent towards he, and cried in a
low voice, "Emma! Emma!" His strong breathing made the flames of the
candles tremble against the wall.
At daybreak Madame Bovary senior arrived. Charles as he embraced her
burst into another flood of tears. She tried, as the chemist had done,
to make some remarks to him on the expenses of the funeral. He became so
angry that she was silent, and he even commissioned her to go to town at
once and buy what was necessary.
Charles remained alone the whole afternoon; they had taken Berthe
to Madame Homais'; Felicite was in the room upstairs with Madame
Lefrancois.
In the evening he had some visitors. He rose, pressed their hands,
unable to speak. Then they sat down near one another, and formed a large
semicircle in front of the fire. With lowered faces, and swinging one
leg crossed over the other knee, they uttered deep sighs at intervals;
each one was inordinately bored, and yet none would be the first to go.
Homais, when he returned at nine o'clock (for the last two days only
Homais seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a stock of
camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried a large jar
full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata. Just then the servant,
Madame Lefrancois, and Madame Bovary senior were busy about Emma,
finishing dressing her, and they were drawing down the long stiff veil
that covered her to her satin shoes.
Felicite was sobbing--"Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!"
"Look at her," said the landlady, sighing; "how pretty she still is!
Now, couldn't you swear she was going to get up in a minute?"
Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise the head
a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she were vomiting,
from her mouth.
"Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!" cried Madame Lefrancois. "Now,
just come and help," she said to the chemist. "Perhaps you're afraid?"
"I afraid?" replied he, shrugging his shoulders. "I dare say! I've seen
all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying pharmacy. We
used to make punch in the dissecting room! Nothingness does not terrify
a philosopher; and, as I often say, I even intend to leave my body to
the hospitals, in order, later on, to serve science."
The cure on his arrival inquired how Monsieur Bovary was, and, on
the reply of the druggist, went on--"The blow, you see, is still too
recent."
Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other people,
to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed a discussion
on the celibacy of priests.
"For," said the chemist, "it is unnatural that a man should do without
women! There have been crimes--"
"But, good heaven!" cried the ecclesiastic, "how do you expect an
individual who is married to keep the secrets of the confessional, for
example?"
Homais fell foul of the confessional. Bournisien defended it; he
enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He cited
various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become honest. Military
men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had felt the scales fall
from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a minister--
His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the
over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this awoke the
chemist.
"Come, take a pinch of snuff," he said to him. "Take it; it'll relieve
you."
A continual barking was heard in the distance. "Do you hear that dog
howling?" said the chemist.
"They smell the dead," replied the priest. "It's like bees; they leave
their hives on the decease of any person."
Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again dropped
asleep. Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on moving his lips
gently for some time, then insensibly his chin sank down, he let fall
his big black boot, and began to snore.
They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs, puffed-up
faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement uniting at last in
the same human weakness, and they moved no more than the corpse by their
side, that seemed to be sleeping.
Charles coming in did not wake them. It was the last time; he came to
bid her farewell.
The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish vapour
blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming in. There were
few stars, and the night was warm. The wax of the candles fell in great
drops upon the sheets of the bed. Charles watched them burn, tiring his
eyes against the glare of their yellow flame.
The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight. Emma was
lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond her own
self, she blended confusedly with everything around her--the silence,
the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground.
Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench against the
thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the threshold of their
house, in the yard at Bertaux. He again heard the laughter of the happy
boys beneath the apple-trees: the room was filled with the perfume
of her hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a noise like
electricity. The dress was still the same.
For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her attitudes,
her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit of despair followed
another, and even others, inexhaustible as the waves of an overflowing
sea.
A terrible curiosity seized him. Slowly, with the tips of his fingers,
palpitating, he lifted her veil. But he uttered a cry of horror that
awoke the other two.
They dragged him down into the sitting-room. Then Felicite came up to
say that he wanted some of her hair.
"Cut some off," replied the druggist.
And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors in
hand. He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in several
places. At last, stiffening himself against emotion, Homais gave two
or three great cuts at random that left white patches amongst that
beautiful black hair.
The chemist and the cure plunged anew into their occupations, not
without sleeping from time to time, of which they accused each other
reciprocally at each fresh awakening. Then Monsieur Bournisien sprinkled
the room with holy water and Homais threw a little chlorine water on the
floor.
Felicite had taken care to put on the chest of drawers, for each
of them, a bottle of brandy, some cheese, and a large roll. And the
druggist, who could not hold out any longer, about four in the morning
sighed--
"My word! I should like to take some sustenance."
The priest did not need any persuading; he went out to go and say mass,
came back, and then they ate and hobnobbed, giggling a little without
knowing why, stimulated by that vague gaiety that comes upon us after
times of sadness, and at the last glass the priest said to the druggist,
as he clapped him on the shoulder--
"We shall end by understanding one another."
In the passage downstairs they met the undertaker's men, who were coming
in. Then Charles for two hours had to suffer the torture of hearing the
hammer resound against the wood. Next day they lowered her into her
oak coffin, that was fitted into the other two; but as the bier was
too large, they had to fill up the gaps with the wool of a mattress. At
last, when the three lids had been planed down, nailed, soldered, it was
placed outside in front of the door; the house was thrown open, and the
people of Yonville began to flock round.
Old Rouault arrived, and fainted on the Place when he saw the black
cloth!
| 4,051 | Part 3, Chapter 9 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-9 | Charles throws himself on Emma's corpse, overcome by grief. Homais goes home, invents a story about accidental poisoning to cover up the suicide, and writes it up for the newspaper. When he returns to the Bovarys' house, he finds Charles alone and frightened, Canivet having left him. Homais, with the best of intentions, attempts to distract Charles by talking about the weather. Father Bournisien succeeds in getting Charles to do something about the funeral. He makes extravagantly romantic plans - ones that Emma herself would have appreciated. Charles rebels against God; he curses the heavens for allowing this to happen. The priest and the pharmacist sit up with the corpse all night, holding a vigil for her. The whole time, they argue about religion. Charles's mother arrives in the morning. She attempts to reason with Charles about the expense of the funeral, and he actually stands up to her for the first time. The townspeople come to visit and pay their respects; they're bored, but each is unwilling to be the first to leave. Felicite is hysterical with grief. She, Madame Lefrancois, and old Madame Bovary dress Emma in her wedding gown to prepare her for her coffin. Grotesquely, a stream of black liquid flows out of the dead woman's mouth as they lift her. Homais and Bournisien continue their intellectual discussion. Charles comes in to say his final good bye in private. He reflects upon his memories of their past together, looks at her dead face, and is horrified. The priest and pharmacist lead him away. Homais shakily cuts a few locks of Emma's hair for Charles to keep. Felicite thoughtfully leaves a bottle of brandy and a pastry out for the men - Homais and Father Bournisien need no prompting to drink the alcohol. They part ways after finishing the bottle. Finally, after Emma's body is sealed inside three coffins, her father arrives. He faints immediately. | null | 461 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/34.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_33_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 10 | part 3, chapter 10 | null | {"name": "Part 3, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-10", "summary": "Monsieur Rouault received a letter from the pharmacist after the fact - so Homais attempted to soften the blow by not exactly telling him that his daughter was dead. As a result, Rouault rode desperately to try and see Emma before she died - and arrived far too late. He and Charles cry together, and attempt to be strong for each other. The whole town turns out for the funeral, including Hippolyte and his fancy leg, as well as the dastardly Monsieur Lheureux. After an elaborate procession, Emma is buried by Lestiboudois. On the way back, Homais amuses himself by noting the improper behavior of his fellow townsfolk. After everything's over, Monsieur Rouault heavily says good bye to his son-in-law and the elder Madame Bovary. He immediately goes home to Les Bertaux, and even refuses to see Berthe, since she would make him even sadder. That night, Charles and his mother stay up talking. They make plans for her to move in, and she rejoices inwardly - she's finally defeated Emma. Rodolphe and Leon both sleep calmly in their respective homes, but those who loved Emma, Charles, her father, and Justin, stay awake, thinking of her.", "analysis": ""} |
He had only received the chemist's letter thirty-six hours after the
event; and, from consideration for his feelings, Homais had so worded it
that it was impossible to make out what it was all about.
First, the old fellow had fallen as if struck by apoplexy. Next, he
understood that she was not dead, but she might be. At last, he had put
on his blouse, taken his hat, fastened his spurs to his boots, and set
out at full speed; and the whole of the way old Rouault, panting, was
torn by anguish. Once even he was obliged to dismount. He was dizzy; he
heard voices round about him; he felt himself going mad.
Day broke. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree. He shuddered,
horrified at this omen. Then he promised the Holy Virgin three chasubles
for the church, and that he would go barefooted from the cemetery at
Bertaux to the chapel of Vassonville.
He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open the
door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats, emptied a
bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again mounted his nag, whose
feet struck fire as it dashed along.
He said to himself that no doubt they would save her; the doctors would
discover some remedy surely. He remembered all the miraculous cures
he had been told about. Then she appeared to him dead. She was there;
before his eyes, lying on her back in the middle of the road. He reined
up, and the hallucination disappeared.
At Quincampoix, to give himself heart, he drank three cups of coffee
one after the other. He fancied they had made a mistake in the name in
writing. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt it there, but did
not dare to open it.
At last he began to think it was all a joke; someone's spite, the jest
of some wag; and besides, if she were dead, one would have known it. But
no! There was nothing extraordinary about the country; the sky was blue,
the trees swayed; a flock of sheep passed. He saw the village; he was
seen coming bending forward upon his horse, belabouring it with great
blows, the girths dripping with blood.
When he had recovered consciousness, he fell, weeping, into Bovary's
arms: "My girl! Emma! my child! tell me--"
The other replied, sobbing, "I don't know! I don't know! It's a curse!"
The druggist separated them. "These horrible details are useless. I will
tell this gentleman all about it. Here are the people coming. Dignity!
Come now! Philosophy!"
The poor fellow tried to show himself brave, and repeated several times.
"Yes! courage!"
"Oh," cried the old man, "so I will have, by God! I'll go along o' her
to the end!"
The bell began tolling. All was ready; they had to start. And seated in
a stall of the choir, side by side, they saw pass and repass in front of
them continually the three chanting choristers.
The serpent-player was blowing with all his might. Monsieur Bournisien,
in full vestments, was singing in a shrill voice. He bowed before the
tabernacle, raising his hands, stretched out his arms. Lestiboudois
went about the church with his whalebone stick. The bier stood near the
lectern, between four rows of candles. Charles felt inclined to get up
and put them out.
Yet he tried to stir himself to a feeling of devotion, to throw himself
into the hope of a future life in which he should see her again. He
imagined to himself she had gone on a long journey, far away, for a long
time. But when he thought of her lying there, and that all was over,
that they would lay her in the earth, he was seized with a fierce,
gloomy, despairful rage. At times he thought he felt nothing more, and
he enjoyed this lull in his pain, whilst at the same time he reproached
himself for being a wretch.
The sharp noise of an iron-ferruled stick was heard on the stones,
striking them at irregular intervals. It came from the end of the
church, and stopped short at the lower aisles. A man in a coarse brown
jacket knelt down painfully. It was Hippolyte, the stable-boy at the
"Lion d'Or." He had put on his new leg.
One of the choristers went round the nave making a collection, and the
coppers chinked one after the other on the silver plate.
"Oh, make haste! I am in pain!" cried Bovary, angrily throwing him a
five-franc piece. The churchman thanked him with a deep bow.
They sang, they knelt, they stood up; it was endless! He remembered that
once, in the early times, they had been to mass together, and they had
sat down on the other side, on the right, by the wall. The bell began
again. There was a great moving of chairs; the bearers slipped their
three staves under the coffin, and everyone left the church.
Then Justin appeared at the door of the shop. He suddenly went in again,
pale, staggering.
People were at the windows to see the procession pass. Charles at the
head walked erect. He affected a brave air, and saluted with a nod those
who, coming out from the lanes or from their doors, stood amidst the
crowd.
The six men, three on either side, walked slowly, panting a little.
The priests, the choristers, and the two choirboys recited the De
profundis*, and their voices echoed over the fields, rising and falling
with their undulations. Sometimes they disappeared in the windings of
the path; but the great silver cross rose always before the trees.
*Psalm CXXX.
The women followed in black cloaks with turned-down hoods; each of them
carried in her hands a large lighted candle, and Charles felt himself
growing weaker at this continual repetition of prayers and torches,
beneath this oppressive odour of wax and of cassocks. A fresh breeze was
blowing; the rye and colza were sprouting, little dewdrops trembled at
the roadsides and on the hawthorn hedges. All sorts of joyous sounds
filled the air; the jolting of a cart rolling afar off in the ruts, the
crowing of a cock, repeated again and again, or the gambling of a foal
running away under the apple-trees: The pure sky was fretted with rosy
clouds; a bluish haze rested upon the cots covered with iris. Charles as
he passed recognised each courtyard. He remembered mornings like this,
when, after visiting some patient, he came out from one and returned to
her.
The black cloth bestrewn with white beads blew up from time to time,
laying bare the coffin. The tired bearers walked more slowly, and it
advanced with constant jerks, like a boat that pitches with every wave.
They reached the cemetery. The men went right down to a place in the
grass where a grave was dug. They ranged themselves all round; and while
the priest spoke, the red soil thrown up at the sides kept noiselessly
slipping down at the corners.
Then when the four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon them.
He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At last a thud was
heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up. Then Bournisien took
the spade handed to him by Lestiboudois; with his left hand all the
time sprinkling water, with the right he vigorously threw in a large
spadeful; and the wood of the coffin, struck by the pebbles, gave forth
that dread sound that seems to us the reverberation of eternity.
The ecclesiastic passed the holy water sprinkler to his neighbour. This
was Homais. He swung it gravely, then handed it to Charles, who sank to
his knees in the earth and threw in handfuls of it, crying, "Adieu!" He
sent her kisses; he dragged himself towards the grave, to engulf himself
with her. They led him away, and he soon grew calmer, feeling perhaps,
like the others, a vague satisfaction that it was all over.
Old Rouault on his way back began quietly smoking a pipe, which Homais
in his innermost conscience thought not quite the thing. He also noticed
that Monsieur Binet had not been present, and that Tuvache had "made
off" after mass, and that Theodore, the notary's servant wore a blue
coat, "as if one could not have got a black coat, since that is the
custom, by Jove!" And to share his observations with others he went from
group to group. They were deploring Emma's death, especially Lheureux,
who had not failed to come to the funeral.
"Poor little woman! What a trouble for her husband!"
The druggist continued, "Do you know that but for me he would have
committed some fatal attempt upon himself?"
"Such a good woman! To think that I saw her only last Saturday in my
shop."
"I haven't had leisure," said Homais, "to prepare a few words that I
would have cast upon her tomb."
Charles on getting home undressed, and old Rouault put on his blue
blouse. It was a new one, and as he had often during the journey wiped
his eyes on the sleeves, the dye had stained his face, and the traces of
tears made lines in the layer of dust that covered it.
Madame Bovary senior was with them. All three were silent. At last the
old fellow sighed--
"Do you remember, my friend, that I went to Tostes once when you had
just lost your first deceased? I consoled you at that time. I thought of
something to say then, but now--" Then, with a loud groan that shook his
whole chest, "Ah! this is the end for me, do you see! I saw my wife go,
then my son, and now to-day it's my daughter."
He wanted to go back at once to Bertaux, saying that he could not sleep
in this house. He even refused to see his granddaughter.
"No, no! It would grieve me too much. Only you'll kiss her many times
for me. Good-bye! you're a good fellow! And then I shall never forget
that," he said, slapping his thigh. "Never fear, you shall always have
your turkey."
But when he reached the top of the hill he turned back, as he had turned
once before on the road of Saint-Victor when he had parted from her. The
windows of the village were all on fire beneath the slanting rays of the
sun sinking behind the field. He put his hand over his eyes, and saw
in the horizon an enclosure of walls, where trees here and there formed
black clusters between white stones; then he went on his way at a gentle
trot, for his nag had gone lame.
Despite their fatigue, Charles and his mother stayed very long that
evening talking together. They spoke of the days of the past and of the
future. She would come to live at Yonville; she would keep house for
him; they would never part again. She was ingenious and caressing,
rejoicing in her heart at gaining once more an affection that had
wandered from her for so many years. Midnight struck. The village as
usual was silent, and Charles, awake, thought always of her.
Rodolphe, who, to distract himself, had been rambling about the wood all
day, was sleeping quietly in his chateau, and Leon, down yonder, always
slept.
There was another who at that hour was not asleep.
On the grave between the pine-trees a child was on his knees weeping,
and his heart, rent by sobs, was beating in the shadow beneath the load
of an immense regret, sweeter than the moon and fathomless as the night.
The gate suddenly grated. It was Lestiboudois; he came to fetch his
spade, that he had forgotten. He recognised Justin climbing over the
wall, and at last knew who was the culprit who stole his potatoes.
| 2,976 | Part 3, Chapter 10 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-10 | Monsieur Rouault received a letter from the pharmacist after the fact - so Homais attempted to soften the blow by not exactly telling him that his daughter was dead. As a result, Rouault rode desperately to try and see Emma before she died - and arrived far too late. He and Charles cry together, and attempt to be strong for each other. The whole town turns out for the funeral, including Hippolyte and his fancy leg, as well as the dastardly Monsieur Lheureux. After an elaborate procession, Emma is buried by Lestiboudois. On the way back, Homais amuses himself by noting the improper behavior of his fellow townsfolk. After everything's over, Monsieur Rouault heavily says good bye to his son-in-law and the elder Madame Bovary. He immediately goes home to Les Bertaux, and even refuses to see Berthe, since she would make him even sadder. That night, Charles and his mother stay up talking. They make plans for her to move in, and she rejoices inwardly - she's finally defeated Emma. Rodolphe and Leon both sleep calmly in their respective homes, but those who loved Emma, Charles, her father, and Justin, stay awake, thinking of her. | null | 282 | 1 |
2,413 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/35.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_34_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 11 | part 3, chapter 11 | null | {"name": "Part 3, Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-11", "summary": "After Emma's death, Charles and Berthe sink into greater and greater poverty. Everyone seems to want to get money out of poor Charles; Lheureux comes back for more, as does Emma's fake piano teacher, Mademoiselle Lempereur . Charles refuses to sell any of Emma's belongings; as a result, he fights with his mother and she leaves. Felicite inherits all of Emma's wardrobe, and seeing her in those dresses makes Charles even sadder. Soon enough, she runs off with Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant. Leon, in the meanwhile, gets married and secures a post as a notary. Wandering through the house one day, Charles discovers Emma and Rodolphe's love letters. He is jealous, but still grieves intensely for Emma, regardless of her infidelity. In honor of her memory, he squanders his money on things she would have liked - fancy clothes and moustache wax. To pay for these things, he signs more promissory notes and goes into greater debt. Eventually, Charles has to sell everything and, after a while, all they have left is Emma's bedroom, full of her possessions. Berthe has nothing, and has nobody to care for her. Charles can't manage to actually take care of her. The Homais family breaks off their association with the Bovarys. Monsieur Homais turns his attention to civic matters. He manages to get the blind beggar shipped off to an asylum. This encourages him to expand his sphere of influence; the pharmacist goes on to write many more articles about local goings-on, and shifts his attention to writing a master work on his observations of Yonville. He also maintains his pharmacy, and keeps up with all the latest ridiculous developments. Homais and Charles choose an extravagant design for Emma's tombstone. Charles tries to keep the memory of Emma alive, but she fades from his memory. Eventually everyone, even Father Bournisien, gives up on him. Charles and his mother attempt to reconcile, but when she offers to take Berthe off his hands, they have a final decisive break. Charles is consumed with jealousy for Homais, who seems to have everything he wants. That is, everything but the cross of the Legion of Honor. The pharmacist makes it his top priority to acquire this prize. He starts to suck up to the local authorities. Finally, one day Charles discovers Leon's love letters in Emma's desk. Mad with fury, he rummages around everywhere and discovers a portrait of Rodolphe, as well. Charles totally breaks off communication with the rest of the town. Everyone assumes that he's a drunkard. He occasionally visits Madame Lefrancois to talk about Emma, but she doesn't have time for him. Finally, Charles is forced to sell his horse, the last thing he has. At the market, he runs into Rodolphe. They awkwardly have a beer together. Rodolphe talks about other things to avoid any discussion of Emma. In the end, Charles tells Rodolphe that he doesn't blame the other man, claiming that only fate is responsible for Emma's death. Rodolphe thinks of Charles as a pitiful, weak, meek man. The next day, Charles sits down in the garden. It's a beautiful spring day, and he's struck with emotion. Berthe comes to fetch him for dinner - but he's dead, the lock of Emma's hair in his hand. Berthe is sent away to live with her grandmother, who dies the same year. She's then passed on to a poor aunt, who sends the child to work in a cotton mill. Since Charles's death, three different doctors have all moved to Yonville to take over his practice. None of them succeed, due to the machinations of Monsieur Homais. Finally, the book closes as Monsieur Homais receives the cross of the Legion of Honor.", "analysis": ""} |
The next day Charles had the child brought back. She asked for her
mamma. They told her she was away; that she would bring her back some
playthings. Berthe spoke of her again several times, then at last
thought no more of her. The child's gaiety broke Bovary's heart, and he
had to bear besides the intolerable consolations of the chemist.
Money troubles soon began again, Monsieur Lheureux urging on anew his
friend Vincart, and Charles pledged himself for exorbitant sums; for he
would never consent to let the smallest of the things that had belonged
to HER be sold. His mother was exasperated with him; he grew even more
angry than she did. He had altogether changed. She left the house.
Then everyone began "taking advantage" of him. Mademoiselle Lempereur
presented a bill for six months' teaching, although Emma had never taken
a lesson (despite the receipted bill she had shown Bovary); it was an
arrangement between the two women. The man at the circulating library
demanded three years' subscriptions; Mere Rollet claimed the postage due
for some twenty letters, and when Charles asked for an explanation, she
had the delicacy to reply--
"Oh, I don't know. It was for her business affairs."
With every debt he paid Charles thought he had come to the end of them.
But others followed ceaselessly. He sent in accounts for professional
attendance. He was shown the letters his wife had written. Then he had
to apologise.
Felicite now wore Madame Bovary's gowns; not all, for he had kept some
of them, and he went to look at them in her dressing-room, locking
himself up there; she was about her height, and often Charles, seeing
her from behind, was seized with an illusion, and cried out--
"Oh, stay, stay!"
But at Whitsuntide she ran away from Yonville, carried off by Theodore,
stealing all that was left of the wardrobe.
It was about this time that the widow Dupuis had the honour to inform
him of the "marriage of Monsieur Leon Dupuis her son, notary at Yvetot,
to Mademoiselle Leocadie Leboeuf of Bondeville." Charles, among the
other congratulations he sent him, wrote this sentence--
"How glad my poor wife would have been!"
One day when, wandering aimlessly about the house, he had gone up to the
attic, he felt a pellet of fine paper under his slipper. He opened it
and read: "Courage, Emma, courage. I would not bring misery into your
life." It was Rodolphe's letter, fallen to the ground between the boxes,
where it had remained, and that the wind from the dormer window had just
blown towards the door. And Charles stood, motionless and staring, in
the very same place where, long ago, Emma, in despair, and paler even
than he, had thought of dying. At last he discovered a small R at the
bottom of the second page. What did this mean? He remembered Rodolphe's
attentions, his sudden, disappearance, his constrained air when they
had met two or three times since. But the respectful tone of the letter
deceived him.
"Perhaps they loved one another platonically," he said to himself.
Besides, Charles was not of those who go to the bottom of things; he
shrank from the proofs, and his vague jealousy was lost in the immensity
of his woe.
Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly must have
coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him for this; he
was seized with a lasting, furious desire for her, that inflamed his
despair, and that was boundless, because it was now unrealisable.
To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her
predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took to
wearing white cravats. He put cosmetics on his moustache, and, like her,
signed notes of hand. She corrupted him from beyond the grave.
He was obliged to sell his silver piece by piece; next he sold the
drawing-room furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the bedroom,
her own room, remained as before. After his dinner Charles went up
there. He pushed the round table in front of the fire, and drew up her
armchair. He sat down opposite it. A candle burnt in one of the gilt
candlesticks. Berthe by his side was painting prints.
He suffered, poor man, at seeing her so badly dressed, with laceless
boots, and the arm-holes of her pinafore torn down to the hips; for the
charwoman took no care of her. But she was so sweet, so pretty, and her
little head bent forward so gracefully, letting the dear fair hair fall
over her rosy cheeks, that an infinite joy came upon him, a happiness
mingled with bitterness, like those ill-made wines that taste of
resin. He mended her toys, made her puppets from cardboard, or sewed up
half-torn dolls. Then, if his eyes fell upon the workbox, a ribbon lying
about, or even a pin left in a crack of the table, he began to dream,
and looked so sad that she became as sad as he.
No one now came to see them, for Justin had run away to Rouen, where he
was a grocer's assistant, and the druggist's children saw less and less
of the child, Monsieur Homais not caring, seeing the difference of their
social position, to continue the intimacy.
The blind man, whom he had not been able to cure with the pomade, had
gone back to the hill of Bois-Guillaume, where he told the travellers of
the vain attempt of the druggist, to such an extent, that Homais when
he went to town hid himself behind the curtains of the "Hirondelle" to
avoid meeting him. He detested him, and wishing, in the interests of his
own reputation, to get rid of him at all costs, he directed against
him a secret battery, that betrayed the depth of his intellect and the
baseness of his vanity. Thus, for six consecutive months, one could read
in the "Fanal de Rouen" editorials such as these--
"All who bend their steps towards the fertile plains of Picardy have, no
doubt, remarked, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a wretch suffering from
a horrible facial wound. He importunes, persecutes one, and levies a
regular tax on all travellers. Are we still living in the monstrous
times of the Middle Ages, when vagabonds were permitted to display in
our public places leprosy and scrofulas they had brought back from the
Crusades?"
Or--
"In spite of the laws against vagabondage, the approaches to our great
towns continue to be infected by bands of beggars. Some are seen going
about alone, and these are not, perhaps, the least dangerous. What are
our ediles about?"
Then Homais invented anecdotes--
"Yesterday, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a skittish horse--" And then
followed the story of an accident caused by the presence of the blind
man.
He managed so well that the fellow was locked up. But he was released.
He began again, and Homais began again. It was a struggle. Homais won
it, for his foe was condemned to life-long confinement in an asylum.
This success emboldened him, and henceforth there was no longer a dog
run over, a barn burnt down, a woman beaten in the parish, of which
he did not immediately inform the public, guided always by the love of
progress and the hate of priests. He instituted comparisons between the
elementary and clerical schools to the detriment of the latter; called
to mind the massacre of St. Bartholomew a propos of a grant of one
hundred francs to the church, and denounced abuses, aired new views.
That was his phrase. Homais was digging and delving; he was becoming
dangerous.
However, he was stifling in the narrow limits of journalism, and soon a
book, a work was necessary to him. Then he composed "General Statistics
of the Canton of Yonville, followed by Climatological Remarks." The
statistics drove him to philosophy. He busied himself with great
questions: the social problem, moralisation of the poorer classes,
pisciculture, caoutchouc, railways, etc. He even began to blush at being
a bourgeois. He affected the artistic style, he smoked. He bought two
chic Pompadour statuettes to adorn his drawing-room.
He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept well abreast
of new discoveries. He followed the great movement of chocolates; he
was the first to introduce "cocoa" and "revalenta" into the
Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusiastic about the hydro-electric
Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when at night he took off
his flannel vest, Madame Homais stood quite dazzled before the golden
spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for
this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi.
He had fine ideas about Emma's tomb. First he proposed a broken column
with some drapery, next a pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta, a sort of
rotunda, or else a "mass of ruins." And in all his plans Homais always
stuck to the weeping willow, which he looked upon as the indispensable
symbol of sorrow.
Charles and he made a journey to Rouen together to look at some tombs
at a funeral furnisher's, accompanied by an artist, one Vaufrylard, a
friend of Bridoux's, who made puns all the time. At last, after having
examined some hundred designs, having ordered an estimate and made
another journey to Rouen, Charles decided in favour of a mausoleum,
which on the two principal sides was to have a "spirit bearing an
extinguished torch."
As to the inscription, Homais could think of nothing so fine as Sta
viator*, and he got no further; he racked his brain, he constantly
repeated Sta viator. At last he hit upon Amabilen conjugem calcas**,
which was adopted.
* Rest traveler.
** Tread upon a loving wife.
A strange thing was that Bovary, while continually thinking of Emma, was
forgetting her. He grew desperate as he felt this image fading from his
memory in spite of all efforts to retain it. Yet every night he dreamt
of her; it was always the same dream. He drew near her, but when he was
about to clasp her she fell into decay in his arms.
For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Monsieur
Bournisien even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up.
Moreover, the old fellow was growing intolerant, fanatic, said Homais.
He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every
other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who
died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows.
In spite of the economy with which Bovary lived, he was far from being
able to pay off his old debts. Lheureux refused to renew any more
bills. A distraint became imminent. Then he appealed to his mother, who
consented to let him take a mortgage on her property, but with a great
many recriminations against Emma; and in return for her sacrifice she
asked for a shawl that had escaped the depredations of Felicite. Charles
refused to give it her; they quarrelled.
She made the first overtures of reconciliation by offering to have the
little girl, who could help her in the house, to live with her. Charles
consented to this, but when the time for parting came, all his courage
failed him. Then there was a final, complete rupture.
As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the love of his
child. She made him anxious, however, for she coughed sometimes, and had
red spots on her cheeks.
Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the family of the
chemist, with whom everything was prospering. Napoleon helped him in the
laboratory, Athalie embroidered him a skullcap, Irma cut out rounds of
paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited Pythagoras' table in
a breath. He was the happiest of fathers, the most fortunate of men.
Not so! A secret ambition devoured him. Homais hankered after the cross
of the Legion of Honour. He had plenty of claims to it.
"First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished myself by a
boundless devotion; second, by having published, at my expense,
various works of public utility, such as" (and he recalled his pamphlet
entitled, "Cider, its manufacture and effects," besides observation
on the lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy; his volume of
statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis); "without counting
that I am a member of several learned societies" (he was member of a
single one).
"In short!" he cried, making a pirouette, "if it were only for
distinguishing myself at fires!"
Then Homais inclined towards the Government. He secretly did the
prefect great service during the elections. He sold himself--in a word,
prostituted himself. He even addressed a petition to the sovereign
in which he implored him to "do him justice"; he called him "our good
king," and compared him to Henri IV.
And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to see if his
nomination were in it. It was never there. At last, unable to bear it
any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden designed to represent the
Star of the Cross of Honour with two little strips of grass running from
the top to imitate the ribband. He walked round it with folded arms,
meditating on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men.
From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on his
investigations slowly, Charles had not yet opened the secret drawer of
a rosewood desk which Emma had generally used. One day, however, he
sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All Leon's
letters were there. There could be no doubt this time. He devoured them
to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the furniture, all the
drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He
found a box and broke it open with a kick. Rodolphe's portrait flew full
in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters.
People wondered at his despondency. He never went out, saw no one,
refused even to visit his patients. Then they said "he shut himself up
to drink."
Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on to the garden hedge,
and saw with amazement this long-bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man,
who wept aloud as he walked up and down.
In the evening in summer he took his little girl with him and led her to
the cemetery. They came back at nightfall, when the only light left in
the Place was that in Binet's window.
The voluptuousness of his grief was, however, incomplete, for he had no
one near him to share it, and he paid visits to Madame Lefrancois to be
able to speak of her.
But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having troubles
like himself. For Lheureux had at last established the "Favorites du
Commerce," and Hivert, who enjoyed a great reputation for doing errands,
insisted on a rise of wages, and was threatening to go over "to the
opposition shop."
One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to sell his horse--his
last resource--he met Rodolphe.
They both turned pale when they caught sight of one another. Rodolphe,
who had only sent his card, first stammered some apologies, then grew
bolder, and even pushed his assurance (it was in the month of August and
very hot) to the length of inviting him to have a bottle of beer at the
public-house.
Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar as he talked, and
Charles was lost in reverie at this face that she had loved. He seemed
to see again something of her in it. It was a marvel to him. He would
have liked to have been this man.
The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling out
with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip in. Charles
was not listening to him; Rodolphe noticed it, and he followed the
succession of memories that crossed his face. This gradually grew
redder; the nostrils throbbed fast, the lips quivered. There was at
last a moment when Charles, full of a sombre fury, fixed his eyes on
Rodolphe, who, in something of fear, stopped talking. But soon the same
look of weary lassitude came back to his face.
"I don't blame you," he said.
Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his hands, went on in a
broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow--
"No, I don't blame you now."
He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made--
"It is the fault of fatality!"
Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the remark very offhand
from a man in his position, comic even, and a little mean.
The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays
of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their
shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were
blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was
suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled
his aching heart.
At seven o'clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the afternoon,
went to fetch him to dinner.
His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth
open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair.
"Come along, papa," she said.
And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to the
ground. He was dead.
Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist's request, Monsieur Canivet came
thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing.
When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five centimes
remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary's going to
her grandmother. The good woman died the same year; old Rouault was
paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her. She is poor, and
sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living.
Since Bovary's death three doctors have followed one another at Yonville
without any success, so severely did Homais attack them. He has an
enormous practice; the authorities treat him with consideration, and
public opinion protects him.
He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.
| 4,648 | Part 3, Chapter 11 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-11 | After Emma's death, Charles and Berthe sink into greater and greater poverty. Everyone seems to want to get money out of poor Charles; Lheureux comes back for more, as does Emma's fake piano teacher, Mademoiselle Lempereur . Charles refuses to sell any of Emma's belongings; as a result, he fights with his mother and she leaves. Felicite inherits all of Emma's wardrobe, and seeing her in those dresses makes Charles even sadder. Soon enough, she runs off with Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant. Leon, in the meanwhile, gets married and secures a post as a notary. Wandering through the house one day, Charles discovers Emma and Rodolphe's love letters. He is jealous, but still grieves intensely for Emma, regardless of her infidelity. In honor of her memory, he squanders his money on things she would have liked - fancy clothes and moustache wax. To pay for these things, he signs more promissory notes and goes into greater debt. Eventually, Charles has to sell everything and, after a while, all they have left is Emma's bedroom, full of her possessions. Berthe has nothing, and has nobody to care for her. Charles can't manage to actually take care of her. The Homais family breaks off their association with the Bovarys. Monsieur Homais turns his attention to civic matters. He manages to get the blind beggar shipped off to an asylum. This encourages him to expand his sphere of influence; the pharmacist goes on to write many more articles about local goings-on, and shifts his attention to writing a master work on his observations of Yonville. He also maintains his pharmacy, and keeps up with all the latest ridiculous developments. Homais and Charles choose an extravagant design for Emma's tombstone. Charles tries to keep the memory of Emma alive, but she fades from his memory. Eventually everyone, even Father Bournisien, gives up on him. Charles and his mother attempt to reconcile, but when she offers to take Berthe off his hands, they have a final decisive break. Charles is consumed with jealousy for Homais, who seems to have everything he wants. That is, everything but the cross of the Legion of Honor. The pharmacist makes it his top priority to acquire this prize. He starts to suck up to the local authorities. Finally, one day Charles discovers Leon's love letters in Emma's desk. Mad with fury, he rummages around everywhere and discovers a portrait of Rodolphe, as well. Charles totally breaks off communication with the rest of the town. Everyone assumes that he's a drunkard. He occasionally visits Madame Lefrancois to talk about Emma, but she doesn't have time for him. Finally, Charles is forced to sell his horse, the last thing he has. At the market, he runs into Rodolphe. They awkwardly have a beer together. Rodolphe talks about other things to avoid any discussion of Emma. In the end, Charles tells Rodolphe that he doesn't blame the other man, claiming that only fate is responsible for Emma's death. Rodolphe thinks of Charles as a pitiful, weak, meek man. The next day, Charles sits down in the garden. It's a beautiful spring day, and he's struck with emotion. Berthe comes to fetch him for dinner - but he's dead, the lock of Emma's hair in his hand. Berthe is sent away to live with her grandmother, who dies the same year. She's then passed on to a poor aunt, who sends the child to work in a cotton mill. Since Charles's death, three different doctors have all moved to Yonville to take over his practice. None of them succeed, due to the machinations of Monsieur Homais. Finally, the book closes as Monsieur Homais receives the cross of the Legion of Honor. | null | 906 | 1 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/01.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_0_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 1 | chapter 1 | null | {"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-1", "summary": "At the age of fifteen, Charles Bovary struck his schoolmates as a shy and clumsy country lad. He did not have great intelligence or wit but was a diligent and industrious student. He was quiet; however, he mixed well with the other boys. His father was a former army surgeon who had been forced to leave the service as a result of some scandal. He was a handsome and unscrupulous man who had married Charles' mother in order to get his hands on her large dowry. After the marriage, he wasted most of the money in foolish speculations, drinking, and amorous affairs. He had always been a cruel and unfaithful husband. In middle age he continued to mistreat his wife and was a bitter, stern, and boastful man. He and his wife eventually acquired and lived on a small farm. Charles' mother had once loved her husband deeply, but her unfortunate marriage had cooled this affection and had turned her youthful gaiety and optimism into nervous moodiness and spite. After their son's birth, the two Bovarys had often clashed about his rearing, and Charles' boyhood was one of inconsistencies and contradictions. His mother had been overly fond and doting, while his father had attempted to inure him to the rigors of life through austere treatment. Eventually Charles was sent to a secondary school and then studied medicine. Although he worked hard at first, his lack of great intelligence and a natural tendency to laziness caused him to fail his examinations. His mother attributed this to unfairness on the part of the examiners, and the news was kept a secret from his father. The following semester, after much hard work, Charles was able to pass. While at the university he had his first real taste of freedom and engaged in several typical student adventures. After he became a doctor, Charles' mother found him a practice in the village of Tostes, and a wealthy wife in Heloise, an ugly widow who was several years older than he. Charles had hoped that marriage would bring him freedom, but soon found his wife to be as grasping and domineering as his mother had been. Nevertheless, his medical practice prospered.", "analysis": "Flaubert is presenting in rapid sketches the essential nature and characteristics of some of the background figures and is preparing us for later actions. For example, it is important to see from the very beginning that Charles is a rather ordinary person with no special talents. He must work exceptionally hard for anything that he achieves. Furthermore, we see that Charles is easily ruled by his mother and later by his wife. He is obedient, diligent, and hard working, but possesses no natural talents. Flaubert is going to present a novel about the provincial middle-class society. He is interested in this first chapter with presenting a basic picture of the typical country background against which the story takes place. Note the tremendous contrast between Charles and his father. The father has a dash of charm and imagination that is missing in Charles. The son is more closely aligned with his mother, whose main concern is with meeting the bills and getting by in life. Charles' first marriage is very important in relationship to his later marriage with Emma. First, we see that his wife is able to make him walk a tight line. She is easily able to control him even though she possesses none of the \"loveliness\" of Emma. She was a real shrew who made life very difficult and unpleasant for Charles. She is so antagonistic that Charles will naturally be more receptive to Emma's charms."} |
We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new
fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a
large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if
just surprised at his work.
The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the
class-master, he said to him in a low voice--
"Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be
in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into
one of the upper classes, as becomes his age."
The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he
could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller
than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village
chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was
not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black
buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the
opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in
blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by
braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots.
We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as
attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean
on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was
obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us.
When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on
the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to
toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a
lot of dust: it was "the thing."
But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt
it, the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on his knees even after
prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in
which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin
cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose
dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval,
stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in
succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band;
after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with
complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord,
small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new;
its peak shone.
"Rise," said the master.
He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to
pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked
it up once more.
"Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag.
There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the
poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap
in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on his head. He sat down
again and placed it on his knee.
"Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name."
The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name.
"Again!"
The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of
the class.
"Louder!" cried the master; "louder!"
The "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately
large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling someone
in the word "Charbovari."
A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they
yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died
away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and
now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence rose
here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.
However, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established
in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of
"Charles Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read,
at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form
at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated.
"What are you looking for?" asked the master.
"My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round
him.
"Five hundred lines for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice
stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst. "Silence!" continued the
master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he
had just taken from his cap. "As to you, 'new boy,' you will conjugate
'ridiculus sum'** twenty times."
Then, in a gentler tone, "Come, you'll find your cap again; it hasn't
been stolen."
*A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat.
**I am ridiculous.
Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained
for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some
paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he
wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered.
In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk,
arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him
working conscientiously, looking up every word in the dictionary, and
taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he
showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his
rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure
of his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from
motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible.
His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired
assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription
scandals, and forced at this time to leave the service, had taken
advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand
francs that offered in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen
in love with his good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his
spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache,
his fingers always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours,
he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a commercial
traveller.
Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune,
dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in
at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law
died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in for the
business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he
thought he would make money.
But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses
instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of
selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased
his hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding
out that he would do better to give up all speculation.
For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of
the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half
private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his
luck, jealous of everyone, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five,
sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace.
His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a
thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once,
expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the
fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered,
grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at
first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and
until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary,
stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent,
burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death.
She was constantly going about looking after business matters. She
called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due,
got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the
workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing,
eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself
to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting
into the cinders.
When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home,
the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him
with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the
philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the
young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain
virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing
him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong
constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink
off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But,
peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His
mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him
tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety
and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the
child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of
high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as
an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old
piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this
Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth
while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to
buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man
always gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child
knocked about the village.
He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens
that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the
geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in
the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and
at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he
might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward
by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on
hand, fresh of colour.
When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began
lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and
irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare
moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and
a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil
after the Angelus*. They went up to his room and settled down; the
flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child
fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his
stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions,
when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum
to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles
playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of
an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his
verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance
passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the
"young man" had a very good memory.
*A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound
of a bell. Here, the evening prayer.
Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps.
Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a
struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take
his first communion.
Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to
school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the end of October,
at the time of the St. Romain fair.
It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him.
He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in
school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory,
and ate well in the refectory. He had in loco parentis* a wholesale
ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took him out once a month on Sundays
after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at
the boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock before
supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with
red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or
read an old volume of "Anarchasis" that was knocking about the study.
When he went for walks he talked to the servant, who, like himself, came
from the country.
*In place of a parent.
By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once
even he got a certificate in natural history. But at the end of his
third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study
medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself.
His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she
knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made arrangements for his
board, got him furniture, table and two chairs, sent home for an old
cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with
the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child.
Then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to
be good now that he was going to be left to himself.
The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him; lectures
on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on
pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics,
without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose
etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to
sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.
He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did
not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all
the courses, never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily task
like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not
knowing what work he is doing.
To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a
piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he lunched when he came back
from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall.
After this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the
hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. In the
evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his
room and set to work again in his wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in
front of the hot stove.
On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are
empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock at the doors, he
opened his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter
of Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between the
bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling
on the banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting
from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite,
beyond the roots spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How
pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And he
expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet odours of the country
which did not reach him.
He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look
that made it nearly interesting. Naturally, through indifference, he
abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture; the
next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little,
he gave up work altogether. He got into the habit of going to the
public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every
evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the
small sheep bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his
freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to see
life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put
his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. Then many things
hidden within him came out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to
his boon companions, became enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to
make punch, and, finally, how to make love.
Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely in his
examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the same night
to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning
of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused
him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners,
encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight.
It was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was
old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a man
born of him could be a fool.
So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination,
ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passed pretty
well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a grand dinner.
Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was only one old
doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his
death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was
installed, opposite his place, as his successor.
But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him
taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practice it;
he must have a wife. She found him one--the widow of a bailiff at
Dieppe--who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs.
Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as
the spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her
ends Madame Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in
very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a port-butcher backed up by the
priests.
Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he
would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. But his
wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast
every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients
who did not pay. She opened his letter, watched his comings and goings,
and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his
surgery.
She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She
constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of
footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to
her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles
returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from
beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit
down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he
was neglecting her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be
unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little
more love.
| 4,978 | Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-1 | At the age of fifteen, Charles Bovary struck his schoolmates as a shy and clumsy country lad. He did not have great intelligence or wit but was a diligent and industrious student. He was quiet; however, he mixed well with the other boys. His father was a former army surgeon who had been forced to leave the service as a result of some scandal. He was a handsome and unscrupulous man who had married Charles' mother in order to get his hands on her large dowry. After the marriage, he wasted most of the money in foolish speculations, drinking, and amorous affairs. He had always been a cruel and unfaithful husband. In middle age he continued to mistreat his wife and was a bitter, stern, and boastful man. He and his wife eventually acquired and lived on a small farm. Charles' mother had once loved her husband deeply, but her unfortunate marriage had cooled this affection and had turned her youthful gaiety and optimism into nervous moodiness and spite. After their son's birth, the two Bovarys had often clashed about his rearing, and Charles' boyhood was one of inconsistencies and contradictions. His mother had been overly fond and doting, while his father had attempted to inure him to the rigors of life through austere treatment. Eventually Charles was sent to a secondary school and then studied medicine. Although he worked hard at first, his lack of great intelligence and a natural tendency to laziness caused him to fail his examinations. His mother attributed this to unfairness on the part of the examiners, and the news was kept a secret from his father. The following semester, after much hard work, Charles was able to pass. While at the university he had his first real taste of freedom and engaged in several typical student adventures. After he became a doctor, Charles' mother found him a practice in the village of Tostes, and a wealthy wife in Heloise, an ugly widow who was several years older than he. Charles had hoped that marriage would bring him freedom, but soon found his wife to be as grasping and domineering as his mother had been. Nevertheless, his medical practice prospered. | Flaubert is presenting in rapid sketches the essential nature and characteristics of some of the background figures and is preparing us for later actions. For example, it is important to see from the very beginning that Charles is a rather ordinary person with no special talents. He must work exceptionally hard for anything that he achieves. Furthermore, we see that Charles is easily ruled by his mother and later by his wife. He is obedient, diligent, and hard working, but possesses no natural talents. Flaubert is going to present a novel about the provincial middle-class society. He is interested in this first chapter with presenting a basic picture of the typical country background against which the story takes place. Note the tremendous contrast between Charles and his father. The father has a dash of charm and imagination that is missing in Charles. The son is more closely aligned with his mother, whose main concern is with meeting the bills and getting by in life. Charles' first marriage is very important in relationship to his later marriage with Emma. First, we see that his wife is able to make him walk a tight line. She is easily able to control him even though she possesses none of the "loveliness" of Emma. She was a real shrew who made life very difficult and unpleasant for Charles. She is so antagonistic that Charles will naturally be more receptive to Emma's charms. | 504 | 238 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/02.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_1_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 2 | chapter 2 | null | {"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-2", "summary": "Late one night Charles was awakened with a request to come 18 miles out in the country and set a broken leg. He sent the messenger on ahead and promised to follow in a couple of hours. At four in the morning, Charles set out on the journey, trying to search his memory for everything he knew about fractures. When he arrived at the farm house, he was admitted by a charming young lady. Upon seeing the patient, he was greatly relieved to find a simple fracture with no complications. Mademoiselle Emma came in and assisted with preparing bandages. Charles was struck by the beauty of her flashing brown eyes which appeared to be almost black. When he had finished, she led him into the dining room where he ate and talked with Mademoiselle Emma about the patient. Upon leaving, he promised to come back in three days. But instead, he found himself returning the next day and went twice a week regularly in spite of the long ride. In about eight weeks, the patient was able to walk about. During the entire episode, Charles never questioned himself as to why he went so often to see the patient, but his wife did. She made inquiries and found out that the patient had a daughter who had been brought up in a convent and was known to give herself airs. After much complaining, nagging, and pleading, Charles' wife finally extracted a promise from him that he would not go there again. As time passed, Charles' mother and wife both began to pick at him incessantly. Suddenly it was learned that the lawyer who had been administering Heloise's estate had absconded with nearly all her money. Furthermore, it was discovered upon investigation that her remaining property was of little value and that the woman had lied about her wealth prior to the wedding. Bovary's parents had a violent argument about this, and Heloise was very upset. About a week later she had a stroke and died.", "analysis": "In this chapter, we meet Mademoiselle Emma. But Flaubert is interested in presenting her from a distant view -- that is, we hear about her first from other viewpoints. He is saving his personal or direct introduction of Emma until a later chapter and is here presenting Charles' and Heloise's view of Emma. This technique is called the delayed emergence. It functions to arouse the reader's interest in the main character. It is a part of Charles' character that he is not even aware of why he went so often to see his patient. It might even be said that he was surprised when his wife accused him of going solely to see Mademoiselle Emma. Denied of the privilege of seeing her, Charles determined that he could then justifiably love her at a distance. Again, note that Charles' present wife is such a shrew, is so bad and so demanding and so ugly , and is so unpleasant that by contrast Emma seems like an angel to Charles. Thus Charles' miserable experiences with his first wife prepare him to be so indulgent and yielding to Emma later in his life. The reader who is not aware of Flaubert's method of evoking a scene is missing a large measure of the greatness of this novel. The reader should select a passage, such as Charles' arrival at his patient's house, and examine the careful way in which Flaubert makes you feel this scene. His choice of language and careful description paints an accurate description of what he is writing about. The technique that Flaubert uses may be compared to that of a camera coming slowly in for a close shot and then moving subtly away for another shot."} |
One night towards eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of
a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the
garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below.
He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came downstairs
shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left
his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He
pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in
a rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested on his elbow on
the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed, held the light.
Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.
This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur
Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken
leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across
country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night;
Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was
decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles would start three
hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and
show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.
Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in his
cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed,
he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped
of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that
are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly
remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures
he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches
of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers
bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as
eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals
seemed like dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that on the
horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.
Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and,
sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein, his recent
sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double
self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and
crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warm smell of poultices
mingled in his brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron
rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed and saw his wife
sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the
grass at the edge of a ditch.
"Are you the doctor?" asked the child.
And on Charles's answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on
in front of him.
The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide's talk
that Monsieur Rouault must be one of the well-to-do farmers.
He had broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a
Twelfth-night feast at a neighbour's. His wife had been dead for two
years. There was with him only his daughter, who helped him to keep
house.
The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the Bertaux.
The little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared;
then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. The
horse slipped on the wet grass; Charles had to stoop to pass under
the branches. The watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their
chains. As he entered the Bertaux, the horse took fright and stumbled.
It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the
open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new
racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from
which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys, five or six
peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of
it. The sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your
hand. Under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with
their whips, shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool
were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The
courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and
the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond.
A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the
threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the
kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servant's breakfast was
boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were
drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle
of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while
along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the
hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the
window, was mirrored fitfully.
Charles went up the first floor to see the patient. He found him in his
bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton nightcap
right away from him. He was a fat little man of fifty, with white skin
and blue eyes, the forepart of his head bald, and he wore earrings. By
his side on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence he poured
himself a little from time to time to keep up his spirits; but as soon
as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and instead of
swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, began to groan
freely.
The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication.
Charles could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling to mind
the devices of his masters at the bedsides of patients, he comforted the
sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon
that are like the oil they put on bistouries. In order to make some
splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. Charles
selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment
of windowpane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and
Mademoiselle Emma tried to sew some pads. As she was a long time before
she found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not answer,
but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her
mouth to suck them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails.
They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of
Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not
white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too
long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in
her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and
her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness.
The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself
to "pick a bit" before he left.
Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks
and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a
huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing
Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped
from a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were
sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from
the neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of
decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the
wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre,
was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, underneath which was written
in Gothic letters "To dear Papa."
First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold,
of the wolves that infested the fields at night.
Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, especially now
that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the room was
chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of her full lips,
that she had a habit of biting when silent.
Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her hair, whose
two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was
parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the
curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined
behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the
country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of
her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two
buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.
When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the
room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the
window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked
down by the wind. She turned round. "Are you looking for anything?" she
asked.
"My whip, if you please," he answered.
He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It
had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle
Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks.
Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out his
arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the
young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked
at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip.
Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised,
he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without
counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident.
Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favourably; and
when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk
alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man
of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured
better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.
As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure
to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have
attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the
money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits
to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of
his life? On these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on
his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black
gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing
the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads
run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old
Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the
small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the
kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in
front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp
sound against the leather of her boots.
She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. When his
horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said
"Good-bye"; there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round,
playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro
on her hips the apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once,
during a thaw the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on
the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold,
and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of
the colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted
up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the
tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on
the stretched silk.
During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame
Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had
even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a
clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a
daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle
Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called
"a good education"; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to
embroider and play the piano. That was the last straw.
"So it is for this," she said to herself, "that his face beams when he
goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of
spoiling it with the rain. Ah! that woman! That woman!"
And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced herself by
allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations
that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to
which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the Bertaux now
that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet?
Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who know how to
talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted
town misses." And she went on--
"The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was
a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes
for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss,
or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess.
Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year,
would have had much ado to pay up his arrears."
For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made
him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more
after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He
obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the
servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive
hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to
love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all
weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her
shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they
were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the
laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings.
Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few
days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and
then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and
observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much.
Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came?
What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it came about that a
notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widow Dubuc's property, one fine
day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. Heloise,
it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six
thousand francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all
this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting
perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the
household. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found
to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed
with the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed
one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation,
Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his
wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such
a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They came to Tostes.
Explanations followed. There were scenes. Heloise in tears, throwing her
arms about her husband, implored him to defend her from his parents.
Charles tried to speak up for her. They grew angry and left the house.
But "the blow had struck home." A week after, as she was hanging up some
washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and
the next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the
window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and fainted. She was
dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Charles went
home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to
their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then,
leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried
in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!
| 4,240 | Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-2 | Late one night Charles was awakened with a request to come 18 miles out in the country and set a broken leg. He sent the messenger on ahead and promised to follow in a couple of hours. At four in the morning, Charles set out on the journey, trying to search his memory for everything he knew about fractures. When he arrived at the farm house, he was admitted by a charming young lady. Upon seeing the patient, he was greatly relieved to find a simple fracture with no complications. Mademoiselle Emma came in and assisted with preparing bandages. Charles was struck by the beauty of her flashing brown eyes which appeared to be almost black. When he had finished, she led him into the dining room where he ate and talked with Mademoiselle Emma about the patient. Upon leaving, he promised to come back in three days. But instead, he found himself returning the next day and went twice a week regularly in spite of the long ride. In about eight weeks, the patient was able to walk about. During the entire episode, Charles never questioned himself as to why he went so often to see the patient, but his wife did. She made inquiries and found out that the patient had a daughter who had been brought up in a convent and was known to give herself airs. After much complaining, nagging, and pleading, Charles' wife finally extracted a promise from him that he would not go there again. As time passed, Charles' mother and wife both began to pick at him incessantly. Suddenly it was learned that the lawyer who had been administering Heloise's estate had absconded with nearly all her money. Furthermore, it was discovered upon investigation that her remaining property was of little value and that the woman had lied about her wealth prior to the wedding. Bovary's parents had a violent argument about this, and Heloise was very upset. About a week later she had a stroke and died. | In this chapter, we meet Mademoiselle Emma. But Flaubert is interested in presenting her from a distant view -- that is, we hear about her first from other viewpoints. He is saving his personal or direct introduction of Emma until a later chapter and is here presenting Charles' and Heloise's view of Emma. This technique is called the delayed emergence. It functions to arouse the reader's interest in the main character. It is a part of Charles' character that he is not even aware of why he went so often to see his patient. It might even be said that he was surprised when his wife accused him of going solely to see Mademoiselle Emma. Denied of the privilege of seeing her, Charles determined that he could then justifiably love her at a distance. Again, note that Charles' present wife is such a shrew, is so bad and so demanding and so ugly , and is so unpleasant that by contrast Emma seems like an angel to Charles. Thus Charles' miserable experiences with his first wife prepare him to be so indulgent and yielding to Emma later in his life. The reader who is not aware of Flaubert's method of evoking a scene is missing a large measure of the greatness of this novel. The reader should select a passage, such as Charles' arrival at his patient's house, and examine the careful way in which Flaubert makes you feel this scene. His choice of language and careful description paints an accurate description of what he is writing about. The technique that Flaubert uses may be compared to that of a camera coming slowly in for a close shot and then moving subtly away for another shot. | 441 | 286 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/03.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_2_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 3 | chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-3", "summary": "Sometime after, Roualt paid Charles a call to settle his bill and to offer his condolences. He invited Bovary to visit at the farm. Charles accepted the offer and became a frequent guest at the Roualt house. In these circumstances, Bovary's interest in Emma matured, and soon he found himself in love with her. Emma's father had never been a very good farmer. He had debts and constantly drank the best cider rather than sending it to the market. Thus, when he realized that Charles was interested in Emma, he resolved to give his consent, especially since Emma had never been very good around the farm. Thus Charles' proposal was accepted. Charles and Emma decided that the wedding would take place as soon as Charles was out of mourning. He visited often and they discussed the details of the wedding. Emma would have preferred a midnight wedding with torches, but her father would not stand for that. Instead, there was a traditional wedding with a party that lasted sixteen hours.", "analysis": "We should note with what delight Charles observes everything that Emma does. He is charmed with her looks, her way of talking, her actions, and everything about her. He can find no fault with her. This attitude or view toward his future wife will essentially continue during his entire married life, making it easy for Emma to commit her indiscretions. Flaubert begins already to offer little hints as to Emma's character. We see that her father thinks of her as rather useless around the farm and is not sorry to lose her in marriage. Emma's romanticism, which will later be seen to be the cause of her tragic life, is here suggested by her desire to have a midnight wedding with torches. This is the first hint that Emma is a person who seeks something of the strange and marvelous, something that will break the monotony of living in a dull world."} |
One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his
leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard
of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could.
"I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been
through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be
quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I
talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the
branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it.
And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their
nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on
the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very
idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well,
quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an
autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb;
it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something
always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's
heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way
altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must
pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see
us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says
you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some
rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit."
Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all
as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear
trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again,
came and went, making the farm more full of life.
Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor
because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off,
spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended
to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him
than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He
told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his
wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in;
he thought no more about her.
He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new
delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now
change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was
very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and
coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him.
On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his
business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young
man! what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had
increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked.
He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better
looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.
One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields.
He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the
outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun
sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners
of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table
were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they
drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in
by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and
touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth
Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of
perspiration on her bare shoulders.
After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to
drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have
a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao
from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the
brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked
glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent
back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the
strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her
tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the
bottom of her glass.
She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was
darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did
Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the
flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing
in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the
yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her
hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs.
She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from
giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began
talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They
went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little
prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a
cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even
showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every
month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But the
gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid!
She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town,
although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more
wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her
voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in
modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now
joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her
look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.
Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to
recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life
she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts
other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her.
Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married,
and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But
Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the
humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry after
all! If you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was
parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and
opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing
in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the
Bertaux.
Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised
himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each
time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words
sealed his lips.
Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was
of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking
her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one
never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it,
the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in
which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture
properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him
less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his
pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking
to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider,
underdone legs of mutton, glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in
the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him
all ready laid as on the stage.
*A mixture of coffee and spirits.
When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his
daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days,
he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a
little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he
was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt
would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old
Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property,"
as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the
shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said
to himself, "I'll give her to him."
At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux.
The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to
hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road
full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave
himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past
it--
"Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to
you."
They stopped. Charles was silent.
"Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault,
laughing softly.
"Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles.
"I ask nothing better", the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the
little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get
off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't return because of
all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so
that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter
of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning
over the hedge."
And he went off.
Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited.
Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch.
Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown
back; the hook was still swinging.
The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as
he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in
countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion
of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before
them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out
of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.
The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with
her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself
chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When
Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked
over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed
of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be
entrees.
Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding
with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So
there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which
they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to
some extent on the days following.
| 2,870 | Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-3 | Sometime after, Roualt paid Charles a call to settle his bill and to offer his condolences. He invited Bovary to visit at the farm. Charles accepted the offer and became a frequent guest at the Roualt house. In these circumstances, Bovary's interest in Emma matured, and soon he found himself in love with her. Emma's father had never been a very good farmer. He had debts and constantly drank the best cider rather than sending it to the market. Thus, when he realized that Charles was interested in Emma, he resolved to give his consent, especially since Emma had never been very good around the farm. Thus Charles' proposal was accepted. Charles and Emma decided that the wedding would take place as soon as Charles was out of mourning. He visited often and they discussed the details of the wedding. Emma would have preferred a midnight wedding with torches, but her father would not stand for that. Instead, there was a traditional wedding with a party that lasted sixteen hours. | We should note with what delight Charles observes everything that Emma does. He is charmed with her looks, her way of talking, her actions, and everything about her. He can find no fault with her. This attitude or view toward his future wife will essentially continue during his entire married life, making it easy for Emma to commit her indiscretions. Flaubert begins already to offer little hints as to Emma's character. We see that her father thinks of her as rather useless around the farm and is not sorry to lose her in marriage. Emma's romanticism, which will later be seen to be the cause of her tragic life, is here suggested by her desire to have a midnight wedding with torches. This is the first hint that Emma is a person who seeks something of the strange and marvelous, something that will break the monotony of living in a dull world. | 223 | 152 |
2,413 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_1_chapters_4_to_5.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_3_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapters 4-5 | chapters 4-5 | null | {"name": "Chapters 4-5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapters-45", "summary": "The wedding was a gala affair with many friends and relatives present. There was much good fun; the only unpleasant note was the sullen attitude of Bovary's mother who resented not having had a hand in the plans or preparations. Charles' great happiness was apparent to all who saw him, and Emma too seemed pleased by her marriage. After two days at Roualt's farm, the couple returned to Tostes. Charles proudly led Emma into her new house, the furnishings and arrangement of which are described in great detail. Emma discovered her predecessor's wedding bouquet on display in the bedroom, where Bovary had thoughtlessly left it. She indulged in some morbid thoughts, but her sorrowful mood passed quickly in the excitement of the moment. In the days that followed, Bovary's every thought was with his wife, and all his efforts were devoted to pleasing her. He took her for walks and enjoyed fulfilling her every whim. He had never known that life could be so pleasant. But Emma wondered why she had not attained the happiness she expected from marriage and what happened to such words as \"bliss\" \"passion,\" and \"ecstasy,\" words that had sounded so wonderful when read in books.", "analysis": "Chapter 4 devotes itself to creating a realistic picture of a country wedding. Flaubert, in a few masterful strokes, makes us feel the entire provincial life. Scenes such as these account for Flaubert's title as the first master of perfect realism. In both chapters, the reader should note how utterly Charles dotes on Emma. His dogged devotion accounts for his later blindness to Emma's faults and his later desire to fulfill her every whim. Emma's desire to change the house should not be seen as a touch of individuality on her part. Rather, she will be seen to be constantly desiring a change, thinking that in every change she will find the happiness that she is seeking. The first blow to Emma's romantic nature comes when she sees the still-preserved bridal bouquet held over from Charles' first marriage. This takes away from the sentimentality she is trying to attach to her own bouquet. At the end of Chapter 5, Emma's true nature is beginning to emerge. She is already disillusioned because marriage is not as great in real life as it was in her books. She is disappointed because she has not found all of the \"bliss, passion, and ecstasy\" that she had read about in novels. This idea will now be developed as the main theme of the book. That is, the contrast Emma finds between the realistic world and her dreams of what life should be."} |
The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled
cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young
people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in
rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot
and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from
Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany.
All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between
friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to.
From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then
the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the
steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all
sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets,
had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with
the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down
behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads,
dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes
(many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their
sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first
communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or
sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their
hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their
gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the
carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it
themselves. According to their different social positions they wore
tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats,
redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe
on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and
round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse
cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short
cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like
a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at
the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say,
with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small
plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt.
And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had
just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been
close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and
not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or
cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh
air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were
mottled here and there with red dabs.
The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither
on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church.
The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated
across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn,
soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to
talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at
its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all
following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves
plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves
unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from
time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her
gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns,
while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault,
with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands
up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur
Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply
in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing
compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed,
and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their
business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another
on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the
squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When
he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly
rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set
off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark
time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little
birds from afar.
The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six
chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle
a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At
the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round
the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine
beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least
shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of
the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot
had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up
on the place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself
brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin
with, at its base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a
temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and
in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second
stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications
in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and
finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of
jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate
swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.
Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they
went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the
granary, and then returned to table. Some towards the finish went to
sleep and snored. But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then they began
songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with
their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad
jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed
up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they
kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore;
and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were
runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over
yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning
out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins.
Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen.
The children had fallen asleep under the seats.
The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage
pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even
brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water
from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in
time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position
of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the
same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused
old Rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in
a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running
served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been
badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints
hoping he would ruin himself.
Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been
consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the
arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead
of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till
daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This
added greatly to the consideration in which he was held.
Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding.
He answered feebly to the puns, doubles entendres*, compliments, and
chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup
appeared.
*Double meanings.
The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who
might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before,
whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did
not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed
near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed
nothing. He called her "my wife", tutoyed* her, asked for her of
everyone, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the
yards, where he could be seen from far between the trees, putting his
arm around her waist, and walking half-bending over her, ruffling the
chemisette of her bodice with his head.
*Used the familiar form of address.
Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of
his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back
in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here
he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way.
When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the
cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh.
Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of
his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her
from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion,
trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the
country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from
the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that
it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he
saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently
under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from
time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would
have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the
road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling
with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he
felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was
afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
right away home.
Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock.
The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.
The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not
having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should
look over her house.
The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road.
Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black
leather cap, and on the floor, in a corner, were a pair of leggings,
still covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment, that was
both dining and sitting room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at the
top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly
stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung crossways
at the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with
a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks
under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was Charles's
consulting room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table,
three chairs, and an office chair. Volumes of the "Dictionary of Medical
Science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive
sales through which they had gone, occupied almost along the six shelves
of a deal bookcase.
The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls when he saw
patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in
the consulting room and recounting their histories.
Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large
dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and
pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements
past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to
guess.
The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered
apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the
middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with
eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed.
Right at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure in plaster
reading his breviary.
Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in the second,
which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red
drapery. A shell box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary
near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin
ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the other
one's. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it
up to the attic, while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were putting
her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in
a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she
were to die.
During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in
the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wallpaper
put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the
sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain
and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,
picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard
in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.
He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together,
a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her
hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and
many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now
made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by
her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down
on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen
thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on
waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the
shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of
different colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towards the
surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw
himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round
his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window
to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of
geranium, clad in her dressing gown hanging loosely about her. Charles,
in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while
she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of
flower or leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating,
described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before
it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare
standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a
kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And
then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along
the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where
the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning
air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his
mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness,
like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are
digesting.
Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when
he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of
companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his
accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school
with cakes in their muffs? Later on, when he studied medicine, and never
had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have
become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the
widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life
this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend
beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself
with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly,
ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing;
he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.
He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her
fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on
her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm
from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away
half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.
Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that
should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought,
have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in
life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so
beautiful in books.
| 4,505 | Chapters 4-5 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapters-45 | The wedding was a gala affair with many friends and relatives present. There was much good fun; the only unpleasant note was the sullen attitude of Bovary's mother who resented not having had a hand in the plans or preparations. Charles' great happiness was apparent to all who saw him, and Emma too seemed pleased by her marriage. After two days at Roualt's farm, the couple returned to Tostes. Charles proudly led Emma into her new house, the furnishings and arrangement of which are described in great detail. Emma discovered her predecessor's wedding bouquet on display in the bedroom, where Bovary had thoughtlessly left it. She indulged in some morbid thoughts, but her sorrowful mood passed quickly in the excitement of the moment. In the days that followed, Bovary's every thought was with his wife, and all his efforts were devoted to pleasing her. He took her for walks and enjoyed fulfilling her every whim. He had never known that life could be so pleasant. But Emma wondered why she had not attained the happiness she expected from marriage and what happened to such words as "bliss" "passion," and "ecstasy," words that had sounded so wonderful when read in books. | Chapter 4 devotes itself to creating a realistic picture of a country wedding. Flaubert, in a few masterful strokes, makes us feel the entire provincial life. Scenes such as these account for Flaubert's title as the first master of perfect realism. In both chapters, the reader should note how utterly Charles dotes on Emma. His dogged devotion accounts for his later blindness to Emma's faults and his later desire to fulfill her every whim. Emma's desire to change the house should not be seen as a touch of individuality on her part. Rather, she will be seen to be constantly desiring a change, thinking that in every change she will find the happiness that she is seeking. The first blow to Emma's romantic nature comes when she sees the still-preserved bridal bouquet held over from Charles' first marriage. This takes away from the sentimentality she is trying to attach to her own bouquet. At the end of Chapter 5, Emma's true nature is beginning to emerge. She is already disillusioned because marriage is not as great in real life as it was in her books. She is disappointed because she has not found all of the "bliss, passion, and ecstasy" that she had read about in novels. This idea will now be developed as the main theme of the book. That is, the contrast Emma finds between the realistic world and her dreams of what life should be. | 271 | 238 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/06.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_4_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 6 | chapter 6 | null | {"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-6", "summary": "Emma recalls her thirteenth year, when her father took her to the convent to live. She enjoyed the convent at first; she liked talking with the nuns and she enjoyed answering the difficult questions correctly. But she soon relinquished herself to the languid atmosphere of the convent and found herself admiring the beauty of the chapel rather than listening to the lessons. She gave herself over to romantic notions concerning the church and dreamed of the \"sick lamb\" and the metaphors of a \"betrothed spouse, heavenly lover, marriage everlasting,\" and she listened only to the romantic melancholy of the lamentations. There was an old maid who came to the convent and who would sing romantic ballads to the girls on the sly. Emma then read voraciously from tales of romance involving lonely meetings, secret encounters, gloomy forests, and troubles of the heart. She became enthusiastic over Sir Walter Scott and dreamed of living in some romantic palace where a cavalier with a white plume could come galloping up and rescue her. When her mother died, Emma had a lock of her dead mother's hair mounted and wrote her father that when she died she would like to be buried in the same grave. She gave her time to reading romantic, sentimental poetry and while enjoying the mysteries of the church, she rebelled against the discipline. When her father took her from the convent, she enjoyed managing the servants for a while, but soon tired of it and longed for the convent. When Charles appeared, she found it difficult to believe that the quietness and dullness of her romance was what she had read about in the novels.", "analysis": "The earliest chapters have been concerned with Emma only from an indirect view. Now Flaubert is ready to present his view or analysis of Emma. As pointed out earlier, this technique -- a delayed emergence of the main character -- serves to heighten the reader's interest in hearing about the main character. This chapter presents Emma as an incurable romantic, a person who lives in a dream world, in a world of fiction rather than in the real world. She is a dreamer and a sentimentalist. When young, she had read Paul and Virginia, a highly sentimental and romanticized view of life and love. This novel of idyllic love contributed to Emma's dreamy sentimentalism. The chapter then proceeds to show how a person already endowed with a strong degree of sentimentality was placed in a type of life in the convent which nourished her already excessive tendency toward this type of sentimentalism. In religion she searched for the unusual, the mystic, the dreamy. In the convent, she read stories of romance while being unable to see the real world. She concentrated her attention upon the beautiful and artistic rather than finding the basic elements of a natural life. Novels read on the sly only increased the value of the romance by being forbidden. Thus, left alone with her dreams, she developed into a dreamy girl who wanted all the elements of romantic fiction to come alive in her own life. She longs for old castles, for romantic lovers charging up to a balcony on a white horse, for moonlight meetings in far-away places. She feels the need of excitement and mystery, and cannot tolerate the normal life of everyday living. Thus, when Charles comes calling, she cannot understand why her life wasn't suddenly filled with passion, bliss and ecstasy. Another of Emma's characteristics is suggested in this chapter: Emma's constant need for a change. She at first enjoyed being out of the convent and at home managing the servants, but then grew rapidly tired of this and longed again for the convent. Thus throughout the novel, Emma will begin one project and drop it only to begin another, always in the constant search for something new and exciting."} |
She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little
bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the
sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for
you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand,
bringing you a bird's nest.
When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place
her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter,
where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the
story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped
here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the
tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court.
Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the
society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel,
which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very
little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she
who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living
thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and
amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she
was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the
altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers.
Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with
their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred
heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the
cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a
whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil.
When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she
might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined,
her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest.
The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal
marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of
unexpected sweetness.
In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in
the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or
the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the
"Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to
the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing
through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the
shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened
her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to
us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well;
she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs.
Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to
those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms,
and the green fields only when broken up by ruins.
She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected
as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her
heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking
for emotions, not landscapes.
At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to
mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an
ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the
refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit
of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped
out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs
of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away.
She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on
the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the
pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed
long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers,
sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions
killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre
forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by
moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions,
gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and
weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of
age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.
Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events,
dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked
to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines
who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the
stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on
his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult
for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy
women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and
Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of
heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St.
Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a
little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always
the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV.
In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but
little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild
compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity
of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria
of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes"
given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden;
it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately
handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at
the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the
most part as counts or viscounts.
She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and
saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the
balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his
arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or
there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who
looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear
eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through
parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at
a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on
sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open
window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their
cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or,
smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a
marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked
shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining
beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres,
Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands,
that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a
lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by
a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam
trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white
excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.
And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head
lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one
by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some
belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.
When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a
funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter
sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be
buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill,
and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at
a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre
hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened
to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of
the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of
the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not
confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel
herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her
brow.
The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with
great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping
from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,
novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to
saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of
the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined
horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This
nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the
church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the
songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against
the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing
antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school,
no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she
had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.
Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the
servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.
When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself
quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to
feel.
But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance
caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe
that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a
great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies
of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived
was the happiness she had dreamed.
| 2,639 | Chapter 6 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-6 | Emma recalls her thirteenth year, when her father took her to the convent to live. She enjoyed the convent at first; she liked talking with the nuns and she enjoyed answering the difficult questions correctly. But she soon relinquished herself to the languid atmosphere of the convent and found herself admiring the beauty of the chapel rather than listening to the lessons. She gave herself over to romantic notions concerning the church and dreamed of the "sick lamb" and the metaphors of a "betrothed spouse, heavenly lover, marriage everlasting," and she listened only to the romantic melancholy of the lamentations. There was an old maid who came to the convent and who would sing romantic ballads to the girls on the sly. Emma then read voraciously from tales of romance involving lonely meetings, secret encounters, gloomy forests, and troubles of the heart. She became enthusiastic over Sir Walter Scott and dreamed of living in some romantic palace where a cavalier with a white plume could come galloping up and rescue her. When her mother died, Emma had a lock of her dead mother's hair mounted and wrote her father that when she died she would like to be buried in the same grave. She gave her time to reading romantic, sentimental poetry and while enjoying the mysteries of the church, she rebelled against the discipline. When her father took her from the convent, she enjoyed managing the servants for a while, but soon tired of it and longed for the convent. When Charles appeared, she found it difficult to believe that the quietness and dullness of her romance was what she had read about in the novels. | The earliest chapters have been concerned with Emma only from an indirect view. Now Flaubert is ready to present his view or analysis of Emma. As pointed out earlier, this technique -- a delayed emergence of the main character -- serves to heighten the reader's interest in hearing about the main character. This chapter presents Emma as an incurable romantic, a person who lives in a dream world, in a world of fiction rather than in the real world. She is a dreamer and a sentimentalist. When young, she had read Paul and Virginia, a highly sentimental and romanticized view of life and love. This novel of idyllic love contributed to Emma's dreamy sentimentalism. The chapter then proceeds to show how a person already endowed with a strong degree of sentimentality was placed in a type of life in the convent which nourished her already excessive tendency toward this type of sentimentalism. In religion she searched for the unusual, the mystic, the dreamy. In the convent, she read stories of romance while being unable to see the real world. She concentrated her attention upon the beautiful and artistic rather than finding the basic elements of a natural life. Novels read on the sly only increased the value of the romance by being forbidden. Thus, left alone with her dreams, she developed into a dreamy girl who wanted all the elements of romantic fiction to come alive in her own life. She longs for old castles, for romantic lovers charging up to a balcony on a white horse, for moonlight meetings in far-away places. She feels the need of excitement and mystery, and cannot tolerate the normal life of everyday living. Thus, when Charles comes calling, she cannot understand why her life wasn't suddenly filled with passion, bliss and ecstasy. Another of Emma's characteristics is suggested in this chapter: Emma's constant need for a change. She at first enjoyed being out of the convent and at home managing the servants, but then grew rapidly tired of this and longed again for the convent. Thus throughout the novel, Emma will begin one project and drop it only to begin another, always in the constant search for something new and exciting. | 373 | 368 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/07.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_5_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 7 | chapter 7 | null | {"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-7", "summary": "Emma wondered if the honeymoon was actually to be the finest part of her life. She wondered why she couldn't be standing in a Swiss chalet with a husband in a dashing outfit of velvet, soft boots, peaked hat, and so forth. As Charles' outward attraction for her increased, she began inwardly to detach herself from him. As she observed Charles, she noted that he simply trudged through every day. His talk was dull, he provoked no emotions in her, he had no desire to do or see anything, and he couldn't even explain a riding term in one of her novels. Ideally, she dreamed of a man who would introduce her to a multitude of activities and passions, who would inspire her to live to the fullest. And when she perceived that Charles was perfectly content simply to be with her, she hated him for his placid immobility and contentment. Charles, on the other hand, found no fault with his wife. She was an excellent manager and played the piano with skill. All her acts gave him pleasure, and in every way he was content with his life and good fortune. Whenever Mrs. Bovary visited, however, he was confounded by the coldness between his wife and mother. Emma resented the older woman's advice or interference, and the mother was jealous of her son's affection for his wife. Meanwhile, Emma continued to crave the exalted and passionate love which she sadly felt had been denied her. She criticized herself for ever having married and suffered from envy of the imagined happiness of the girls with whom she had gone to school. One September the Bovarys were invited to a ball at the chateau of the Marquis d'Andervilliers, whom Charles had treated. The Marquis was far above them in social rank but wanted to demonstrate his gratitude for the service Bovary had done him. Emma looked forward to this unique event with great eagerness.", "analysis": "Emma continues her dreaming of another life and another husband. She pictures to herself a fabulous life with another person and begins to detach herself from Charles. The contrast between her dreams and her life is brought out rather concisely in two paragraphs, the first describing Charles' commonplace banalities, his slow plodding ways, his lack of emotional stimulation and his contentment, whereas in her dreams, she sees a man sweeping her off her feet and introducing her to all the intense passions of life. Finally, to observe her dull husband being content with a snack, falling into bed, and snoring fills her with indescribable longings for another life. This chapter begins to depict the complete contrast between Emma and Charles. His plodding nature and his routine ardors and embraces destroyed all the excitement in life for Emma. She becomes increasingly irritated with his coarse ways and his dullness. This chapter marks the beginning of her life of waiting for something exciting to happen. Her entire life will be characterized by her unfilled longing and incessant waiting for some excitement to enter into it. Her disappointment prompted her first words to be spoken in the novel: \"O God, O God, why did I get married?\" Previous to this statement, we have heard about Emma and about her thoughts, but significantly, these are her first spoken words. The excitement that Emma has been waiting for comes in the form of an invitation to La Vaubyessard. This will soon become one of the high points of her life."} |
She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time
of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full
sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those
lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of
laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride
slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed
by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of
a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume
of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in
hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her
that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar
to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean
over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch
cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails,
and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked
to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable
uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed
her--the opportunity, the courage.
If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but
once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have
gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by
a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater
became the gulf that separated her from him.
Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and
everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without
exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity,
he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors
from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day
he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come
across in a novel.
A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold
activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements
of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing,
wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm,
this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.
Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand
there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes
half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers,
little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers
glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb,
and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken
up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the
other end of the village when the window was open, and often the
bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list
slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.
Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the
patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of
a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to
have some tasty dish--piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves,
served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying
finger-glasses for dessert. From all this much consideration was
extended to Bovary.
Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife.
He showed with pride in the sitting room two small pencil sketches by
her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the
wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at his
door in his wool-work slippers.
He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked
for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited
on him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one
after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been,
the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he
finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off
the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to
bed, and lay on his back and snored.
As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief
would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was
all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of
the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore
thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely
towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight
line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that "was quite good
enough for the country."
His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly
when there had been some violent row at her place; and yet Madame Bovary
senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought "her
ways too fine for their position"; the wood, the sugar, and the candles
disappeared as "at a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in
the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She put her
linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on
the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with these lessons.
Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words "daughter" and "mother"
were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the
lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger.
In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the
favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion
from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched
her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through
the windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as
remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with
Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to
adore her so exclusively.
Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved
his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible,
and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam
Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or
two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma
proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his
patients.
And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she wanted to make
herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all
the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many
melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and
Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.
When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without
getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did
not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself
in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that
Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became
regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among
other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony
of dinner.
A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had
given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for
she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see
before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far
as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an
angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of
the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you.
She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last
she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and
wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and
the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always
closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts,
aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round
and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing
the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield.
Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass
that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to
herself, "Good heavens! Why did I marry?"
She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would have not
been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would
have been these unrealised events, this different life, this unknown
husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been
handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old
companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In
town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the
lights of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands,
the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose
dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was
weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.
She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive
her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and
open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her
seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was
full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows;
the music master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all
of this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and
smoothed the long delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have
no troubles."
Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned
slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud
as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.
Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in
one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought
even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground,
whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their
summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl
round her shoulders and rose.
In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the short moss
that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky
showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform,
and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out
against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali,
and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself into an
armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak.
But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her
life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.
Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to
re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to
the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a
great deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always enthusiastically
demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had
suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by
giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes
to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some
superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry trees did not
thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it
his business to thank his personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty
figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not
think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other
hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.
On Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in
their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped
on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles
held a bandbox between his knees.
They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lit
to show the way for the carriages.
| 3,146 | Chapter 7 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-7 | Emma wondered if the honeymoon was actually to be the finest part of her life. She wondered why she couldn't be standing in a Swiss chalet with a husband in a dashing outfit of velvet, soft boots, peaked hat, and so forth. As Charles' outward attraction for her increased, she began inwardly to detach herself from him. As she observed Charles, she noted that he simply trudged through every day. His talk was dull, he provoked no emotions in her, he had no desire to do or see anything, and he couldn't even explain a riding term in one of her novels. Ideally, she dreamed of a man who would introduce her to a multitude of activities and passions, who would inspire her to live to the fullest. And when she perceived that Charles was perfectly content simply to be with her, she hated him for his placid immobility and contentment. Charles, on the other hand, found no fault with his wife. She was an excellent manager and played the piano with skill. All her acts gave him pleasure, and in every way he was content with his life and good fortune. Whenever Mrs. Bovary visited, however, he was confounded by the coldness between his wife and mother. Emma resented the older woman's advice or interference, and the mother was jealous of her son's affection for his wife. Meanwhile, Emma continued to crave the exalted and passionate love which she sadly felt had been denied her. She criticized herself for ever having married and suffered from envy of the imagined happiness of the girls with whom she had gone to school. One September the Bovarys were invited to a ball at the chateau of the Marquis d'Andervilliers, whom Charles had treated. The Marquis was far above them in social rank but wanted to demonstrate his gratitude for the service Bovary had done him. Emma looked forward to this unique event with great eagerness. | Emma continues her dreaming of another life and another husband. She pictures to herself a fabulous life with another person and begins to detach herself from Charles. The contrast between her dreams and her life is brought out rather concisely in two paragraphs, the first describing Charles' commonplace banalities, his slow plodding ways, his lack of emotional stimulation and his contentment, whereas in her dreams, she sees a man sweeping her off her feet and introducing her to all the intense passions of life. Finally, to observe her dull husband being content with a snack, falling into bed, and snoring fills her with indescribable longings for another life. This chapter begins to depict the complete contrast between Emma and Charles. His plodding nature and his routine ardors and embraces destroyed all the excitement in life for Emma. She becomes increasingly irritated with his coarse ways and his dullness. This chapter marks the beginning of her life of waiting for something exciting to happen. Her entire life will be characterized by her unfilled longing and incessant waiting for some excitement to enter into it. Her disappointment prompted her first words to be spoken in the novel: "O God, O God, why did I get married?" Previous to this statement, we have heard about Emma and about her thoughts, but significantly, these are her first spoken words. The excitement that Emma has been waiting for comes in the form of an invitation to La Vaubyessard. This will soon become one of the high points of her life. | 437 | 255 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/08.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_6_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 8 | chapter 8 | null | {"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-8", "summary": "The chateau was a building of stately proportions, situated on a large and prosperous estate. The many rooms were filled with expensive and artistic furnishings and decorations. The ball was attended by all the aristocracy and gentry of the surrounding area. Emma was overjoyed at the opportunity of being able to move freely in such noble company. During their stay at the chateau she constantly berated Bovary, whom she felt looked like a country buffoon and whose presence embarrassed her. Emma dressed and attempted to behave as if she too were a great lady and mingled with the other guests. All night she basked in the reflected glory of those around her. The ball and the people at it seemed to be transported from out of the novels and dreams she had long cherished. Emma was so ecstatic she never noticed that most of the guests ignored her. The high point of her evening came when a man known only as \"Vicomte\" danced with her. On the trip home Emma suffered from bitter disappointment that she, who was so obviously entitled to preferment, could not live this way all year round. In her disillusionment she saw Bovary as a clumsy, simple oaf. Back home her frustration caused her to be cross with him, and in a fit of pique she fired the maid, despite the woman's devotion and good service. Each day Emma attempted to recall the great events of the ball, but in time they became vague memories.", "analysis": "This chapter presents in reality all of the grand elegance that Emma had dreamed and read about. Here then are her dreams turning into reality. Everything that she dreamed of is here: the grand dinner, the magnificent ball, the elegant dances, the discussions of faraway people and even an old man who had slept with the queen, and a young lady carrying on an intrigue with a young man. And finally, Emma's being requested to dance with a Viscount testifies to her own superiority over her upbringing. This chapter focuses almost all of the attention on Emma. It is important here to see that Emma does possess the necessary qualities so as to blend in with an aristocratic world. Unlike Charles, who stands limply around for five hours watching a game he doesn't understand, Emma is moving graciously and rather charmingly amid this aristocratic society. Even though she does not attract people to her, she seems to blend in. Her invitation to dance with the Viscount and her ability to learn the dance attest to her acceptance. Thus, Emma's later degradation should be contrasted to the success she attains here, and by the comparison, Emma's later plight will be seen to be more pathetic. Note the cigar box that Charles found. Emma will later dawdle over this as a reminder of her experience at the ball and convince herself that it belonged to the Viscount. Returning to her own drab surroundings, Emma can barely tolerate the dull routine of everyone doing the same dull things. She therefore loses herself in her reveries about the ball."} |
The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting
wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense
green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees
set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron,
syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of
green along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge;
through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs
scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered
hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel
lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old
chateau.
Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants
appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering his arm to the
doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule.
It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of
footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church.
Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery
overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one
could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the
drawing room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces,
their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled
silently as they made their strokes.
On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at
the bottom names written in black letters. She read: "Jean-Antoine
d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la
Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October,
1587." And on another: "Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de
la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St.
Michael, wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of
May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693." One could
hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered
over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the
horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where
there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares
framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the
painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over
and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a
well-rounded calf.
The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the
Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on
an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her
a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook
nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair
a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young
woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers
in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.
At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down
at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the
dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness.
Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a
blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes
of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silver dish covers
reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal
covered with light steam reflected from one to the other pale rays;
bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in
the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a
bishop's mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped
roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open
baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke
was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and
frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offering ready carved
dishes between the shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon
gave you the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid
with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed
motionless on the room full of life.
Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their
glasses.
But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent
over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an
old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes
were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He
was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on
a time favourite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil
hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said,
the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and
Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels,
bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his
family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the
dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes
turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something
extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens!
Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt
it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted
pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than
elsewhere.
The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the ball.
Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her
debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser,
and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed.
Charles's trousers were tight across the belly.
"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said.
"Dancing?" repeated Emma.
"Yes!"
"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place.
Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added.
Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish
dressing.
He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes
seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards the ears, shone
with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk,
with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of
pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with
green.
Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.
"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me."
One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She
went downstairs restraining herself from running.
Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing.
She sat down on a form near the door.
The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up
and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line
of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling
faces, and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed
hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh
at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets
trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms.
The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape,
bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of mytosotis, jasmine, pomegranate
blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places,
mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.
Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the
tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and
waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and,
swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight
movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate
phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other
instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis
d'or that were being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room;
then all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note,
feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted;
the same eyes falling before you met yours again.
A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here
and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished
themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their
differences in age, dress, or face.
Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,
brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate
pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that
is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the
veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite
nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low
cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they
wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave
forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air
of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young.
In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and
through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality,
the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised
and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society
of loose women.
A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy
with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.
They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoly,
Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum
by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation
full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very
young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romolus,"
and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained
that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors
that had disfigured the name of his horse.
The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim.
Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair
and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary
turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed
against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux
came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in
a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly,
skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But
in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until
then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She
was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest.
She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand
in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her
teeth.
A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing.
"Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has
fallen behind the sofa?"
The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw
the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle,
into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan, offered it to the lady
respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began
smelling her bouquet.
After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups a la
bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la Trafalgar, and all sorts of
cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one
after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners of the muslin
curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through
the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were still
left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their
tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door.
*With almond milk
At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.
Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the
Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a
dozen persons.
One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and
whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time
to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and
that she would get through it very well.
They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them
was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like
a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress
caught against his trousers.
Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to
his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a
more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with
her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for
a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but
more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the
wall and covered her eyes with her hands.
When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three
waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool.
She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.
Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body,
her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved,
his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how to
waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.
Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or
rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed.
Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His "knees were going
up into his body." He had spent five consecutive hours standing
bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without
understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief
that he pulled off his boots.
Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.
The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the
damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still
murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to
prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to
give up.
Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the chateau,
trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the
evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated,
blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and
cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.
There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten
minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor.
Next, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a
small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and
they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling
with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from
over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing.
The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the
outhouses of the chateau. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took
her to see the stables.
Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the
horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when
anyone went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness room
shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was
piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the
whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.
Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The
dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels
being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and
Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.
Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge
of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little
horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose
reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened
on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it.
They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen
with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emma thought she
recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the
movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the
trot or gallop.
A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces
that had broken.
But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the
ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with
a green silk border and beblazoned in the centre like the door of a
carriage.
"There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening
after dinner."
"Why, do you smoke?" she asked.
"Sometimes, when I get a chance."
He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.
When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper.
Nastasie answered rudely.
"Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you
warning."
For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.
Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.
"How good it is to be at home again!"
Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl.
She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him
company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest
acquaintance in the place.
"Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last.
"Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied.
Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being
made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding,
spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.
"You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully.
He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the
pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back
of the cupboard.
The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden, up
and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier,
before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things
of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed
already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day
before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard
had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that
a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was
resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down
to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of
the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against
wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced.
The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma.
Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah!
I was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago."
And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance.
She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries
and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret
remained with her.
| 5,172 | Chapter 8 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-8 | The chateau was a building of stately proportions, situated on a large and prosperous estate. The many rooms were filled with expensive and artistic furnishings and decorations. The ball was attended by all the aristocracy and gentry of the surrounding area. Emma was overjoyed at the opportunity of being able to move freely in such noble company. During their stay at the chateau she constantly berated Bovary, whom she felt looked like a country buffoon and whose presence embarrassed her. Emma dressed and attempted to behave as if she too were a great lady and mingled with the other guests. All night she basked in the reflected glory of those around her. The ball and the people at it seemed to be transported from out of the novels and dreams she had long cherished. Emma was so ecstatic she never noticed that most of the guests ignored her. The high point of her evening came when a man known only as "Vicomte" danced with her. On the trip home Emma suffered from bitter disappointment that she, who was so obviously entitled to preferment, could not live this way all year round. In her disillusionment she saw Bovary as a clumsy, simple oaf. Back home her frustration caused her to be cross with him, and in a fit of pique she fired the maid, despite the woman's devotion and good service. Each day Emma attempted to recall the great events of the ball, but in time they became vague memories. | This chapter presents in reality all of the grand elegance that Emma had dreamed and read about. Here then are her dreams turning into reality. Everything that she dreamed of is here: the grand dinner, the magnificent ball, the elegant dances, the discussions of faraway people and even an old man who had slept with the queen, and a young lady carrying on an intrigue with a young man. And finally, Emma's being requested to dance with a Viscount testifies to her own superiority over her upbringing. This chapter focuses almost all of the attention on Emma. It is important here to see that Emma does possess the necessary qualities so as to blend in with an aristocratic world. Unlike Charles, who stands limply around for five hours watching a game he doesn't understand, Emma is moving graciously and rather charmingly amid this aristocratic society. Even though she does not attract people to her, she seems to blend in. Her invitation to dance with the Viscount and her ability to learn the dance attest to her acceptance. Thus, Emma's later degradation should be contrasted to the success she attains here, and by the comparison, Emma's later plight will be seen to be more pathetic. Note the cigar box that Charles found. Emma will later dawdle over this as a reminder of her experience at the ball and convince herself that it belonged to the Viscount. Returning to her own drab surroundings, Emma can barely tolerate the dull routine of everyone doing the same dull things. She therefore loses herself in her reveries about the ball. | 336 | 265 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/09.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_7_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 9 | chapter 9 | null | {"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-9", "summary": "Emma buried herself in her fantasies and dreamed of living in Paris, among the nobility. She visualized life in the capital as a constant round of balls, parties, amours, and other exciting things. She read novels and travel books voraciously and studied maps of the city. Much of her time was spent planning imaginary trips, adventures, secret meetings, and visits to the theater or opera. The reality of life at Tostes became unbearable to her, and she was even more critical of Bovary. At first Emma attempted to add little touches of elegance to her humdrum life, such as fancy lampshades and silver, but this soon became an unsatisfactory solution to her craving, even though it pleased Charles. Emma's despair became more intense when she finally was forced to realize that there would be no further invitations to the chateau, and in her depression she gave up her music, sketching, and other pursuits. She was often sad and lonely, and during the long winter her plight became worse. She seemed to cultivate her unhappiness and self-pity by concentrating on her unattainable aspirations, and by finding so little with which to occupy herself. Most of her time was now spent staring down from her window at the village street. She was sullen and rarely spoke to Charles. As her condition became even worse, Emma's moods began to fluctuate between extreme forms of behavior. Sometimes she was very active, sometimes lethargic and slovenly, sometimes nervous and stingy, sometimes capricious and temperamental, but always she was unpredictable and difficult to get along with. Soon she became physically ill. None of Charles' worried efforts to cure her were successful, and he took her to Rouen, to see the medical professor under whom he had studied. This learned doctor recommended a change of scene for the sake of Emma's health, since it was evidently a nervous disorder and she complained so much of disliking Tostes. Despite the fact that he had built a flourishing practice in the village, Charles was willing to sacrifice all for Emma's welfare. After making some inquiries, he decided to move to the town of Yonville, which was located in a nice area and where a doctor was needed. While Emma was helping with the packing, she pricked her hand on her old bridal bouquet, which was now dried up, frayed and yellow with dust. She threw it into the fire and watched it burn. By the time they moved to the new town, Emma was pregnant.", "analysis": "Perhaps no chapter in the novel presents Flaubert's essential theme and meaning as well as does this concluding chapter of Part One. Flaubert vividly depicts the exhausting and enervating results of a woman who expends all her energy in dreams and futile longings. The chapter opens with Emma's recalling the events of the ball, reliving certain episodes and then progressing to envisioning new incidents which might have happened. She wastes, then, her energies in imagining that the cigar case belonged to the Viscount, that he is now in Paris and is pursuing a life of intrigue and excitement. She fritters away her time and energy by tracing walks through Paris on a map she bought, she imagines shopping in Paris, she subscribes to Paris magazines and she dreams of the Viscount. But Flaubert is able to make us all see that Emma's frustrated longing for a different type of life is a quality that we all possess. Thus he universalizes Emma's longings so as to make an indirect comment concerning this type of wasted and futile activity. Emma constantly contrasts her real environment and surroundings with those she conjectures in her dreams. The real seems completely intolerable: \"The nearer home things came, the more she shrank from all thought of them.\" In her dreams, new and exciting things happen every day, but in her real life in Tostes, the same things happen over and over again, so that \"the whole of her immediate environment -- dull countryside, imbecile petty bourgeois, life in its ordinariness -- seemed a freak, a particular piece of bad luck that had seized on her.\" Therefore, she tries to introduce some elegance into her life; she hires a fourteen-year-old girl and tries to teach her how to become a \"lady's maid.\" Emma's frustration and longings cause her to give up her piano, her needlework, drawing, care for the house and all other useful activity. Instead, she fritters away her time in daydreaming. Rather than making herself useful in some way, she drains herself of all her energy by these longings for another life. In waiting for something to happen, she becomes a pathetic case of a woman who exhausts herself in these futile longings until she is physically sick. In other words, she indulges in her own misery until her self-indulgences cause her sickness. She has had a fleeting glimpse at emotions that transcend the dull routine life at Tostes, and her intense longings for these more sublime emotions cause her sickness. The pathos of Emma's life is that she does possess enough sensitivity to be aware of feelings and emotions greater than those of Charles, but is unable to find a suitable outlet for these emotions. Emma's plight is symbolically depicted in the discovery and burning of her bridal bouquet. What was once to be the symbol of a new and exciting life filled with new emotions now is seen as a faded, frayed, dusty object on which she pricks her finger. Thus, the burning of the bridal bouquet signifies the end of her marriage and prepares us for her promiscuity later on. It is not just the end of a marriage, but also the end of her life at Tostes, because now that they are moving, Emma can perhaps be reawakened to a different life."} |
Often when Charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the
folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar case.
She looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odour of the lining--a
mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's? Perhaps
it was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some
rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had
occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the
pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the
canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and
all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same
silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away
with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-mantelled
chimneys between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes;
he was at Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague
name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it
rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes,
even on the labels of her pomade-pots.
At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts
singing the "Marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to the noise of the
iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon
deadened by the soil. "They will be there to-morrow!" she said to
herself.
And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing
villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the
end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into
which her dream died.
She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map
she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at
every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white
squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of
her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind
and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles
of theatres.
She took in "La Corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "Sylphe des
Salons." She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of
first nights, races, and soirees, took interest in the debut of a
singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the
addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In
Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and
George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires.
Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages
while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always
returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made
comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened
round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened
out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.
Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes in an
atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult
were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma
perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in
themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over
polished floors in drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables
covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses with
trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the
society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the
women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men,
unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to
death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards
the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants,
where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the
motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as
kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence
outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of
storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it
was lost, with no particular place and as if non-existent. The nearer
things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them.
All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class
imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a
peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as
far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and passions. She confused
in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart,
elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like
Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs
by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all
the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be
separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence,
from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled
flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias, nor from the flashing of precious
stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries.
The lad from the posting house who came to groom the mare every morning
passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes
in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this was the
groom in knee-britches with whom she had to be content! His work done,
he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put up
his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the
servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could
into the manger.
To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma
took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet
face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in
the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before
coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her--wanted to make a
lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not
to be sent away; and as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,
Felicite every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone
in her bed after she had said her prayers.
Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions.
Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that
showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with
three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and
her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell
over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case,
pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she
dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,
and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She
longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same
time to die and to live in Paris.
Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on
farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid
spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined
basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he
found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed
woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say
whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous
her chemise.
She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of
arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on
her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the
servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last
mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the
watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two
large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory necessaire with a
silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements
the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the
senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust
sanding all along the narrow path of his life.
He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established.
The country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the
children, never went to the public house, and, moreover, his morals
inspired confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest
complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact
only prescribed sedatives, from time to time and emetic, a footbath,
or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people
copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the
"devil's own wrist."
Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in "La Ruche Medicale,"
a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little
after dinner, but in about five minutes the warmth of the room added to
the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin
on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the
lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was
not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their
books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism
sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat?
She could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been
illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the
newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition.
An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat
humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled
relatives. When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma
inveighed loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He
kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with
shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window
in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.
"What a man! What a man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips.
Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his
manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles;
after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup
he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting
fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up
to the temples.
Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest unto his
waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the dirty gloves he was
going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it
was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation.
Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in
a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she
had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an
ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to
her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to
the pendulum of the clock.
At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to
happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the
solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of
the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would
bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a
shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the
portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that
day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that
it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for
the morrow.
Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear trees
began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.
From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to
October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers would give
another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or
visits.
After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained
empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would
thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing
nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some
event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences and
the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it so!
The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.
She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her?
Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking
with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel
the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while
boring herself with practicing. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery
she left in the cupboard. What was the good? What was the good? Sewing
irritated her. "I have read everything," she said to herself. And she
sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.
How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull
attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over
some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the
highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and
the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away
over the fields.
But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the
peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed children skipping along
in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six
men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door
of the inn.
The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with
rime, and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass,
sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o'clock the lamp
had to be lighted.
On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the
cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one
to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the
espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent
under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the
many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the
curie in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right
foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white
scabs on his face.
Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with
the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever.
She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of
shame restrained her.
Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skullcap opened
the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre
over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by
three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the
bell of a public house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear
the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop
creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving
of a fashion-plate stuck against a windowpane and the wax bust of a
woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted
calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big
town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour, near the
theatre--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church,
sombre and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she
always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skullcap over
his ears and his vest of lasting.
Sometimes in the afternoon outside the window of her room, the head of a
man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with
a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately
began and on the organ, in a little drawing room, dancers the size of
a finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock
coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the sofas,
the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking glass held together
at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle,
looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and again,
while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone,
with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his
shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music
escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under
a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at
the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted
lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless
sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the
flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream
to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some coppers
in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ
on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him going.
But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this
small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking
door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life
seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the boiled beef there
rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow
eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused
herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth table cover with the point
of her knife.
She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame
Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much
surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty,
now passed whole days without dressing, wore grey cotton stockings, and
burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since
they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that
Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth
of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow
her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that
mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she
had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good
woman did not interfere again.
Emma was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself,
then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, the next
cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then,
stifling, threw open the windows and put on light dresses. After she had
well scolded her servant she gave her presents or sent her out to see
neighbours, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her
purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible
to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always
retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal
hands.
Towards the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself
brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes.
Charles being with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the
room, spat on the firedogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and
municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with
a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover she no
longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she
set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which
others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all of which
made her husband open his eyes widely.
Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue from it? Yet
she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen
duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she
execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls
to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent
pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not know, but that these
must surely yield.
She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart.
Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried
only seemed to irritate her the more.
On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this
over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which
she remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was
pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms.
As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her
illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea,
began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere.
From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and
completely lost her appetite.
It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and
"when he was beginning to get on there." Yet if it must be! He took her
to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of
air was needed.
After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that
in the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a considerable market town
called Yonville-l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a
week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the
number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what
his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being
satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's
health did not improve.
One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer,
something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet.
The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin
ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared
up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the
cinders, slowly devoured. She watched it burn.
The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold
lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black
butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney.
When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant.
Part II
| 5,844 | Chapter 9 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-9 | Emma buried herself in her fantasies and dreamed of living in Paris, among the nobility. She visualized life in the capital as a constant round of balls, parties, amours, and other exciting things. She read novels and travel books voraciously and studied maps of the city. Much of her time was spent planning imaginary trips, adventures, secret meetings, and visits to the theater or opera. The reality of life at Tostes became unbearable to her, and she was even more critical of Bovary. At first Emma attempted to add little touches of elegance to her humdrum life, such as fancy lampshades and silver, but this soon became an unsatisfactory solution to her craving, even though it pleased Charles. Emma's despair became more intense when she finally was forced to realize that there would be no further invitations to the chateau, and in her depression she gave up her music, sketching, and other pursuits. She was often sad and lonely, and during the long winter her plight became worse. She seemed to cultivate her unhappiness and self-pity by concentrating on her unattainable aspirations, and by finding so little with which to occupy herself. Most of her time was now spent staring down from her window at the village street. She was sullen and rarely spoke to Charles. As her condition became even worse, Emma's moods began to fluctuate between extreme forms of behavior. Sometimes she was very active, sometimes lethargic and slovenly, sometimes nervous and stingy, sometimes capricious and temperamental, but always she was unpredictable and difficult to get along with. Soon she became physically ill. None of Charles' worried efforts to cure her were successful, and he took her to Rouen, to see the medical professor under whom he had studied. This learned doctor recommended a change of scene for the sake of Emma's health, since it was evidently a nervous disorder and she complained so much of disliking Tostes. Despite the fact that he had built a flourishing practice in the village, Charles was willing to sacrifice all for Emma's welfare. After making some inquiries, he decided to move to the town of Yonville, which was located in a nice area and where a doctor was needed. While Emma was helping with the packing, she pricked her hand on her old bridal bouquet, which was now dried up, frayed and yellow with dust. She threw it into the fire and watched it burn. By the time they moved to the new town, Emma was pregnant. | Perhaps no chapter in the novel presents Flaubert's essential theme and meaning as well as does this concluding chapter of Part One. Flaubert vividly depicts the exhausting and enervating results of a woman who expends all her energy in dreams and futile longings. The chapter opens with Emma's recalling the events of the ball, reliving certain episodes and then progressing to envisioning new incidents which might have happened. She wastes, then, her energies in imagining that the cigar case belonged to the Viscount, that he is now in Paris and is pursuing a life of intrigue and excitement. She fritters away her time and energy by tracing walks through Paris on a map she bought, she imagines shopping in Paris, she subscribes to Paris magazines and she dreams of the Viscount. But Flaubert is able to make us all see that Emma's frustrated longing for a different type of life is a quality that we all possess. Thus he universalizes Emma's longings so as to make an indirect comment concerning this type of wasted and futile activity. Emma constantly contrasts her real environment and surroundings with those she conjectures in her dreams. The real seems completely intolerable: "The nearer home things came, the more she shrank from all thought of them." In her dreams, new and exciting things happen every day, but in her real life in Tostes, the same things happen over and over again, so that "the whole of her immediate environment -- dull countryside, imbecile petty bourgeois, life in its ordinariness -- seemed a freak, a particular piece of bad luck that had seized on her." Therefore, she tries to introduce some elegance into her life; she hires a fourteen-year-old girl and tries to teach her how to become a "lady's maid." Emma's frustration and longings cause her to give up her piano, her needlework, drawing, care for the house and all other useful activity. Instead, she fritters away her time in daydreaming. Rather than making herself useful in some way, she drains herself of all her energy by these longings for another life. In waiting for something to happen, she becomes a pathetic case of a woman who exhausts herself in these futile longings until she is physically sick. In other words, she indulges in her own misery until her self-indulgences cause her sickness. She has had a fleeting glimpse at emotions that transcend the dull routine life at Tostes, and her intense longings for these more sublime emotions cause her sickness. The pathos of Emma's life is that she does possess enough sensitivity to be aware of feelings and emotions greater than those of Charles, but is unable to find a suitable outlet for these emotions. Emma's plight is symbolically depicted in the discovery and burning of her bridal bouquet. What was once to be the symbol of a new and exciting life filled with new emotions now is seen as a faded, frayed, dusty object on which she pricks her finger. Thus, the burning of the bridal bouquet signifies the end of her marriage and prepares us for her promiscuity later on. It is not just the end of a marriage, but also the end of her life at Tostes, because now that they are moving, Emma can perhaps be reawakened to a different life. | 564 | 552 |
2,413 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_1_to_2.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_8_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 1-2 | chapters 1-2 | null | {"name": "Chapters 1-2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-12", "summary": "Yonville was a market town located in the center of a farming district, not far from Rouen. The main features of the surrounding region and of the town itself are described in some detail. Various inhabitants of Yonville, including Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper, Hivert and Artemise, her servants, Binet, the tax collector, and Homais, the apothecary, make their first appearances in this chapter. Homais, with whom Bovary had corresponded before deciding to move to Yonville, was an outspoken and pretentious fellow of some education and status. He was always eager to impress people with his knowledge and sophistication, although in fact he did not possess much of either. The Bovarys and Felicite, their new maid, arrived in Yonville after a very tiring trip and an accident in which Emma lost her pet greyhound. She was in her usual irritable mood. Bovary and his wife dined at the inn. They were joined at the table by Homais and his boarder, Leon, a shy young man who was the town lawyer's clerk. During the meal Homais devoted most of his attention to Bovary, seeking to awe him by his extensive acquaintance with science and local affairs. Meanwhile, Emma and Leon fell into conversation. He shared many of her romanticized notions and was also an avid reader of sentimental novels. An immediate rapport sprang up between them. Their talk consisted of platitudes and conventionalities, but they each interpreted them as sensitive and profound observations. Later on, the Bovarys took possession of their new house. Emma recalled the other places in which she had lived and been unhappy. She hoped that the future would bring an improvement in her life.", "analysis": "Flaubert's masterful description and rendition of the town is a masterpiece of realistic writing. It captures all of the mediocrity of a small town. And what Flaubert never says directly, but depicts through his descriptions is that this town is just about the same as was Tostes. Yonville is just as monotonous, routine, and boring as was Tostes. Here, nothing has changed in years and nothing will change. So suddenly, we realize that this town will depress Emma as much as did Tostes. We meet the chemist Homais for the first time. He will develop into a stereotype. It will suffice here to begin to note certain characteristics which make up the stereotype. 1) He is the man who professes to keep up with the times. 2) He feels it is his duty to ridicule the church, therefore aligning himself with the advanced thinkers of the world. 3) He has accumulated many facts which he enjoys reciting, but the reader should note that his facts are of a trivial nature. Emma's first meeting with Leon is an exciting event for her. For the first time in her life, she has met a person who shares the same interest in literature, music, and related subjects. She immediately feels that they are kindred spirits and an immediate rapport sprang up between them. But the reader should note that their talk consisted of platitudes and conventionalities, but they each interpreted them as sensitive and profound observations."} |
Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not
even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen,
between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley
watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after
turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout
that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.
We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of
the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it
makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies--all on
the left is pasture land, all of the right arable. The meadow stretches
under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of
the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising,
broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. The
water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the colour of the
roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle
with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver.
Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of
Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top
to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain tracks, and these
brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the grey colour of
the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in
the neighboring country.
Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France,
a bastard land whose language is without accent and its landscape is
without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel
cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is
costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full
of sand and flints.
Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but
about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to
that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their
way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of
its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping
up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and
the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread
riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along the banks like a
cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side.
At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with
young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the
place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards
full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries
scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to
the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach
down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses
have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the
plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree
sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small
swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread
steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower,
the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of
ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a
blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts
outside that partly block the way. Then across an open space appears a
white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger
on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps;
scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the
finest in the place.
*The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of
notaries.
The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther
down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds
it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of graves that the old
stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the
grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was
rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof
is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows
in its blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a
loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their
wooden shoes.
The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon
the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with
a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr.
So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the
confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in
a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and
with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a
copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior,"
overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the
perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted.
The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts,
occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town
hall, constructed "from the designs of a Paris architect," is a sort of
Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On
the ground-floor are three Ionic columns and on the first floor a
semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a
Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other
the scales of Justice.
But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the
chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand
lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front
throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across
them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist
leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with
inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy,
Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine,
Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths,
hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the
breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then at
the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the
word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about
half-way up once more repeats "Homais" in gold letters on a black
ground.
Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only
one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops
short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand and
the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached.
At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall
was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all
the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore,
continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who is at once
gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the
parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to
plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows
smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to
rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.
"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curie at last said to him one
day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time;
but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and
even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally.
Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed
at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the
church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from
the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like lumps of white amadou,
rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of
the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its
poodle mane.
On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow
Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated
great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The
meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee
made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the
doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with
bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for
brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the
long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of
plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was
being chopped.
From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the
servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.
A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and
wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the
chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he
appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head
in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.
"Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water
bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to
offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers
are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has
been left before the front door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when
it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur
Homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk
eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she went on,
looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand.
"That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais. "You would
buy another."
"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow.
"Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again
you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want
narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now; everything is
changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!"
The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on--
"You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one
were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or
the sufferers from the Lyons floods--"
"It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the
landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as
long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've feathered
our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'Cafe Francais' closed
with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!" she went
on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding
the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six
visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!"
"Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?"
"Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes
six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for
punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He'd
rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so
particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes
at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he
eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!"
"Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and
an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector."
Six o'clock struck. Binet came in.
He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin
body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of
his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead,
flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth
waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round,
well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking
out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair
whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a
garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose
hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a
fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin
rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist
and the egotism of a bourgeois.
He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out
first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet
remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and
took off his cap in his usual way.
"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said
the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady.
"He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the
cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes in the
evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a
dab fish and never said a word."
"Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that
makes the society-man."
"Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady.
"Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he, parts! In his own line it is
possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on--
"Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a
doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become
whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in
history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something.
Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the
bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had
put it behind my ear!"
Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle"
were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into
the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his
face was rubicund and his form athletic.
"What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?" asked the landlady, as she
reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed
with their candles in a row. "Will you take something? A thimbleful of
Cassis*? A glass of wine?"
*Black currant liqueur.
The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that
he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after
asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the
evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.
When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the
square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very unbecoming. This
refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy;
all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days
of the tithe.
The landlady took up the defence of her curie.
"Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year
he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six
trusses at once, he is so strong."
"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to
fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have
the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a
good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals."
"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion."
The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have
more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling.
I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a
Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below
to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't
need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my
pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one
can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the
eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of
Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith
of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't
admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a
cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies
uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd
in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws,
which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in
turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them."
He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over
the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town
council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a
distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled
with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground,
and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door.
It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt,
prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders.
The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the
coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the
old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed
away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came
down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.
Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all
spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert
did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place
in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for
the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his
mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and
all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels,
which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of
his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.
An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across
the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had
even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight
of her; but it had been necessary to go on.
Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of this misfortune.
Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with
her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs
recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said had
been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another
had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four
rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve
years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street
as he was going to dine in town.
Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and
they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly
since night set in.
Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his
respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render
them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had
ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.
When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney.
With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and
having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black
boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the
whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the
fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now
and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind
through the half-open door.
On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her
silently.
As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the
notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who
was the second habitue of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his
dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom
he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early,
he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure
from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with
delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine
in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour
where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the
table laid for four.
Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza;
then, turning to his neighbour--
"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in
our 'Hirondelle.'"
"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like
change of place."
"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same
places."
"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the
saddle"--
"But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it
seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added.
"Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is not very
hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us
the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay
pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases
of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a
few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a
serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of
scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our
peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur
Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your
science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse
to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the
doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad,
and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I
have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade
at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or
otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a
matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of
Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on
the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous
vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle
in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say,
nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and
which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together
all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say,
and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when
there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender
insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered
on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to
say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled
themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like
breezes from Russia."
"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?" continued
Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man.
"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on
the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I
go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset."
"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but
especially by the side of the sea."
"Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon.
"And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the
mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of
which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?"
"It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. "A cousin
of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could
not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the
waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of
incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices,
and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such
spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I
no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire
his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some
imposing site."
"You play?" she asked.
"No, but I am very fond of music," he replied.
"Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted Homais,
bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the
other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I
heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor."
Leon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's where he had a small room on the
second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his
landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to
him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He
was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary
was not known exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a
good deal of show.
Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?"
"Oh, German music; that which makes you dream."
"Have you been to the opera?"
"Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish
reading for the bar."
"As I had the honour of putting it to your husband," said the chemist,
"with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find
yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the
most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a
doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen.
Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a
laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He
was a gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden,
by the side of the water, he had an arbour built just for the purpose of
drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be
able--"
"My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has
been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room
reading."
"Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by
one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against
the window and the lamp is burning?"
"What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon
him.
"One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we
traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with
the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the
adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were
yourself palpitating beneath their costumes."
"That is true! That is true?" she said.
"Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague
idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from
afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?"
"I have experienced it," she replied.
"That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more
tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears."
"Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on the
contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one.
I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are
in nature."
"In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart,
miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all
the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble
characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself,
living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville
affords so few resources."
"Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always subscribed to a
lending library."
"If madame will do me the honour of making use of it", said the chemist,
who had just caught the last words, "I have at her disposal a library
composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter
Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons'; and in addition I receive various
periodicals, among them the 'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage
to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel,
Yonville, and vicinity."
For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant
Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags,
brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly
left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against
the wall with its hooks.
Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the
bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small
blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar,
and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently
sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while
Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague
conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to
the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of
novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where
she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked
of everything till to the end of dinner.
When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room in the
new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was
asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was
waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw
stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had
taken in his other hand the cure's umbrella, they started.
The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the
earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was
only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost
immediately, and the company dispersed.
As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster
fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the
wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish
light passed through the curtainless windows.
She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields,
half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along
the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were
scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses
on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men who had brought the
furniture had left everything about carelessly.
This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place.
The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her
arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth.
And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in
her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in
the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life
lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be
better.
| 8,536 | Chapters 1-2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-12 | Yonville was a market town located in the center of a farming district, not far from Rouen. The main features of the surrounding region and of the town itself are described in some detail. Various inhabitants of Yonville, including Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper, Hivert and Artemise, her servants, Binet, the tax collector, and Homais, the apothecary, make their first appearances in this chapter. Homais, with whom Bovary had corresponded before deciding to move to Yonville, was an outspoken and pretentious fellow of some education and status. He was always eager to impress people with his knowledge and sophistication, although in fact he did not possess much of either. The Bovarys and Felicite, their new maid, arrived in Yonville after a very tiring trip and an accident in which Emma lost her pet greyhound. She was in her usual irritable mood. Bovary and his wife dined at the inn. They were joined at the table by Homais and his boarder, Leon, a shy young man who was the town lawyer's clerk. During the meal Homais devoted most of his attention to Bovary, seeking to awe him by his extensive acquaintance with science and local affairs. Meanwhile, Emma and Leon fell into conversation. He shared many of her romanticized notions and was also an avid reader of sentimental novels. An immediate rapport sprang up between them. Their talk consisted of platitudes and conventionalities, but they each interpreted them as sensitive and profound observations. Later on, the Bovarys took possession of their new house. Emma recalled the other places in which she had lived and been unhappy. She hoped that the future would bring an improvement in her life. | Flaubert's masterful description and rendition of the town is a masterpiece of realistic writing. It captures all of the mediocrity of a small town. And what Flaubert never says directly, but depicts through his descriptions is that this town is just about the same as was Tostes. Yonville is just as monotonous, routine, and boring as was Tostes. Here, nothing has changed in years and nothing will change. So suddenly, we realize that this town will depress Emma as much as did Tostes. We meet the chemist Homais for the first time. He will develop into a stereotype. It will suffice here to begin to note certain characteristics which make up the stereotype. 1) He is the man who professes to keep up with the times. 2) He feels it is his duty to ridicule the church, therefore aligning himself with the advanced thinkers of the world. 3) He has accumulated many facts which he enjoys reciting, but the reader should note that his facts are of a trivial nature. Emma's first meeting with Leon is an exciting event for her. For the first time in her life, she has met a person who shares the same interest in literature, music, and related subjects. She immediately feels that they are kindred spirits and an immediate rapport sprang up between them. But the reader should note that their talk consisted of platitudes and conventionalities, but they each interpreted them as sensitive and profound observations. | 401 | 243 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/12.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_9_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 3 | chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-3", "summary": "All the next day Leon thought about Emma, for their meeting had been a very special event to him. This was the first time that the bashful youth had ever spoken to a lady at such length, and he was surprised at his own eloquence. In the days that followed, Homais was of great assistance to Bovary in establishing himself, although it must be said that the druggist's motives were partly selfish. Charles was a bit gloomy, because his medical practice was slow in starting and he had financial worries. The cost of moving had been high, he had lost money on the sale of the house at Tostes, and there was now a child on the way. However, the thought of having a \"baby Emma\" to love also, and to watch grow, was a source of great joy to him. Emma had originally been surprised by her pregnancy but was now accustomed to the idea. She was eager to have the child, although all the preparations made her impatient since they could not afford the kind of layette she insisted was necessary. She hoped the baby would be a boy, for she felt that only a man could have the freedom and strength to overcome the constraints that had always so frustrated her. The child was born, and after much discussion the name of \"Berthe\" was selected. There was a spirited christening party, and Bovary's parents visited Yonville for a month. One day Emma decided to visit the baby at the home of its wet nurse. She was still weak after her confinement and was beginning to feel faint, when she encountered Leon. She asked him to accompany her. Leon consented and by nightfall, rumors had spread through the town that Madame Bovary was compromising herself. After seeing the child, Madame Bovary was pestered with lots of trivial requests from the nurse. She quickly consented to give the woman more supplies and even some brandy for the woman's husband. Then she and Leon took a long stroll along the river. Even though they didn't say very much to each other, both were aware of a strange bliss and a deeper communication. After Leon left her, he thought how radiantly she stood out, especially amid all the banalities of Yonville.", "analysis": "When Emma first learned she was pregnant, she thought that this could be a new experience for her, could fill her empty life with excitement, especially if it were a boy. But when the girl was born, she soon lost interest in it. Again this shows Emma's erratic nature, her inability to maintain an interest in any aspect of life. Her reaction differs significantly with Charles' and the difference emphasizes the growing breach between them. Charles thinks that with the birth of the child, he will have been through the entire range of human experience. Emma's indiscretion in asking Leon to accompany her, foreshadows her later promiscuities. We have seen that Emma possesses an impetuous nature, and this quality will also contribute to her series of indiscretions. Emma's encounter with the nurse foreshadows her handlings with the various tradesmen which will later take her so deeply in debt. It seems that Emma would rather give in than discuss the needs of the nurse. Later, her financial troubles are a result of her impetuousness and her failure to consider her needs."} |
The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She
had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and
reclosed the window.
Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going
to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The
dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he
had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." How
then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of
things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually
shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and
dissimulation.
At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to the arguments
of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable
thing for a young man. Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in
water-colours, could read the key of G, and readily talked literature
after dinner when he did not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him
for his education; Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for
he often took the little Homais into the garden--little brats who were
always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their
mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin, the
chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been
taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time
as a servant.
The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary
information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own cider
merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly
placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a
supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the
sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked
after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year,
according to the taste of the customers.
The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the
chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it
all.
He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article I, which
forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise medicine; so that,
after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen
to see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the magistrate
receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was
in the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard
the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise
great locks that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled as if he were
about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons,
his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was
obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover
his spirits.
Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and
he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his
back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous,
everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his
attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later
on, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him "the
paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to
have a chat with the Doctor.
Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours
without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep, or watched
his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a
workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been
left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had
spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the
moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped
away in two years.
Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from
Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster cure, who falling out
of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand
fragments on the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came
to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her
confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of
the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment
of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and
her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one
another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her
armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her,
passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to
make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of
caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having
begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human
life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity.
Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be
delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not
being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a
swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit
of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the
whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing
anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that
stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the
very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated.
As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to
think of him more consecutively.
She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him
George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected
revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he
may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste
of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once
inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and
legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a
string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws
her, some conventionality that restrains.
She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was
rising.
"It is a girl!" said Charles.
She turned her head away and fainted.
Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d'Or, almost
immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as man of
discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the
half-opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it well made.
Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a
name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian
endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde
pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better.
Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma opposed
this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted
outsiders.
"Monsieur Leon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking about it
the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very much in
fashion just now."
But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a
sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that
recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it
was on this system that he had baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon
represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to
romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the
French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere
with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of
sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination
and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the
ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded
all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic
over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported,
but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for
their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in
which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with
both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour.
At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyessard she had heard
the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was
chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested
to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment,
to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of
marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that
he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there
was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much excitement.
Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-time began singing "Le Dieu des bonnes
gens." Monsieur Leon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary, senior, who
was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary,
senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing
it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery
of the first of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old
Bovary replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux"; the cure
wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they
succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on
with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.
Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the
natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore
in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the
habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant
to the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his
son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his
daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne.
The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the
world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier
times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had
partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs,
or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look
out for yourself."
Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and
fearing that her husband might in the long-run have an immoral influence
upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure.
Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was
not the man to respect anything.
One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little
girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and, without
looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were
yet passed, she set out for the Rollets' house, situated at the extreme
end of the village, between the highroad and the fields.
It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the slate
roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to
strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy wind was blowing;
Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she
was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to
rest.
At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighbouring door with a
bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the
shade in front of the Lheureux's shop under the projecting grey awning.
Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was
beginning to grow tired.
"If--" said Leon, not daring to go on.
"Have you any business to attend to?" she asked.
And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same
evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's
wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was
compromising herself."
To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving
the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little
houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were
in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the
sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in
the hedges one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or
tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two,
side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining
his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges
fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.
They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it.
Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath the
dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright
against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of
lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here
and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags,
knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse
linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared
with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was
pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula,
the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their
business, left in the country.
"Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep."
The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its
farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a
kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which
was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door,
shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand,
near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu
Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and
bits of amadou.
Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame" blowing her
trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus
and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.
Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the
wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked
herself to and fro.
Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this
beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty.
Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been
an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who
had just been sick over her collar.
The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show.
"She gives me other doses," she said: "I am always a-washing of her. If
you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have
a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't
trouble you then."
"Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet," and
she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.
The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the
time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.
"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you
might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a
month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk."
After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had gone a
little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned
round. It was the nurse.
"What is it?"
Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began
talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year
that the captain--
"Oh, be quick!" said Emma.
"Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "I'm afraid
he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men--"
"But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you some. You
bother me!"
"Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he
has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him."
"Do make haste, Mere Rollet!"
"Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking
too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes
begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub your little
one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue."
Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She walked
fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of
her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat
had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and
carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one
wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to
trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing
desk.
They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the
bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls
whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift,
and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the
current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like
streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a
water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced
with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed
each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in
the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the
dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard
nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the
path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's dress rustling round
her.
The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were
hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up
between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary,
as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow
dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its
fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.
They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected
shortly at the Rouen theatre.
"Are you going?" she asked.
"If I can," he answered.
Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full
of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial
phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the
whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices.
Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of
speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like
tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn
softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication
without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.
In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to
step on large green stones put here and there in the mud.
She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and
tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent
forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling
into the puddles of water.
When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the
little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.
Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the
briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went
out.
He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of
the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and watched
the sky through his fingers.
"How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!"
He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais
for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely
absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red
whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements,
although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had
impressed the clerk.
As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle
as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins,
weeping for other's woes, letting everything go in her household, and
detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so
common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although
she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each
other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a
woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than
the gown.
And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three
publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his
two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands
and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable
companions.
But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's stood
out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to
see a vague abyss.
In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the
druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him
again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being
indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.
| 5,723 | Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-3 | All the next day Leon thought about Emma, for their meeting had been a very special event to him. This was the first time that the bashful youth had ever spoken to a lady at such length, and he was surprised at his own eloquence. In the days that followed, Homais was of great assistance to Bovary in establishing himself, although it must be said that the druggist's motives were partly selfish. Charles was a bit gloomy, because his medical practice was slow in starting and he had financial worries. The cost of moving had been high, he had lost money on the sale of the house at Tostes, and there was now a child on the way. However, the thought of having a "baby Emma" to love also, and to watch grow, was a source of great joy to him. Emma had originally been surprised by her pregnancy but was now accustomed to the idea. She was eager to have the child, although all the preparations made her impatient since they could not afford the kind of layette she insisted was necessary. She hoped the baby would be a boy, for she felt that only a man could have the freedom and strength to overcome the constraints that had always so frustrated her. The child was born, and after much discussion the name of "Berthe" was selected. There was a spirited christening party, and Bovary's parents visited Yonville for a month. One day Emma decided to visit the baby at the home of its wet nurse. She was still weak after her confinement and was beginning to feel faint, when she encountered Leon. She asked him to accompany her. Leon consented and by nightfall, rumors had spread through the town that Madame Bovary was compromising herself. After seeing the child, Madame Bovary was pestered with lots of trivial requests from the nurse. She quickly consented to give the woman more supplies and even some brandy for the woman's husband. Then she and Leon took a long stroll along the river. Even though they didn't say very much to each other, both were aware of a strange bliss and a deeper communication. After Leon left her, he thought how radiantly she stood out, especially amid all the banalities of Yonville. | When Emma first learned she was pregnant, she thought that this could be a new experience for her, could fill her empty life with excitement, especially if it were a boy. But when the girl was born, she soon lost interest in it. Again this shows Emma's erratic nature, her inability to maintain an interest in any aspect of life. Her reaction differs significantly with Charles' and the difference emphasizes the growing breach between them. Charles thinks that with the birth of the child, he will have been through the entire range of human experience. Emma's indiscretion in asking Leon to accompany her, foreshadows her later promiscuities. We have seen that Emma possesses an impetuous nature, and this quality will also contribute to her series of indiscretions. Emma's encounter with the nurse foreshadows her handlings with the various tradesmen which will later take her so deeply in debt. It seems that Emma would rather give in than discuss the needs of the nurse. Later, her financial troubles are a result of her impetuousness and her failure to consider her needs. | 509 | 180 |
2,413 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_4_to_5.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_10_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 4-5 | chapters 4-5 | null | {"name": "Chapters 4-5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-45", "summary": "During the winter Emma's favorite pursuit was to sit at the window and watch the street. She often saw Leon as he passed, and she had a new and unknown feeling at those moments. Homais lived across the street and was a frequent caller, especially at mealtimes. He enjoyed gossiping about Bovary's patients and discussing science, philosophy, and politics with the doctor. It was the druggist who always did most of the talking. On Sundays the Bovarys usually visited the Homais family. Leon was always there, and a bond rapidly developed between him and Emma. They used to sit together and discuss fashions or books while the others played cards or dozed. Leon began to grow confused and was tormented by these meetings. He was uncertain whether Emma responded to his feelings for her. He was afraid to displease her by remaining silent about his love, but he did not have the courage to declare himself. One Sunday in February, Homais and his children, the Bovarys, and Leon went on an outdoor excursion. Emma watched the men with interest and decided that she was disgusted by Charles' commonplace appearance and personality. That night she suddenly realized that Leon loved her. This novel idea pleased her, and she began to complain to herself about the cruel fate which had separated the two of them. Later that week Leon paid her a visit, on some weak pretext. They were both shy and their conversation was stilted, for they feared to express their real feelings to each other. As time passed Emma began to lose weight through worry. She found a delicious pleasure in contemplating her affection for Leon and contrasting it with her sensible, though unsatisfying role of the virtuous wife. She felt that she was a martyr to marital fidelity. Emma became irritable again and was exasperated by Bovary's placid ignorance of her torments. She blamed him for all her troubles and in addition was overly tolerant in judging herself and her behavior. She dreamed of running away with Leon but then doubted his love for her. She wished that Bovary were a cruel husband so that she would have an excuse to be unfaithful. Her nervousness and tension often caused her to engage in fits of weeping. One day while she was dreaming of Leon, Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, paid her a visit in order to show her some of his wares, especially scarves and little ornaments. He then slyly let her know that he was also a moneylender in case she ever needed to borrow a little money. As Emma came to the realization of her love for Leon, she tried to compensate for her frustrated love by being the ideal wife, mother and housekeeper. But while she was being the model wife, \"she was all desire and rage and hatred.\"", "analysis": "In these chapters, Flaubert is developing the love between Emma and Leon, a love that will not be consummated until the third part of the novel. Emma's love causes her to despise her husband, then she turns into the model wife trying to compensate for her lack of love, and finally turns to moods of despair. This again emphasizes Emma's lack of stability and her constant fluctuation between opposite extremes. These moods foreshadow her later sickness and ultimately her suicide. Monsieur Lheureux is here introduced. He is the moneylender who will unscrupulously play on Emma's weaknesses and will be the cause of her suicide. His portrayal here already suggests his obsequious personality."} |
When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the
sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was
on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the
looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she could see
the villagers pass along the pavement.
Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Emma could hear
him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man
glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without
turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her
left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she
often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past.
She would get up and order the table to be laid.
Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on
tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase,
"Good evening, everybody." Then, when he had taken his seat at the table
between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter
consulted his as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked
of "what was in the paper."
Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end
to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories
of individual catastrophes that had occurred in France or abroad. But
the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some
remarks on the dishes before him.
Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the
tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the
manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning.
He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner.
Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars,
excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs;
he knew also all the latest inventions in economic stoves, together with
the art of preserving cheese and of curing sick wines.
At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop.
Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Felicite was
there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's
house.
"The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the devil
take me if I don't believe he's in love with your servant!"
But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his
constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could
not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called
him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the arm-chairs,
and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too
large.
Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his
scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated
various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be
there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took
her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that
she wore over her boots when there was snow.
First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais
played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her advice.
Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of
her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made
to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up. From her
turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually
paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then her dress fell
on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the
ground. When Leon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it,
he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one.
When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played
dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table,
turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration". She had brought her ladies'
journal with her. Leon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings
together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages. She
often begged him to read her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a
languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love
passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais
was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six.
Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in
front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the
cinders; the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading.
Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the
gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances
with their balancing-poles. Leon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his
sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation
seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard.
Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce
of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did
not trouble himself about it.
On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked
with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of
the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him
at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses
fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on
his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.
She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the
pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other
tending their flowers at their windows.
Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for
on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was
bright, one could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile of
Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be
heard at the Lion d'Or.
One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug in velvet and
wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur
Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief;
every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the
clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be his
lover.
He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and
of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him--
"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?"
He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to
her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the
shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire.
Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put
it off to times that he again deferred.
Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution
soon deserted him in Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in,
invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient
in the neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went
out. Her husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Emma,
she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come
suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies,
which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf,
and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on
the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she
would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a
rent in the wall of it.
It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling.
They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Leon,
gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and a
half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give
them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas
on his shoulder.
Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great
piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and
stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a
quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The
building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the
roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed
with corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind.
Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance
of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the
thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick
such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use.
Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and
she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale
splendour. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over
his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look
of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating
to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the
bearer.
While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of
depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale
seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and
his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the
lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large
blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more
beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.
"Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist.
And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of
lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was
being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes
with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his.
"Ah!" she said to herself, "he carried a knife in his pocket like a
peasant."
The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.
In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour's, and when
Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began
with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that
lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from
her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had
down there, Leon standing up with one hand behind his cane, and with
the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She
thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she
recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the
sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her
lips as if for a kiss--
"Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked herself; "but
with whom? With me?"
All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of
the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back,
stretching out her arms.
Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had not willed it!
And why not? What prevented it?"
When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened,
and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then
asked carelessly what had happened that evening.
"Monsieur Leon," he said, "went to his room early."
She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a
new delight.
The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lherueux, the
draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but
bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of
the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a
decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the
keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been
formerly; a pedlar said some, a banker at Routot according to others.
What was certain was that he made complex calculations in his head that
would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always
held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who
invites.
After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down
a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with
many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without
gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract
a "fashionable lady"; he emphasized the words; yet she had only to
command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might
wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for
he went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the
best houses. You could speak of him at the "Trois Freres," at the "Barbe
d'Or," or at the "Grand Sauvage"; all these gentlemen knew him as
well as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show
madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to
the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered
collars from the box.
Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything," she said.
Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves,
several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and
finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in open work by convicts.
Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure
bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma's look, who was walking up
and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove
some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread
out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the
green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little
stars.
"How much are they?"
"A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no hurry;
whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews."
She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur
Lheureux's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly--
"Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got
on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!"
Emma smiled.
"I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, "that
it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some,
if need be."
She made a gesture of surprise.
"Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to go far to
find you some, rely on that."
And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the "Cafe
Francais," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.
"What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his
whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than
a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! Those sort of people,
madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. Still
it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off."
And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's
patients.
"It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the floor,
"that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the thing. One of these
days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my
back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble
servant." And he closed the door gently.
Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she
was a long time over it; everything was well with her.
"How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.
She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Leon. She got up and took
from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be hemmed. When
he came in she seemed very busy.
The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes,
whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near
the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She
stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with
her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence,
as he would have been by her speech.
"Poor fellow!" she thought.
"How have I displeased her?" he asked himself.
At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these days, to
go to Rouen on some office business.
"Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?"
"No," she replied.
"Why?"
"Because--"
And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread.
This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers.
A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it.
"Then you are giving it up?" he went on.
"What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to
look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many
duties that must be considered first?"
She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected anxiety.
Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!"
The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his behalf
astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on his praises,
which he said everyone was singing, especially the chemist.
"Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma.
"Certainly," replied the clerk.
And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance
generally made them laugh.
"What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife does not
trouble about her appearance."
Then she relapsed into silence.
It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners,
everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church
regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity.
She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite brought her
in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared
she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion,
and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outburst which would have
reminded anyone but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Notre Dame de
Paris."
When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire.
His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was
quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the night-caps arranged in piles
of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn
in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not
understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when
Leon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,
his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his eyes
moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this
woman with the slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his
forehead: "What madness!" he said to himself. "And how to reach her!"
And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all
hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on
an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly
attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she
rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent
manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure
feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because
they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion
rejoices.
Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black
hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always
silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely
touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine
destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved,
that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder
in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the
marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist
said--
"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a
sub-prefecture."
The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the
poor her charity.
But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with
the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose torment those chaste
lips said nothing. She was in love with Leon, and sought solitude that
she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his
form troubled the voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at
the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and
afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended
in sorrow.
Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after he had
gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his comings
and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find
an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's wife seemed happy to her
to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon
this house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip their
red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised
her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident,
that she might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess it, and
she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.
What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of
shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was
past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of being able to say to
herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking
resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she
was making.
Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy
of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of
turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself
to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by
an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had
not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow
home.
What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her
anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an
imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose
sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all
felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of
that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides.
On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that
resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented
it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair,
and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own
gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity
drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires.
She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better
right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised
sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and
she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she
was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.
Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the
temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life; but at once a
vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.
"Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become of me?
What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?"
She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with
flowing tears.
"Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in
during these crises.
"It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it would
worry him."
"Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere
Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at
Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her
standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a
winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was
a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do
anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went
off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his
rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle.
Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say."
"But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it began."
| 6,379 | Chapters 4-5 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-45 | During the winter Emma's favorite pursuit was to sit at the window and watch the street. She often saw Leon as he passed, and she had a new and unknown feeling at those moments. Homais lived across the street and was a frequent caller, especially at mealtimes. He enjoyed gossiping about Bovary's patients and discussing science, philosophy, and politics with the doctor. It was the druggist who always did most of the talking. On Sundays the Bovarys usually visited the Homais family. Leon was always there, and a bond rapidly developed between him and Emma. They used to sit together and discuss fashions or books while the others played cards or dozed. Leon began to grow confused and was tormented by these meetings. He was uncertain whether Emma responded to his feelings for her. He was afraid to displease her by remaining silent about his love, but he did not have the courage to declare himself. One Sunday in February, Homais and his children, the Bovarys, and Leon went on an outdoor excursion. Emma watched the men with interest and decided that she was disgusted by Charles' commonplace appearance and personality. That night she suddenly realized that Leon loved her. This novel idea pleased her, and she began to complain to herself about the cruel fate which had separated the two of them. Later that week Leon paid her a visit, on some weak pretext. They were both shy and their conversation was stilted, for they feared to express their real feelings to each other. As time passed Emma began to lose weight through worry. She found a delicious pleasure in contemplating her affection for Leon and contrasting it with her sensible, though unsatisfying role of the virtuous wife. She felt that she was a martyr to marital fidelity. Emma became irritable again and was exasperated by Bovary's placid ignorance of her torments. She blamed him for all her troubles and in addition was overly tolerant in judging herself and her behavior. She dreamed of running away with Leon but then doubted his love for her. She wished that Bovary were a cruel husband so that she would have an excuse to be unfaithful. Her nervousness and tension often caused her to engage in fits of weeping. One day while she was dreaming of Leon, Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, paid her a visit in order to show her some of his wares, especially scarves and little ornaments. He then slyly let her know that he was also a moneylender in case she ever needed to borrow a little money. As Emma came to the realization of her love for Leon, she tried to compensate for her frustrated love by being the ideal wife, mother and housekeeper. But while she was being the model wife, "she was all desire and rage and hatred." | In these chapters, Flaubert is developing the love between Emma and Leon, a love that will not be consummated until the third part of the novel. Emma's love causes her to despise her husband, then she turns into the model wife trying to compensate for her lack of love, and finally turns to moods of despair. This again emphasizes Emma's lack of stability and her constant fluctuation between opposite extremes. These moods foreshadow her later sickness and ultimately her suicide. Monsieur Lheureux is here introduced. He is the moneylender who will unscrupulously play on Emma's weaknesses and will be the cause of her suicide. His portrayal here already suggests his obsequious personality. | 635 | 112 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/15.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_11_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 6 | chapter 6 | null | {"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-6", "summary": "One evening the tolling of church bells made Emma recall her childhood and school days. She mused about the solace she had often found then through religious devotions and set out for the church, hoping that there she might resolve her present problems and gain some inner peace. She met the cure, Abbe Bournisien, near the entrance, where he was attempting to control the mischievous children of his catechism class. Emma attempted to explain to the priest her need for spiritual help, but the priest's attention focused more on the young boys who were misbehaving. He was also more interested in telling Emma about his problems within the parish than he was in listening to her. After several attempts on Emma's part to explain her dilemma, she finally sighed in despair: \"O God, O God!\" The Abbe immediately thinks she has some physical ailment and advises her to go home immediately and have a cup of tea. Then \"it suddenly struck him: 'there was something you were asking me. What was it, now? I can't recall.'\" Emma responds that it was nothing and then leaves as the Abbe goes in to teach catechism to the group of boys. She continued to be very jumpy and tense. That same evening, in a fit of nervous annoyance, she pushed the baby away from her. Berthe fell and cut herself. Emma screamed for help and claimed that the child had been hurt accidentally while playing. After some confused excitement, Bovary and Homais managed to calm her and take care of Berthe. Leon found that his position in Yonville remained perplexing and intolerable. He adored Emma, but saw no future in his love for a married woman. He decided to go to Paris to study law, something he had long spoken of doing. The idea of being alone in the capital frightened him, but he saw no other alternative. After a while, though, he began to imagine with great joy the Bohemian adventures he would have there. Leon made his arrangements and the day finally came for his departure. When he bid farewell to Emma, they were both restrained and shy, although their eyes and gestures communicated a wealth of emotional meanings. After he had gone, Homais and Bovary discussed the dangers and temptations of life in the city. Emma listened silently.", "analysis": "When Emma thinks of the consolation she had at the convent, she fails to remember that she was also terribly dissatisfied there. Emma is actually looking for some experience that will fill her void and occupy her so that she will not think about her misery. In other words, she is using religion as a substitute for real experiences and as a way of forgetting her present misery. In this brief scene between Emma and the priest, Flaubert offers a masterful condemnation of the church in a very subtle way. The priest is so occupied with his own insignificant occupation that he does not have time to perceive Emma's distress. In fact, he thinks that she needs a cup of tea rather than spiritual guidance. His devout devotion to details renders him incapable of recognizing Emma's spiritual need and thus he fails in his greater mission as a priest. This chapter presents the departure of Leon without a physical consummation of their love. But the length of this mutual attraction and Emma's many reflections about it make her more receptive for her next encounter. In other words, she regrets her timidity in not letting Leon know of her love so that now she is emotionally prepared to respond more openly to the advances of Rodolphe. It can also be said that both Emma and Leon have progressed in their education so that when they next meet, they will not be so bashful and timid."} |
One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been
watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard
the Angelus ringing.
It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a
warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like
women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars
of the arbour and away beyond the river seen in the fields, meandering
through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between
the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler
and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches.
In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing
could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its
peaceful lamentation.
With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost
themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered
the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the
altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked
to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here
and there by the stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over
their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the
gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense.
Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the
down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she
went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that
her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it.
On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order not
to shorten his day's labour, he preferred interrupting his work,
then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own
convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads
of catechism hour.
Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the
cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their
clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the
newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but
stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom.
The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure
made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the
humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the
great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on
the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the
air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow
nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was
burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a
distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of
the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and
the corners.
"Where is the cure?" asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who was
amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it.
"He is just coming," he answered.
And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbe Bournisien appeared;
the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.
"These young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!"
Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with is
foot, "They respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught sight of Madame
Bovary, "Excuse me," he said; "I did not recognise you."
He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing
the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.
The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the
lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at the hem.
Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines
of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his
neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was
dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of
his greyish beard. He had just dined and was breathing noisily.
"How are you?" he added.
"Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill."
"Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These first warm days weaken
one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all, we are born to suffer,
as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think of it?"
"He!" she said with a gesture of contempt.
"What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he prescribe
something for you?"
"Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I need."
But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the
kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs
of cards.
"I should like to know--" she went on.
"You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "I'll warm
your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma, "He's Boudet the carpenter's
son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he
could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes
for a joke I call him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to
Maromme) and I even say 'Mon Riboudet.' Ha! Ha! 'Mont Riboudet.' The
other day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he
condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?"
She seemed not to hear him. And he went on--
"Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest
people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he added with a
thick laugh, "and I of the soul."
She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said, "you
solace all sorrows."
"Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to
Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell.
All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon me! Longuemarre and
Boudet! Bless me! Will you leave off?"
And with a bound he ran into the church.
The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over
the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were
just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly
distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of
their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their
knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them
there.
"Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton
handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are
much to be pitied."
"Others, too," she replied.
"Assuredly. Town-labourers, for example."
"It is not they--"
"Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I
assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread."
"But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she
spoke, "those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have no--"
"Fire in the winter," said the priest.
"Oh, what does that matter?"
"What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and
food--for, after all--"
"My God! my God!" she sighed.
"It is indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bovary; drink
a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water
with a little moist sugar."
"Why?" And she looked like one awaking from a dream.
"Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I thought
you felt faint." Then, bethinking himself, "But you were asking me
something? What was it? I really don't remember."
"I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma.
And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the
cassock. They looked at one another face to face without speaking.
"Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty first, you
know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The first communion will
soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after all. So after
Ascension Day I keep them recta* an extra hour every Wednesday. Poor
children! One cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord, as,
moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his Divine
Son. Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband."
*On the straight and narrow path.
And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached
the door.
Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with a
heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two
hands half-open behind him.
Then she turned on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on a pivot,
and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices
of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her.
"Are you a Christian?"
"Yes, I am a Christian."
"What is a Christian?"
"He who, being baptized-baptized-baptized--"
She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and
when she was in her room threw herself into an arm-chair.
The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations.
The furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to
lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out,
the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of
all things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was
there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted
shoes, and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her
apron-strings.
"Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her hand.
The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on
them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a
small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron.
"Leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably.
Her face frightened the child, who began to scream.
"Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow.
Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting
her cheek, which began to bleed, against it. Madame Bovary sprang to
lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her
might, and she was just going to curse herself when Charles appeared. It
was the dinner-hour; he had come home.
"Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell down
while she was playing, and has hurt herself."
Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for
some sticking plaster.
Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished
to remain alone to look after the child. Then watching her sleep, the
little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid
to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little.
Berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed.
Her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. Big tears
lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one
could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew
the skin obliquely.
"It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly this child is!"
When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from the chemist's shop,
whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the
sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle.
"I assure you it's nothing." he said, kissing her on the forehead.
"Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill."
He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had not seemed
much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to
"keep up his spirits." Then they had talked of the various dangers that
threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. Madame Homais knew
something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin
full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and
her good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives were not
sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows
and strong bars across the fireplace; the little Homais, in spite of
their spirit, could not stir without someone watching them; at the
slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until
they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded
head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais'; her
husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences
of such compression to the intellectual organs. He even went so far as
to say to her, "Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?"
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 bent 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.
Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched
the clouds. They gathered around the sunset on the side of Rouen and
then swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great
rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy,
while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust
of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered
against the green leaves.
Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in
the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed
away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia.
"Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought.
Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner.
"Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!"
"So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair; "Any news
at home?"
"Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. You know
women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be
wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more
malleable than ours."
"Poor Leon!" said Charles. "How will he live at Paris? Will he get used
to it?"
Madame Bovary sighed.
"Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "The outings at
restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly
enough, I assure you."
"I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary.
"Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although he'll have to do
like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don't know what
a life those dogs lead in the Latin quarter with actresses. Besides,
students are thought a great deal of in Paris. Provided they have a few
accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even
ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which
subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches."
"But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down there--"
"You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of the
medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket
there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. An individual
presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, and whom one
would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself;
offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more
intimate; he takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house,
introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and
three-fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you
into some pernicious step.
"That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking especially of
illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the
provinces."
Emma shuddered.
"Because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and of the
perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. And then the
water at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at restaurants, all the
spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever
people may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have always
preferred plain living; it is more healthy. So when I was studying
pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boarding house; I dined with the
professors."
And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal
likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was
wanted.
"Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! I can't go out for a
minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling and toiling.
What drudgery!" Then, when he was at the door, "By the way, do you know
the news?"
"What news?"
"That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising his eyebrows and
assuming one of his most serious expression, "that the agricultural
meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this year at
Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumour, at all events, is going the round. This
morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the utmost importance
for our district. But we'll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you;
Justin has the lantern."
| 6,302 | Chapter 6 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-6 | One evening the tolling of church bells made Emma recall her childhood and school days. She mused about the solace she had often found then through religious devotions and set out for the church, hoping that there she might resolve her present problems and gain some inner peace. She met the cure, Abbe Bournisien, near the entrance, where he was attempting to control the mischievous children of his catechism class. Emma attempted to explain to the priest her need for spiritual help, but the priest's attention focused more on the young boys who were misbehaving. He was also more interested in telling Emma about his problems within the parish than he was in listening to her. After several attempts on Emma's part to explain her dilemma, she finally sighed in despair: "O God, O God!" The Abbe immediately thinks she has some physical ailment and advises her to go home immediately and have a cup of tea. Then "it suddenly struck him: 'there was something you were asking me. What was it, now? I can't recall.'" Emma responds that it was nothing and then leaves as the Abbe goes in to teach catechism to the group of boys. She continued to be very jumpy and tense. That same evening, in a fit of nervous annoyance, she pushed the baby away from her. Berthe fell and cut herself. Emma screamed for help and claimed that the child had been hurt accidentally while playing. After some confused excitement, Bovary and Homais managed to calm her and take care of Berthe. Leon found that his position in Yonville remained perplexing and intolerable. He adored Emma, but saw no future in his love for a married woman. He decided to go to Paris to study law, something he had long spoken of doing. The idea of being alone in the capital frightened him, but he saw no other alternative. After a while, though, he began to imagine with great joy the Bohemian adventures he would have there. Leon made his arrangements and the day finally came for his departure. When he bid farewell to Emma, they were both restrained and shy, although their eyes and gestures communicated a wealth of emotional meanings. After he had gone, Homais and Bovary discussed the dangers and temptations of life in the city. Emma listened silently. | When Emma thinks of the consolation she had at the convent, she fails to remember that she was also terribly dissatisfied there. Emma is actually looking for some experience that will fill her void and occupy her so that she will not think about her misery. In other words, she is using religion as a substitute for real experiences and as a way of forgetting her present misery. In this brief scene between Emma and the priest, Flaubert offers a masterful condemnation of the church in a very subtle way. The priest is so occupied with his own insignificant occupation that he does not have time to perceive Emma's distress. In fact, he thinks that she needs a cup of tea rather than spiritual guidance. His devout devotion to details renders him incapable of recognizing Emma's spiritual need and thus he fails in his greater mission as a priest. This chapter presents the departure of Leon without a physical consummation of their love. But the length of this mutual attraction and Emma's many reflections about it make her more receptive for her next encounter. In other words, she regrets her timidity in not letting Leon know of her love so that now she is emotionally prepared to respond more openly to the advances of Rodolphe. It can also be said that both Emma and Leon have progressed in their education so that when they next meet, they will not be so bashful and timid. | 541 | 244 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/16.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_12_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 7 | chapter 7 | null | {"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-7", "summary": "After Leon had gone, Emma began a period of secret mourning. She drifted about aimlessly and was often melancholy. She saw Leon in her imagination as the hero of all her dreams and remembered their walks and conversations. She reproached herself for not having responded to his love, and he became the center of all her thoughts. In her misery, she began again the strange and unpredictable behavior that had marked her in Tostes. Her moods constantly changed, and she was often giddy and nervous. One day Rodolphe Boulanger, a handsome and wealthy landowner, brought one of his servants to be treated by Bovary. While there he saw Emma and was immediately attracted by her good looks and ladylike bearing. Boulanger was a suave bachelor, both coarse and shrewd. At once his thoughts turned to Emma's seduction, and he began to lay his plans.", "analysis": "Emma's long melancholy and regret over not having seized her opportunity with Leon actually cause her to become sick. She then goes into one of her spending sprees, justifying her spending by feeling she has sacrificed so much by being faithful to Charles. These are the same types of spending sprees which will later lead her into heavy debts. Note again Emma's erratic actions. She would take something up, leave it, go to something else only to leave it. It seems that nothing fulfills her. Flaubert's description of Emma's actions and looks implies that Emma fits ironically into the tradition of the courtly love. The \"vaporish airs,\" the fact that she was \"pale all over, white as a sheet,\" and given to spells of dizziness are all characteristics of the courtly love tradition or are signs of disappointed or unfulfilled love. Emma is, after all, essentially middle-class, but she is also more than this. In a sense, she raises herself above the town because unlike others, she is vaguely aware that there are emotions of a higher and purer nature than those with which she finds herself surrounded. This realization does raise Emma in our estimation although this is also the ultimate cause of her tragedy. Note that Rodolphe is able to see through Emma immediately. He sees her boredom, recognizes that she dislikes her husband and her present life, and realizes that she is \"gasping for love\" and is ready for a love affair. What we know is that this is true, but partly because she regrets not having an affair with Leon."} |
The next day was a dreary one for Emma. Everything seemed to her
enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the exterior of
things, and sorrow was engulfed within her soul with soft shrieks such
as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. It was that reverie which we
give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after
everything was done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every
wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings
on.
As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were running in
her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a numb despair.
Leon reappeared, taller, handsomer, more charming, more vague. Though
separated from her, he had not left her; he was there, and the walls of
the house seemed to hold his shadow.
She could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he had walked, from
those empty chairs where he had sat. The river still flowed on, and
slowly drove its ripples along the slippery banks.
They had often walked there to the murmur of the waves over the
moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had been! What happy afternoons
they had seen alone in the shade at the end of the garden! He read
aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind
of the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book and the nasturtiums
of the arbour. Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life, the only
possible hope of joy. Why had she not seized this happiness when it came
to her? Why not have kept hold of it with both hands, with both knees,
when it was about to flee from her? And she cursed herself for not
having loved Leon. She thirsted for his lips. The wish took possession
of her to run after and rejoin him, throw herself into his arms and
say to him, "It is I; I am yours." But Emma recoiled beforehand at the
difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by regret,
became only the more acute.
Henceforth the memory of Leon was the centre of her boredom; it burnt
there more brightly than the fire travellers have left on the snow of
a Russian steppe. She sprang towards him, she pressed against him, she
stirred carefully the dying embers, sought all around her anything
that could revive it; and the most distant reminiscences, like the most
immediate occasions, what she experienced as well as what she imagined,
her voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness
that crackled in the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her
lost hopes, the domestic tete-a-tete--she gathered it all up, took
everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her melancholy.
The flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had exhausted
itself, or because it had been piled up too much. Love, little by
little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this
incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and
faded by degrees. In the supineness of her conscience she even took her
repugnance towards her husband for aspirations towards her lover, the
burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness; but as the tempest still
raged, and as passion burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help
came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost in the
terrible cold that pierced her.
Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought herself now far
more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty
that it would not end.
A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow herself
certain whims. She bought a Gothic prie-dieu, and in a month spent
fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote to Rouen
for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of Lheureux's finest scarves,
and wore it knotted around her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with
closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch
in this garb.
She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair a la Chinoise, in
flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted in on one side and rolled it
under like a man's.
She wanted to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, and
a supply of white paper. She tried serious reading, history, and
philosophy. Sometimes in the night Charles woke up with a start,
thinking he was being called to a patient. "I'm coming," he stammered;
and it was the noise of a match Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But
her reading fared like her piece of embroidery, all of which, only just
begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to other
books.
She had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to commit any
folly. She maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she
could drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as Charles was stupid
enough to dare her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop.
In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called
them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the
corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of
old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all
over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils,
her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three grey hairs on
her temples, she talked much of her old age.
She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as Charles fussed
around her showing his anxiety--
"Bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?"
Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table,
sitting in an arm-chair at his bureau under the phrenological head.
Then he wrote to his mother begging her to come, and they had many long
consultations together on the subject of Emma.
What should they decide? What was to be done since she rejected all
medical treatment? "Do you know what your wife wants?" replied Madame
Bovary senior.
"She wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. If she
were obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn't have
these vapours, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her
head, and from the idleness in which she lives."
"Yet she is always busy," said Charles.
"Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books, works against
religion, and in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from
Voltaire. But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Anyone who
has no religion always ends by turning out badly."
So it was decided to stop Emma reading novels. The enterprise did not
seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She was, when she passed through
Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that Emma had
discontinued her subscription. Would they not have a right to apply
to the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous
trade? The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During
the three weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged
half-a-dozen words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at
table and in the evening before going to bed.
Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day at Yonville.
The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, which, on
end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses
from the church to the inn. On the other side there were canvas booths,
where cotton checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold,
together with harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends
fluttered in the wind. The coarse hardware was spread out on the ground
between pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky straw
stuck out.
Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks through the bars
of flat cages. The people, crowding in the same place and unwilling
to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the shop front of the
chemist. On Wednesdays his shop was never empty, and the people pushed
in less to buy drugs than for consultations. So great was Homais'
reputation in the neighbouring villages. His robust aplomb had
fascinated the rustics. They considered him a greater doctor than all
the doctors.
Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. The window in
the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade, she was amusing
herself with watching the crowd of boors when she saw a gentleman in
a green velvet coat. He had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy
gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant
walking with a bent head and quite a thoughtful air.
"Can I see the doctor?" he asked Justin, who was talking on the
doorsteps with Felicite, and, taking him for a servant of the
house--"Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette is
here."
It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added "of La
Huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better known.
La Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, where he had just
bought the chateau and two farms that he cultivated himself, without,
however, troubling very much about them. He lived as a bachelor, and was
supposed to have "at least fifteen thousand francs a year."
Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger introduced his man, who
wanted to be bled because he felt "a tingling all over."
"That'll purge me," he urged as an objection to all reasoning.
So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked Justin to hold it.
Then addressing the peasant, who was already pale--
"Don't be afraid, my lad."
"No, no, sir," said the other; "get on."
And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. At the prick of
the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass.
"Hold the basin nearer," exclaimed Charles.
"Lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it was a little fountain
flowing. How red my blood is! That's a good sign, isn't it?"
"Sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels nothing at first, and then
syncope sets in, and more especially with people of strong constitution
like this man."
At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twisting between
his fingers. A shudder of his shoulders made the chair-back creak. His
hat fell off.
"I thought as much," said Bovary, pressing his finger on the vein.
The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin's hands; his knees shook,
he turned pale.
"Emma! Emma!" called Charles.
With one bound she came down the staircase.
"Some vinegar," he cried. "O dear! two at once!"
And in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress.
"It is nothing," said Monsieur Boulanger quietly, taking Justin in his
arms. He seated him on the table with his back resting against the wall.
Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The strings of his shirt had
got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers
about the young fellow's neck. Then she poured some vinegar on her
cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and
then blew upon them softly. The ploughman revived, but Justin's syncope
still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in the pale sclerotics like
blue flowers in milk.
"We must hide this from him," said Charles.
Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. With the
movement she made in bending down, her dress (it was a summer dress with
four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread
out around her on the flags of the room; and as Emma stooping, staggered
a little as she stretched out her arms.
The stuff here and there gave with the inflections of her bust.
Then she went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was melting some
pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived. The servant had been to
fetch him in the tumult. Seeing his pupil's eyes staring he drew a long
breath; then going around him he looked at him from head to foot.
"Fool!" he said, "really a little fool! A fool in four letters! A
phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! And a fellow who isn't afraid of
anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous
heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about
yourself! Here's a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for
under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in
order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to
keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an
imbecile."
Justin did not answer. The chemist went on--
"Who asked you to come? You are always pestering the doctor and madame.
On Wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to me. There are
now twenty people in the shop. I left everything because of the interest
I take in you. Come, get along! Sharp! Wait for me, and keep an eye on
the jars."
When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked for a
little while about fainting-fits. Madame Bovary had never fainted.
"That is extraordinary for a lady," said Monsieur Boulanger; "but some
people are very susceptible. Thus in a duel, I have seen a second lose
consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols."
"For my part," said the chemist, "the sight of other people's blood
doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would
make me faint if I reflected upon it too much."
Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm
himself, since his fancy was over.
"It procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance," he added,
and he looked at Emma as he said this. Then he put three francs on the
corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out.
He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to La
Huchette), and Emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars,
slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects.
"She is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty, this
doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a
Parisienne's. Where the devil does she come from? Wherever did that fat
fellow pick her up?"
Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal
temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to
do with women, and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty to him;
so he was thinking about her and her husband.
"I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt. He has dirty
nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. While he is trotting after his
patients, she sits there botching socks. And she gets bored! She would
like to live in town and dance polkas every evening. Poor little woman!
She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table.
With three words of gallantry she'd adore one, I'm sure of it. She'd be
tender, charming. Yes; but how to get rid of her afterwards?"
Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by
contrast think of his mistress. She was an actress at Rouen, whom he
kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in
remembrance, he was satiated--
"Ah! Madame Bovary," he thought, "is much prettier, especially fresher.
Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. She is so finiky about her
pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns."
The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe only heard the regular
beating of the grass striking against his boots, with a cry of the
grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. He again saw Emma in
her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her.
"Oh, I will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a
clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the political
part of the enterprise. He asked himself--
"Where shall we meet? By what means? We shall always be having the brat
on our hands, and the servant, the neighbours, and husband, all sorts of
worries. Pshaw! one would lose too much time over it."
Then he resumed, "She really has eyes that pierce one's heart like a
gimlet. And that pale complexion! I adore pale women!"
When he reached the top of the Arguiel hills he had made up his mind.
"It's only finding the opportunities. Well, I will call in now and then.
I'll send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself bled, if need be. We
shall become friends; I'll invite them to my place. By Jove!" added he,
"there's the agricultural show coming on. She'll be there. I shall see
her. We'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way."
| 4,303 | Chapter 7 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-7 | After Leon had gone, Emma began a period of secret mourning. She drifted about aimlessly and was often melancholy. She saw Leon in her imagination as the hero of all her dreams and remembered their walks and conversations. She reproached herself for not having responded to his love, and he became the center of all her thoughts. In her misery, she began again the strange and unpredictable behavior that had marked her in Tostes. Her moods constantly changed, and she was often giddy and nervous. One day Rodolphe Boulanger, a handsome and wealthy landowner, brought one of his servants to be treated by Bovary. While there he saw Emma and was immediately attracted by her good looks and ladylike bearing. Boulanger was a suave bachelor, both coarse and shrewd. At once his thoughts turned to Emma's seduction, and he began to lay his plans. | Emma's long melancholy and regret over not having seized her opportunity with Leon actually cause her to become sick. She then goes into one of her spending sprees, justifying her spending by feeling she has sacrificed so much by being faithful to Charles. These are the same types of spending sprees which will later lead her into heavy debts. Note again Emma's erratic actions. She would take something up, leave it, go to something else only to leave it. It seems that nothing fulfills her. Flaubert's description of Emma's actions and looks implies that Emma fits ironically into the tradition of the courtly love. The "vaporish airs," the fact that she was "pale all over, white as a sheet," and given to spells of dizziness are all characteristics of the courtly love tradition or are signs of disappointed or unfulfilled love. Emma is, after all, essentially middle-class, but she is also more than this. In a sense, she raises herself above the town because unlike others, she is vaguely aware that there are emotions of a higher and purer nature than those with which she finds herself surrounded. This realization does raise Emma in our estimation although this is also the ultimate cause of her tragedy. Note that Rodolphe is able to see through Emma immediately. He sees her boredom, recognizes that she dislikes her husband and her present life, and realizes that she is "gasping for love" and is ready for a love affair. What we know is that this is true, but partly because she regrets not having an affair with Leon. | 206 | 264 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/17.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_13_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 8 | chapter 8 | null | {"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-8", "summary": "At the time of this story, the annual Agricultural Show for the Prefecture of the Seine-Inferieure was held at Yonville. Everyone looked forward to the fair with great enthusiasm; when the long-awaited day finally arrived, Yonville was crowded with visitors from all the surrounding farms and towns. There were exhibits and contests of many kinds, and everything had a carnival aspect. The most important event of the day was the speech and presentation of awards by a representative of the Prefect. According to his carefully calculated plan, Rodolphe took advantage of the excitement of the day to renew his acquaintance with Emma. They went walking together and spoke about a variety of things. Rodolphe took every opportunity to drop some hint about his love for Emma. He gradually leads her toward the city hall so that they can be alone. Meanwhile the representative from the Prefect arrived, and even though the people expected the Prefect himself, they were still honored by this man. However, in trying to pay homage to him, the battalion of men confused their orders and everything ended in confusion. While he spoke about the government, Rodolphe begins to hint to Emma his affections for her. And while the speech is going on in the background about morality and government, Rodolphe begins to declare his love for Emma and to insist that his feelings are nobler than common morality. He continues to declare his love for her in high-sounding language while the representative of the Prefect awards prizes to various people. After the awarding of the prices, Emma separates from Rodolphe and does not see him again until that night at the banquet and later at the fireworks. She was complimented by his attention but had constantly acted as she thought proper for a respectable, married woman. As the fireworks were being set off, Emma watched Rodolphe. She was not even aware that the fireworks had gotten wet and wouldn't go off. Later, however, Homais wrote a glowing account of the entire day's activities.", "analysis": "The inexperienced reader will often overlook the greatness of this particular chapter. It is often referred to when the subject of Flaubert's greatness is being discussed. It will profit the reader to reread the chapter and observe many of the following factors: the number of things that are contrasted -- the use of subtle irony, especially in passages that seem to be simply description; the elaborately described show, the gold medal won by the old peasant woman, and the subtle but damning description of the pompous dignitaries; and the use of foreshadowing, especially in the way in which Emma is able to see unknowingly her whole pathetic life unfold before her in symbolic events. Use of Contrast and Description: There are so many masterfully descriptive passages, it will suffice to point out only one. In the first part of the chapter, Flaubert is describing all the animals that are gathered together for the show. Most of the details of this description suggest symbolically that this animal world is the same world in which the action of the entire novel is being played. The animals are described in the same manner in which people will later be described. For example, later in the chapter, when Flaubert is describing the feast, the same type of description is used for both the animals and the people. They were both herded into a small place with noses together, sweating and stuffing themselves. One could even maintain that the animals are described in terms of people and the people are described in terms of animals, emphasizing the nature of the people that Flaubert is dealing with. Use of Irony: The speech of the representative of the Prefect is filled with cliches and pompous platitudes. The speaker says only what every other speaker has been saying for years, yet his speech is highly praised. Rodolphe's speech to Emma, delivered against the background of the general prizes being awarded, is a masterpiece of irony. First, we hear about the old peasant woman who is winning a prize for fifty-four years of faithful service and fidelity as a servant. At the same time, Emma is planning on being unfaithful and on beginning a love affair with Rodolphe, whom we know can never be faithful to any person very long. It is a further stroke of irony that his false speeches of passion such as \"I stayed with you, because I couldn't tear myself away\" are spoken during the awarding of the first prize in manure. Subtly speaking, Rodolphe's speech is just so much manure, but Emma is not capable of recognizing it. Foreshadowing: In the discussion of Lheureux's being the cause of the downfall of a certain man, we are warned that Emma will herself get into trouble because of her dealings with this man. He is even described here as a wheedling, grovelling creature. The tremendous waste of human energy in preparing for the show indicates how the energies of Emma are wasted throughout the entire novel. Emma's view of the ancient Hirondelle as it approaches the town, foreshadows her degradation and involvement with Leon later in the novel, as this coach will be instrumental in her love affair. Homais' role in the entire pageant and his essay sent to the paper afterwards reaches the height of the comic absurd. First of all, from all of the description, the entire day was a failure if not a fiasco. The dignitary was late and when he finally arrived he was only a representative of the Prefect; the presentation of arms was sloppy, confused, and ridiculous; the speeches were dull; there were not enough seats; the feast was long and noisy and badly served and too crowded; the fireworks were damp and would not go off, and it rained during the proceedings. But Homais' account of the day written for the newspaper was so frankly false that his exaggerations seem the height of the comic. And ironically speaking, an earlier description of Homais says that he \"had the right form of words for every conceivable occasion.\""} |
At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the
solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the
preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been hung with garlands
of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the
middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was
to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful
farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was
none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet
was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and,
tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless
that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into
his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement.
As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel,
both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One
saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and re-pass
alternately; there was no end to it, and it constantly began again.
There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had
scoured their houses the evening before; tri-coloured flags hung from
half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely
weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured
neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved
with the motley colours the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue
smocks. The neighbouring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses,
pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their dresses, turned
up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their part, in order to save
their hats, kept their handkerchiefs around them, holding one corner
between their teeth.
The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village.
People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time
to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women
with their gloves, who were going out to see the fete. What was most
admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a
platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were
against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles,
each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with
inscriptions in gold letters.
On one was written, "To Commerce"; on the other, "To Agriculture"; on
the third, "To Industry"; and on the fourth, "To the Fine Arts."
But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of
Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she
muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas
booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under
a tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place!
Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a
cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!"
The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers,
beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown.
"Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat widow asked
where he was going--
"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, I who am always more cooped up in my
laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese."
"What cheese?" asked the landlady.
"Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished to convey
to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home like a recluse.
To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--"
"Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously.
"Yes, I am going," replied the druggist, astonished. "Am I not a member
of the consulting commission?"
Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying
with a smile--
"That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you?
Do you understand anything about it?"
"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist--that is to say,
a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the
knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies,
it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in
fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the
analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is
all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?"
The landlady did not answer. Homais went on--
"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled
the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the
composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the
atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters,
the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not.
And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to
direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals,
the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know
botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are
the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive
and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them
there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace
with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the
alert to find out improvements."
The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francois" and the chemist
went on--
"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they
would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus lately I
myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages,
entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with some
New Reflections on the Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural Society
of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among
its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if my
work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame
Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.
"Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop
as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her
breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands
at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "Well, it won't
last long," she added. "It'll be over before a week."
Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and
whispered in his ear--
"What! you didn't know it? There is to be an execution in next week.
It's Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed him with bills."
"What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the druggist, who always found
expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.
Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from
Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she detested
Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak."
"There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to
Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur
Boulanger's arm."
"Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her my
respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure
under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was
calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off
rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously
to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his
frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind.
Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame
Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her,
said in a rough tone--
"It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist."
She pressed his elbow.
"What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he looked at her out
of the corner of his eyes.
Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood
out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it
like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked
straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered
by the cheek-bones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the
delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils.
Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white
teeth were seen between her lips.
"Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe.
Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur
Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter
into the conversation.
"What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!"
And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, whilst at the
slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your
pardon!" and raised his hat.
When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road
up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him
Madame Bovary. He called out--
"Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently."
"How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing.
"Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as
to-day I have the happiness of being with you--"
Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine
weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had
sprung up again.
"Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to
furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place."
He added, "Shall I pick some? What do you think?"
"Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little.
"H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe.
The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with their
great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get
out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue
stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelt of milk, when one
passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand,
and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to
the banquet tent.
But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other
entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks.
The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a
confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in
the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the
cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass,
slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats
that buzzed round them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by the
halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils looking
towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and
flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then
came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded
animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some
sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart,
outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull,
muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and who moved no more than
if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope.
Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps,
examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One
who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he
walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de
la Panville. As soon as he recognised Rodolphe he came forward quickly,
and smiling amiably, said--
"What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?"
Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had
disappeared--
"Ma foi!*" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his."
*Upon my word!
And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily,
showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in
front of some fine beast, which Madame Bovary did not at all admire.
He noticed this, and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their
dresses; then he apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that
incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think
they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations
of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for
social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric
shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his
waistcoat of grey ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at
the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters.
These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on
horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his
straw hat on one side.
"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country--"
"It's waste of time," said Emma.
"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people
is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!"
Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed,
the illusions lost there.
"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."
"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted."
"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to
wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the
sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were
not better to join those sleeping there!"
"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them."
"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he
accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.
But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great
pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen
with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the
ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger,
who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to
all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning
the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew
which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for
these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the
thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.
Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to
himself--
"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim
in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone! Oh, how I would
have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything,
overcome everything!"
"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied."
"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.
"For, after all," she went on, "you are free--" she hesitated, "rich--"
"Do not mock me," he replied.
And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a
cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell
towards the village.
It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the
members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to
begin the meeting or still wait.
At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by
two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily.
Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to
imitate him. All ran towards the enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A
few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed
to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their
harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town
hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed,
beating drums and marking time.
"Present!" shouted Binet.
"Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march."
And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting
loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns
were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman
in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft
of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most
benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were
half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his
sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognised the
mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able
to come. He himself was a councillor at the prefecture; then he added
a few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the
other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face,
their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round,
the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and
the crowd. The councillor pressing his little cocked hat to his
breast repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled,
stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the
monarchy and the honour that was being done to Yonville.
Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the
coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door
of the "Lion d'Or", where a number of peasants collected to look at the
carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one
by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet
arm-chairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.
All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned
by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers
emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows.
All the waist-coats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches
had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone
rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of
their trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than
the leather of their heavy boots.
The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between
the pillars while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting
on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all
those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back
every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion
with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to
the small steps of the platform.
"I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his
place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something
rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty
effect."
"To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor took
everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and
he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art."
Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first
floor of the town hall, to the "council-room," and, as it was empty,
he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He
fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch,
and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each
other.
There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying.
At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain,
and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had
collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began--
"Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on
the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will, I am sure, be
shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the
higher administration, to the government to the monarch, gentle men, our
sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private
prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at
once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils
of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well
as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts?"
"I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further."
"Why?" said Emma.
But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an extraordinary
pitch. He declaimed--
"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined
our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man
himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled
lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins,
when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations."
"Well, someone down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then
I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad
reputation--"
"Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma.
"No! It is dreadful, I assure you."
"But, gentlemen," continued the councillor, "if, banishing from my
memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back
to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there?
Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means
of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state,
establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centres have
recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in
all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France
breathes once more!"
"Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they
are right."
"How so?" she asked.
"What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly
tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions
and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all
sorts of fantasies, of follies."
Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has voyaged over
strange lands, and went on--
"We have not even this distraction, we poor women!"
"A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it."
"But is it ever found?" she asked.
"Yes; one day it comes," he answered.
"And this is what you have understood," said the councillor.
"You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of a work
that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress and morality,
you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more
redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!"
"It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when
one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice
cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your
life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There
is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen
each other in dreams!"
(And he looked at her.) "In fine, here it is, this treasure so sought
after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts,
one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from
darkness into light."
And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his
hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it
fall on Emma's. She took hers away.
"And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who is so blind,
so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices
of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural
populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the
country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a
word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence,
vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced
intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus
contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to
the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of
duty--"
"Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word.
They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with
foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty,
duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the
beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the
ignominy that it imposes upon us."
"Yet--yet--" objected Madame Bovary.
"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one
beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of
poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?"
"But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the
world and accept its moral code."
"Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conventional, that
of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that
makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthly, like the mass
of imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is
about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue
heavens that give us light."
Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief.
He continued--
"And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses
of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of
subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen,
who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country,
brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by
means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour,
and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the
baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it
not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant
flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish
ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even
necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected
on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the
ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow
for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should
never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different
products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother,
lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple
tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let
us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and
to which I will more particularly call your attention."
He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide
open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him
with staring eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed
his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between
his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable.
The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in
their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the
platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with
out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could
hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his
helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of
Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on
his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled
beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little
face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and
sleepiness.
The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk
leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors,
and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by
the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur
Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of
phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the
crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the
bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In
fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and
these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down
some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.
Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice,
speaking rapidly--
"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single
sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest
sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do
meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend together. Yet they will
make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon
each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years,
they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they
are born one for the other."
His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards
Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes
small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the
perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy.
Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had
waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an
odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes
the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant
back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the
horizon, the old diligence, the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending
the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this
yellow carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this
route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him
opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it
seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of
the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away,
that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent
of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced
through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust
of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which
suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink
in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves,
she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while
athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the
crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He
said--"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of
routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism.
"Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good
manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine
races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in
leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise
with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble
domestics, whose hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into
consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues,
and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it
encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just
demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful
sacrifices."
Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning
another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor,
but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by
more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise
of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture
more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had
always contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was
talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of
society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns
in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had
put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and
in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur
Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little
Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing
Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his cabbages, and the
Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the
young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible
attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence.
"Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance
willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that
flow but to unite; our special bents of mind had driven us towards each
other."
And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.
"For good farming generally!" cried the president.
"Just now, for example, when I went to your house."
"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."
"Did I know I should accompany you?"
"Seventy francs."
"A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained."
"Manures!"
"And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!"
"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"
"For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a
charm."
"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."
"And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you."
"For a merino ram!"
"But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow."
"To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame."
"Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I
not?"
"Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg,
sixty francs!"
Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering
like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but, whether she was trying
to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure; she made a
movement with her fingers. He exclaimed--
"Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand
that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!"
A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the
table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women
were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.
"Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on:
"Flemish manure-flax-growing-drainage-long leases-domestic service."
Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme
desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without an effort,
their fingers intertwined.
"Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere, for
fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value,
twenty-five francs!"
"Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councillor.
She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering--
"Go up!"
"Don't be afraid!"
"Oh, how stupid she is!"
"Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache.
"Yes; here she is."
"Then let her come up!"
Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid
bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she
wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her
pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered
russet apple. And from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two
large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of washing
the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that
they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and
by dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble
witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of
monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion
weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had
caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she
found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by
the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the
councillor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run
away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at
her.
Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of
servitude.
"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the
councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president;
and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he
repeated in a fatherly tone--"Approach! approach!"
"Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began
shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal!
Twenty-five francs! For you!"
Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude
spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her
muttering "I'll give it to our cure up home, to say some masses for me!"
"What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary.
The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had
been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into
the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the
animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green-crown on
their horns.
The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the
town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the
battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's
arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about
alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.
The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that
they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for
forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one
stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a
whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated
above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against
the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard
nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty
plates, his neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled
his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing
noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips;
her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the
folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all
infinity before him in the vistas of the future.
He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with
her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the
danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and
give some advice to Binet.
The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess
of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would
not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon
biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meagre Roman-candle
went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the
cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma
silently nestled against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she
watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe
gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.
They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops of rain began
to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.
At this moment the councillor's carriage came out from the inn.
His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from
the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his
body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.
"Truly," said the druggist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously
against drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door
of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the names of all those who during
the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics,
one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to
in case of need. But excuse me!"
*Specifically for that.
And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to
see his lathe again.
"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your
men, or to go yourself--"
"Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!"
"Do not be uneasy," said the druggist, when he returned to his friends.
"Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No
sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest."
"Ma foi! I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never
mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fete."
Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very
beautiful!"
And having bowed to one another, they separated.
Two days later, in the "Final de Rouen," there was a long article on the
show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next morning.
"Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this
crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical
sun pouring its heat upon our heads?"
Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government
was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand
reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on
the entry of the councillor, he did not forget "the martial air of our
militia;" nor "our most merry village maidens;" nor the "bald-headed old
men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of
our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the
drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury,
and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais,
chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society.
When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of
the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced the son,
the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed
his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good
housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.
"About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard
brought together the principal personages of the fete. The greatest
cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur
Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays,
Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin
sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant
fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a
veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our
little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of
a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' Let us state that no untoward
event disturbed this family meeting." And he added "Only the absence
of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests understand progress in
another fashion. Just as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!"
| 11,574 | Chapter 8 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-8 | At the time of this story, the annual Agricultural Show for the Prefecture of the Seine-Inferieure was held at Yonville. Everyone looked forward to the fair with great enthusiasm; when the long-awaited day finally arrived, Yonville was crowded with visitors from all the surrounding farms and towns. There were exhibits and contests of many kinds, and everything had a carnival aspect. The most important event of the day was the speech and presentation of awards by a representative of the Prefect. According to his carefully calculated plan, Rodolphe took advantage of the excitement of the day to renew his acquaintance with Emma. They went walking together and spoke about a variety of things. Rodolphe took every opportunity to drop some hint about his love for Emma. He gradually leads her toward the city hall so that they can be alone. Meanwhile the representative from the Prefect arrived, and even though the people expected the Prefect himself, they were still honored by this man. However, in trying to pay homage to him, the battalion of men confused their orders and everything ended in confusion. While he spoke about the government, Rodolphe begins to hint to Emma his affections for her. And while the speech is going on in the background about morality and government, Rodolphe begins to declare his love for Emma and to insist that his feelings are nobler than common morality. He continues to declare his love for her in high-sounding language while the representative of the Prefect awards prizes to various people. After the awarding of the prices, Emma separates from Rodolphe and does not see him again until that night at the banquet and later at the fireworks. She was complimented by his attention but had constantly acted as she thought proper for a respectable, married woman. As the fireworks were being set off, Emma watched Rodolphe. She was not even aware that the fireworks had gotten wet and wouldn't go off. Later, however, Homais wrote a glowing account of the entire day's activities. | The inexperienced reader will often overlook the greatness of this particular chapter. It is often referred to when the subject of Flaubert's greatness is being discussed. It will profit the reader to reread the chapter and observe many of the following factors: the number of things that are contrasted -- the use of subtle irony, especially in passages that seem to be simply description; the elaborately described show, the gold medal won by the old peasant woman, and the subtle but damning description of the pompous dignitaries; and the use of foreshadowing, especially in the way in which Emma is able to see unknowingly her whole pathetic life unfold before her in symbolic events. Use of Contrast and Description: There are so many masterfully descriptive passages, it will suffice to point out only one. In the first part of the chapter, Flaubert is describing all the animals that are gathered together for the show. Most of the details of this description suggest symbolically that this animal world is the same world in which the action of the entire novel is being played. The animals are described in the same manner in which people will later be described. For example, later in the chapter, when Flaubert is describing the feast, the same type of description is used for both the animals and the people. They were both herded into a small place with noses together, sweating and stuffing themselves. One could even maintain that the animals are described in terms of people and the people are described in terms of animals, emphasizing the nature of the people that Flaubert is dealing with. Use of Irony: The speech of the representative of the Prefect is filled with cliches and pompous platitudes. The speaker says only what every other speaker has been saying for years, yet his speech is highly praised. Rodolphe's speech to Emma, delivered against the background of the general prizes being awarded, is a masterpiece of irony. First, we hear about the old peasant woman who is winning a prize for fifty-four years of faithful service and fidelity as a servant. At the same time, Emma is planning on being unfaithful and on beginning a love affair with Rodolphe, whom we know can never be faithful to any person very long. It is a further stroke of irony that his false speeches of passion such as "I stayed with you, because I couldn't tear myself away" are spoken during the awarding of the first prize in manure. Subtly speaking, Rodolphe's speech is just so much manure, but Emma is not capable of recognizing it. Foreshadowing: In the discussion of Lheureux's being the cause of the downfall of a certain man, we are warned that Emma will herself get into trouble because of her dealings with this man. He is even described here as a wheedling, grovelling creature. The tremendous waste of human energy in preparing for the show indicates how the energies of Emma are wasted throughout the entire novel. Emma's view of the ancient Hirondelle as it approaches the town, foreshadows her degradation and involvement with Leon later in the novel, as this coach will be instrumental in her love affair. Homais' role in the entire pageant and his essay sent to the paper afterwards reaches the height of the comic absurd. First of all, from all of the description, the entire day was a failure if not a fiasco. The dignitary was late and when he finally arrived he was only a representative of the Prefect; the presentation of arms was sloppy, confused, and ridiculous; the speeches were dull; there were not enough seats; the feast was long and noisy and badly served and too crowded; the fireworks were damp and would not go off, and it rained during the proceedings. But Homais' account of the day written for the newspaper was so frankly false that his exaggerations seem the height of the comic. And ironically speaking, an earlier description of Homais says that he "had the right form of words for every conceivable occasion." | 439 | 677 |
2,413 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_9_to_10.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_14_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 9-10 | chapters 9-10 | null | {"name": "Chapters 9-10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-910", "summary": "During the next six weeks Rodolphe did not see Emma. This interval was also planned by him, acting on the theory that \"absence makes the heart grow fonder.\" He had carefully analyzed her personality and decided to take advantage of all her frustrations and weaknesses. When Rodolphe finally called at the Bovary house, Emma, who had thought about him often and was insulted by his lack of attention, was unresponsive. But Rodolphe was so eloquent in amorous language that she soon forgot her affected annoyance at his absence and was overcome by sentiment. When Charles came in, Rodolphe suggested that perhaps riding would be good for Emma. He offered to lend them a horse, but Emma refused. After Rodolphe had gone, Charles convinced Emma to accept Rodolphe's offer and even wrote to Rodolphe himself requesting the horse. The next day Emma and Rodolphe went for a ride together. He led her to a beautiful and deserted glade in the nearby forest. When they had dismounted, Rodolphe again spoke of his passion for her. Emma was frightened by his intensity but quickly forgot all her good intentions and gave herself entirely to him. When she returned home that night she was radiant with joy. In her new happiness she identified herself with all the daring and romantic heroines of literature whom she had always envied and admired. She unbelievingly repeated to herself over and over again, \"I have a lover -- a lover.\" From this day on, the affair between Emma and Rodolphe progressed with great speed. They frequently exchanged love letters and had many secret meetings. Rodolphe was always in Emma's thoughts. She often slipped from her house in the early morning while Bovary was still asleep in order to surprise Rodolphe and have a few extra hours with him. After a while, Rodolphe, who was a practical and realistic man, became concerned about Emma's imprudent behavior. He spoke to her about this, claiming to be worried lest she compromise herself, and soon she too became nervous. She began to be troubled by feelings of guilt. The pair took precautions to keep their correspondence hidden and worked out an arrangement so that Rodolphe could meet Emma at night in her garden or even in her house, once Bovary had fallen into his usual deep sleep. Rodolphe began to visit her several times each week. He was sometimes troubled by her wildly romantic fancies and feared that she would do something irrational or impractical, in accord with her silly ideas. He thought of ending their relationship but procrastinated because of the great physical appeal she had for him. So far as Emma's love for him was concerned, Rodolphe cynically doubted her sincerity and had no compunctions about using or abandoning her. Emma, on the other hand, considered him the one great love for whom she had always yearned and surrendered herself to him with complete devotion. As time passed, Emma became unhappy about both her marriage and adultery. She was often negligent of her duties and then, in a moment of guilty realization, would engage in a brief spurt of activity or maternal affection. Her guilt kept bothering her, and for a short period she even decided to repent and reform. She derived a strange pleasure from her masochistic decision to assuage her guilt through self-sacrifice, for her affection for Rodolphe had not lessened. In order to end the affair, she was cold to him and she planned to force herself to love and assist Bovary.", "analysis": "Emma is a woman of romantic longings. We saw earlier that she longed for a man who \"should know about everything; excel in a multitude of activity, introduce you to passion in all its force, to life in all its graces, you into all mysteries\" , and now Rodolphe comes to call after a six weeks' absence, and tells her things she \"had never been told before.\" Here then is the romantic dream come true. But, in reality, he is not the knight in shining armor. He is, after all, a thirty-four-year-old farmer. But to Emma who has lived in boredom so long and who has longed for some type of escape, he is the fulfillment of her dreams. After she surrenders to him, she then thinks of all the heroines of books and compares her shoddy seduction in the woods to those of the romanticized heroines of her novels. She is convinced that her affair has all the \"passion, ecstasy and delirium\" of the fictionalized accounts in romances. Emma then attempts to make her shoddy affair conform to those of fictionalized accounts. She insists that they leave letters for each other in secret hiding places. She comforts him about absurd, insignificant events and when once she thinks she hears Charles coming, she expects Rodolphe to grab his pistol so as to defend himself. She insists upon exchanging miniatures, locks of hair, and even rings. Even Rodolphe realizes the degree of sentimentality that Emma is attaching to their love affair. Emma never realizes that Rodolphe is simply using her for a pretty mistress. Even though they are having their affair now in Charles' consulting room, she fails to realize how shoddy the affair is and continues to force their affair into the pattern of a great love. Ironically, it was Charles who originally assured the success of the love affair by insisting that Emma accept Rodolphe's offer of the riding horse. Of course, we have seen earlier that Charles, due to the horrible disposition of his first wife, can see no fault in Emma. Chapter 9 ends with Rodolphe's admonition to Emma that she is compromising herself by her visits to his cabin. This foreshadows his rejection of Emma. We know from the beginning that this is to be only a brief love affair for him, but as he reminds her of her position, we note already that he is beginning to tire of her."} |
Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he
appeared.
The day after the show he had said to himself--"We mustn't go back too
soon; that would be a mistake."
And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he
had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned thus--
"If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience to see me
again love me more. Let's go on with it!"
And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the
room, he saw Emma turn pale.
She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain along
the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on
which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the
meshes of the coral.
Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first
conventional phrases.
"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."
"Seriously?" she cried.
"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it
was because I did not want to come back."
"Why?"
"Can you not guess?"
He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing.
He went on--
"Emma!"
"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.
"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not
to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and
that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the
world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of
another!"
He repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands.
"Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair.
Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far
that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what
force impelled me towards you. For one does not struggle against Heaven;
one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which
is beautiful, charming, adorable."
It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself,
and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly
and fully at this glowing language.
"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least
I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night-every night-I
arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its glimmering in the moon,
the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp,
a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never
knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!"
She turned towards him with a sob.
"Oh, you are good!" she said.
"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one
word--only one word!"
And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground; but
a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the
door of the room was not closed.
"How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humour
a whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and
Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles
came in.
"Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him.
The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into
obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself
together a little.
"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health."
Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's
palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if
riding would not be good.
"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to
follow it up."
And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered
one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit
he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered
from giddiness.
"I'll call around," said Bovary.
"No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient
for you."
"Ah! very good! I thank you."
And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur
Boulanger's kind offer?"
She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally
declared that perhaps it would look odd.
"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a
pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong."
"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?"
"You must order one," he answered.
The riding-habit decided her.
When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his
wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.
The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two
saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin
side-saddle.
Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she
had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his
appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white
corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.
Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also
came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice.
"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are
mettlesome."
She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the windowpanes
to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered
with a wave of her whip.
"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all,
prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear.
As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop.
Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her
figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out,
she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in
her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head;
they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses
stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.
It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds
hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent
asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the
clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of
Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls and
the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and
never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the
height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake
sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there
stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose
above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.
By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered
in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco,
deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the
horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.
Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned
away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine
trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy.
The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.
Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.
"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.
"Do you think so?" she said.
"Forward! forward!" he continued.
He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot.
Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup.
Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. At other
times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt
his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no
longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots
of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were
grey, fawn, or golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves.
Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the
hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks.
They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in
front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way,
although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her,
saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white
stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.
She stopped. "I am tired," she said.
"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"
Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her
veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face
appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure
waves.
"But where are we going?"
He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round
him biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice
had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe
began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her
with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy.
Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on
the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the words, "Are not our
destinies now one?"
"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!" She rose
to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having gazed
at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said
hurriedly--
"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back."
He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:
"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"
Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he
advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered:
"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!"
"If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became
respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He
said--
"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were
mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in
a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to live! I must have
your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!"
And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to disengage
herself. He supported her thus as they walked along.
But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.
"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!"
He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness
on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds.
At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide
themselves.
"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!"
"Why? Emma! Emma!"
"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder.
The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw
back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with
a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him--
The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the
branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves
or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying
about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something
sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose
beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a
stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she
heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she
heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing
nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his
penknife one of the two broken bridles.
They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again
the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same
stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her
something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved
in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand
to kiss it.
She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee
bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed by the fresh
air in the red of the evening.
On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People
looked at her from the windows.
At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to
hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there
with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.
"Emma!" he said.
"What?"
"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an old cob,
still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that could be bought; I
am sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might please
you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell me?"
She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later--
"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.
"Yes. Why?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"
And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up
in her room.
At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches,
Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves
rustled and the reeds whistled.
But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never
had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something
subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover!
a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her.
So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness
of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all
would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed
her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary
existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the
interspaces of these heights.
Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the
lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with
the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were,
an actual part of these imaginings, and realised the love-dream of her
youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had
so envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not
suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up
burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse,
without anxiety, without trouble.
The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one
another She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with
kisses; and she looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to
call her again by her name--to say that he loved her They were in the
forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some woodenshoe maker. The walls
were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated
side by side on a bed of dry leaves.
From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening.
Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a
fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there,
that she always found fault with as too short.
One morning, when Charles had gone out before day break, she was seized
with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go quickly to La
Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while
everyone was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she
soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps,
without looking behind her.
Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognised her lover's house. Its
two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn.
Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must
be the chateau She entered--it was if the doors at her approach had
opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to
the corridor. Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end
of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry.
"You here? You here?" he repeated. "How did you manage to come? Ah! your
dress is damp."
"I love you," she answered, throwing her arms about his neck.
This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles went out
early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led
to the waterside.
But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls
alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall
she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across
ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling; and clogging her thin
shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the
meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out
of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a
fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe
still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room.
The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter
softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops
of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around
her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to his
breast.
Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables,
combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his
shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that
lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a
bottle of water.
It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then Emma cried.
She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than
herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come
unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.
"What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!"
At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming
imprudent--that she was compromising herself.
Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had
intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he
was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or
even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house she
looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the
horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She
listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped
short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.
One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the
long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out
sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the
edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked
on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had
gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes,
trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for
wild ducks.
"You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed; "When one sees a
gun, one should always give warning."
The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for
a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting except in boats,
Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them,
and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But
this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he
congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness. At sight of
Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a
conversation.
"It isn't warm; it's nipping."
Emma answered nothing. He went on--
"And you're out so early?"
"Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse where my
child is."
"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me,
since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the
bird at the mouth of the gun--"
"Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on her
heel.
"Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub.
Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he
would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the
worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the little
Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one
was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet,
then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he
would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her
brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before
her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.
Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of
distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she
caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again. He was standing
in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was
saying--
"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol."
"Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then to
Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't
worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the
stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor," (for the chemist
much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by
it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now,
take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from
the little room; you know very well that the arm-chairs are not to be
taken out of the drawing-room."
And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting away from the
counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid.
"Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; I'm
ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid,
isn't it?"
Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some
copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting things.
Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying--
"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp."
"Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are
people who like it."
She was stifling.
"And give me--"
"Will he never go?" thought she.
"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax,
and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the
varnished leather of my togs."
The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared,
Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat
down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a
footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near
her papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on
labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time
to time, were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low
words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil.
"And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais.
"Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in
his waste-book.
"Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice.
"Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the druggist.
But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard
nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh.
"How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais.
"Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied.
So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma
wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to
find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one.
All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night
he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the
gate, which Charles thought lost.
To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She
jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a
mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild
with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled
him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up
a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But
Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too.
"Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time."
"Yes, I am coming," she answered.
Then, as the candles dazzled him; he turned to the wall and fell asleep.
She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. Rodolphe had a large
cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm round her waist, he
drew her without a word to the end of the garden.
It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Leon
had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought
of him now.
The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they
heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling
of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the
darkness, and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and
swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The
cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips
seemed to them deeper; their eyes that they could hardly see, larger;
and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on
their souls sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied
vibrations.
When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room
between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen
candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down
there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the
whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not
refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma.
She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions
more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of
approaching steps in the alley.
"Someone is coming!" she said.
He blew out the light.
"Have you your pistols?"
"Why?"
"Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma.
"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his sentence
with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger."
She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort
of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised her.
Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had
spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for
he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called
devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had taken a great vow
that he did not think in the best of taste.
Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on
exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she
was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union.
She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature.
Then she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his!
Rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled
him with caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she
sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon--
"I am sure that above there together they approve of our love."
But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such
ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for
him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride
and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense
disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it
was lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up
appearances, and insensibly his ways changed.
He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry,
nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their great love,
which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of
a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it.
She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe
concealed his indifference less and less.
She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she
did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation
of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their
voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual
seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him.
Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having
succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the
end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another
like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame.
It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance
of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter.
Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following
lines:--
"My Dear Children--I hope this will find you well, and that this one
will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little more tender,
if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time, for a change,
I'll give you a turkeycock, unless you have a preference for some dabs;
and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I
have had an accident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one
windy night among the trees. The harvest has not been overgood either.
Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult
now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor Emma."
Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped
his pen to dream a little while.
"For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other day at
the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned
away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be pitied with such
a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I heard from a pedlar, who,
travelling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth
drawn, that Bovary was as usual working hard. That doesn't surprise me;
and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if
he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the
stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So much
the better, my dear children, and may God send you every imaginable
happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little
grand-daughter, Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for
her in the garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it
is to have jam made for her by and bye, that I will keep in the cupboard
for her when she comes.
"Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my
son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best
compliments, your loving father.
"Theodore Rouault."
She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The spelling
mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma followed the
kindly thought that cackled right through it like a hen half hidden
in the hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from
the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her
dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth
to take up the tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on
the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of
a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the
summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when anyone
passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive,
and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her
window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been
at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions!
Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's
life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage,
and her love--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like
a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his
road.
But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary
catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking
round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer.
An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot; the fire burned;
beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was
bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter.
In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst
of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach
at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt.
Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she
lent forward, beating the air with both her arms.
"Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How I love
you, my poor child! How I love you!"
Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at
once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings,
her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the
return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying
a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite
thunderstricken at this excess of tenderness.
That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual.
"That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim:"
And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed
herself cold and almost contemptuous.
"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!"
And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the
handkerchief she took out.
Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if
it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her
no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much
embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the druggist came just in
time to provide her with an opportunity.
| 9,186 | Chapters 9-10 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-910 | During the next six weeks Rodolphe did not see Emma. This interval was also planned by him, acting on the theory that "absence makes the heart grow fonder." He had carefully analyzed her personality and decided to take advantage of all her frustrations and weaknesses. When Rodolphe finally called at the Bovary house, Emma, who had thought about him often and was insulted by his lack of attention, was unresponsive. But Rodolphe was so eloquent in amorous language that she soon forgot her affected annoyance at his absence and was overcome by sentiment. When Charles came in, Rodolphe suggested that perhaps riding would be good for Emma. He offered to lend them a horse, but Emma refused. After Rodolphe had gone, Charles convinced Emma to accept Rodolphe's offer and even wrote to Rodolphe himself requesting the horse. The next day Emma and Rodolphe went for a ride together. He led her to a beautiful and deserted glade in the nearby forest. When they had dismounted, Rodolphe again spoke of his passion for her. Emma was frightened by his intensity but quickly forgot all her good intentions and gave herself entirely to him. When she returned home that night she was radiant with joy. In her new happiness she identified herself with all the daring and romantic heroines of literature whom she had always envied and admired. She unbelievingly repeated to herself over and over again, "I have a lover -- a lover." From this day on, the affair between Emma and Rodolphe progressed with great speed. They frequently exchanged love letters and had many secret meetings. Rodolphe was always in Emma's thoughts. She often slipped from her house in the early morning while Bovary was still asleep in order to surprise Rodolphe and have a few extra hours with him. After a while, Rodolphe, who was a practical and realistic man, became concerned about Emma's imprudent behavior. He spoke to her about this, claiming to be worried lest she compromise herself, and soon she too became nervous. She began to be troubled by feelings of guilt. The pair took precautions to keep their correspondence hidden and worked out an arrangement so that Rodolphe could meet Emma at night in her garden or even in her house, once Bovary had fallen into his usual deep sleep. Rodolphe began to visit her several times each week. He was sometimes troubled by her wildly romantic fancies and feared that she would do something irrational or impractical, in accord with her silly ideas. He thought of ending their relationship but procrastinated because of the great physical appeal she had for him. So far as Emma's love for him was concerned, Rodolphe cynically doubted her sincerity and had no compunctions about using or abandoning her. Emma, on the other hand, considered him the one great love for whom she had always yearned and surrendered herself to him with complete devotion. As time passed, Emma became unhappy about both her marriage and adultery. She was often negligent of her duties and then, in a moment of guilty realization, would engage in a brief spurt of activity or maternal affection. Her guilt kept bothering her, and for a short period she even decided to repent and reform. She derived a strange pleasure from her masochistic decision to assuage her guilt through self-sacrifice, for her affection for Rodolphe had not lessened. In order to end the affair, she was cold to him and she planned to force herself to love and assist Bovary. | Emma is a woman of romantic longings. We saw earlier that she longed for a man who "should know about everything; excel in a multitude of activity, introduce you to passion in all its force, to life in all its graces, you into all mysteries" , and now Rodolphe comes to call after a six weeks' absence, and tells her things she "had never been told before." Here then is the romantic dream come true. But, in reality, he is not the knight in shining armor. He is, after all, a thirty-four-year-old farmer. But to Emma who has lived in boredom so long and who has longed for some type of escape, he is the fulfillment of her dreams. After she surrenders to him, she then thinks of all the heroines of books and compares her shoddy seduction in the woods to those of the romanticized heroines of her novels. She is convinced that her affair has all the "passion, ecstasy and delirium" of the fictionalized accounts in romances. Emma then attempts to make her shoddy affair conform to those of fictionalized accounts. She insists that they leave letters for each other in secret hiding places. She comforts him about absurd, insignificant events and when once she thinks she hears Charles coming, she expects Rodolphe to grab his pistol so as to defend himself. She insists upon exchanging miniatures, locks of hair, and even rings. Even Rodolphe realizes the degree of sentimentality that Emma is attaching to their love affair. Emma never realizes that Rodolphe is simply using her for a pretty mistress. Even though they are having their affair now in Charles' consulting room, she fails to realize how shoddy the affair is and continues to force their affair into the pattern of a great love. Ironically, it was Charles who originally assured the success of the love affair by insisting that Emma accept Rodolphe's offer of the riding horse. Of course, we have seen earlier that Charles, due to the horrible disposition of his first wife, can see no fault in Emma. Chapter 9 ends with Rodolphe's admonition to Emma that she is compromising herself by her visits to his cabin. This foreshadows his rejection of Emma. We know from the beginning that this is to be only a brief love affair for him, but as he reminds her of her position, we note already that he is beginning to tire of her. | 801 | 405 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/20.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_15_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 11 | chapter 11 | null | {"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-11", "summary": "One day it was learned that a doctor in Rouen had published a remarkable new surgical procedure for curing clubfoot. Emma and Homais urged Charles to carry out the new operation on Hippolyte, the crippled servant at the inn. Emma hoped in this way to advance Bovary in his career and thus satisfy her desire to be a good wife; she had many daydreams about the wealth and increased prestige to which his success would entitle them. Homais expected to gain personal repute from his own part in the operation and to bring more business to Yonville as word of the cure spread. Neither Homais nor Emma was particularly concerned with the safety of the operation or the well-being of Hippolyte. Bovary was dubious about the new technique and was unwilling to cooperate, but, under the combined pressure of Emma and Homais, finally gave in. Moreover, nearly everyone in the town, including the mayor, was a staunch advocate of the new operation, for they had all been convinced by Homais of its advantage to them. Their ceaseless prodding continued until Bovary was ready to proceed. Hippolyte was terrified and confused by the whole idea, but he was a simple youth and was induced to volunteer his body for the sake of Yonville and Science. The operation was carried out by Homais and Charles in the local inn. At first it seemed a success, but Hippolyte soon became ill and suffered terrible pain. It was discovered that his leg was infested with gangrene. Bovary was very upset and unable to act; so a consultant was called in from another town. The doctor sternly admonished Bovary for his foolish treatment and amputated the patient's leg. Homais, meanwhile, disclaimed any responsibility, and Emma was disgusted by what she interpreted as a further demonstration of Charles' stupid incompetence. In fact, however, the fault was not entirely Bovary's although no one recognized this. Some of the blame also belonged to the specialist who had published an untested and undependable \"cure.\" Bovary and Emma were both depressed by this incident, although for different reasons. He was ashamed of what he had done and felt that he had been irresponsible. She reproached herself for ever having had faith in him and decided that she was now absolved of any responsibility to her husband. Her passion for Rodolphe flared up again, and she saw him that night for the first time in many days. Charles, in his simplicity, assumed that Emma's depression had been caused by sympathy for him and was gratified by her demonstration of devotion.", "analysis": "This chapter interrupts the progress of the love affair. At the end of the last chapter, Emma had begun to repent of her love for Rodolphe. Now she turns to Charles, and when Homais suggests the operation, she encourages it, thinking that if Charles were famous she could respect him. Through it all, Homais and Emma never give any thought to Charles or to Hippolyte, but instead see in the operation how they could personally benefit from the fame. We know, and later in retrospect Emma realizes, that Charles is not capable of such an operation, and it is only through the goading of Emma and Homais that he ever consents. The operation having failed, Emma now repents of her past virtue. In other words, Charles' ineptitude and stupidity now give her full justification to carry out her affair with no tinge of recrimination. Thus this interlude functions to again convince Emma of Charles' ignorance and to justify her infidelity. The description of the operation, the gangrene with its smell, the interest of the crowd, and the suffering of Hippolyte are all masterfully rendered. And the absurdity of Homais' letter, composed immediately after the operation, should be compared with the equally absurd letter describing the agricultural show in Chapter 8."} |
He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot, and
as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that
Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations
for strephopody or club-foot.
"For," said he to Emma, "what risk is there? See--" (and he enumerated
on his fingers the advantages of the attempt), "success, almost certain
relief and beautifying of the patient, celebrity acquired by the
operator. Why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor
Hippolyte of the 'Lion d'Or'? Note that he would not fail to tell about
his cure to all the travellers, and then" (Homais lowered his voice and
looked round him) "who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph
on the subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it
is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? who knows?"
In fact, Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to Emma that he was not
clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to a step by
which his reputation and fortune would be increased! She only wished to
lean on something more solid than love.
Charles, urged by the druggist and by her, allowed himself to be
persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume, and every evening,
holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it.
While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say,
katastrephopody, endostrephopody, and exostrephopody (or better, the
various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with the
hypostrephopody and anastrephopody), otherwise torsion downwards and
upwards, Monsier Homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the
lad at the inn to submit to the operation.
"You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick,
like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns."
Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.
"However," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me. It's for your
sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my friend, rid of
your hideous caudication, together with that waddling of the lumbar
regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in
the exercise of your calling."
Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would
feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more
likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily.
Then he attacked him through his vanity:
"Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you had had to
go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? Ah! Hippolyte!"
And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this
obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science.
The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet, who never
interfered with other people's business, Madame Lefrancois, Artemise,
the neighbours, even the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache--everyone persuaded
him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it
would cost him nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the machine
for the operation. This generosity was an idea of Emma's, and Charles
consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an
angel.
So by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a
kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith,
that weighed about eight pounds, and in which iron, wood, sheer-iron,
leather, screws, and nuts had not been spared.
But to know which of Hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was necessary first
of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had.
He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which,
however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an
equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with
a strong tendency to equinus. But with this equinus, wide in foot like
a horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which
the black nails looked as if made of iron, the clubfoot ran about like
a deer from morn till night. He was constantly to be seen on the Place,
jumping round the carts, thrusting his limping foot forwards. He seemed
even stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had
acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and energy; and
when he was given some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its
fellow.
Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendon of
Achilles, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to
afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to
risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of
injuring some important region that he did not know.
Neither Ambrose Pare, applying for the first time since Celsus, after an
interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor Dupuytren,
about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took
away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook,
minds so strained as Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, his
tenotome between his fingers. And as at hospitals, near by on a table
lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of
bandages--every bandage to be found at the druggist's. It was Monsieur
Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations,
as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles
pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the
operation over. Hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over
Bovary's hands to cover them with kisses.
"Come, be calm," said the druggist; "later on you will show your
gratitude to your benefactor."
And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were
waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Hippolyte would reappear
walking properly. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the
machine, went home, where Emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door.
She threw herself on his neck; they sat down to table; he ate much,
and at dessert he even wanted to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he only
permitted himself on Sundays when there was company.
The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. They
talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in
their house; he saw people's estimation of him growing, his comforts
increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh
herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some
tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought of Rodolphe
for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to
Charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth.
They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the servant, suddenly
entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. It
was the paragraph he intended for the "Fanal de Rouen." He brought it
for them to read.
"Read it yourself," said Bovary.
He read--
"'Despite the prejudices that still invest a part of the face of Europe
like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country
places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville found itself the
scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of
loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished
practitioners--'"
"Oh, that is too much! too much!" said Charles, choking with emotion.
"No, no! not at all! What next!"
"'--Performed an operation on a club-footed man.' I have not used the
scientific term, because you know in a newspaper everyone would not
perhaps understand. The masses must--'"
"No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!"
"I proceed," said the chemist. "'Monsieur Bovary, one of our most
distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man
called Hippolyte Tautain, stableman for the last twenty-five years at
the hotel of the "Lion d'Or," kept by Widow Lefrancois, at the Place
d'Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the
subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was
a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The
operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a
few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though to say that the
rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The
patient, strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained
of no pain. His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be
desired. Everything tends to show that his convelescence will be brief;
and who knows even if at our next village festivity we shall not see our
good Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus
of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve
and his capers his complete cure? Honour, then, to the generous savants!
Honour to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the
amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honour, thrice honour!
Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame
walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science
now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to
the successive phases of this remarkable cure.'"
This did not prevent Mere Lefrancois, from coming five days after,
scared, and crying out--
"Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!"
Charles rushed to the "Lion d'Or," and the chemist, who caught sight
of him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned his shop. He appeared
himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking everyone who was going up
the stairs--
"Why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?"
The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine
in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to
break it.
With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb,
the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. The outlines
of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed
about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous
machine. Hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. No
attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not
been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But, hardly had
the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit
to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten
matters. At last, three days after, Hippolyte being unable to endure it
any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised
at the result they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with
blisters here and there, whence there oozed a black liquid. Matters
were taking a serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry himself, and Mere
Lefrancois, had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so
that he might at least have some distraction.
But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of
such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room.
He lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale with long beard,
sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the
dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him.
She brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted, and encouraged
him. Besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days,
when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him,
fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled.
"How are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Ah! you're not
up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. You should do this! do
that!" And then they told him stories of people who had all been cured
by other remedies than his. Then by way of consolation they added--
"You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king! All the
same, old chap, you don't smell nice!"
Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary himself turned
sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Hippolyte looked at him
with eyes full of terror, sobbing--
"When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am! How
unfortunate I am!"
And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself.
"Don't listen to him, my lad," said Mere Lefrancois, "Haven't they
tortured you enough already? You'll grow still weaker. Here! swallow
this."
And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of
bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the
strength to put to his lips.
Abbe Bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him.
He began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he
ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the Lord, and take
advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to Heaven.
"For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather neglected
your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. How many years is
it since you approached the holy table? I understand that your work,
that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your
salvation. But now is the time to reflect. Yet don't despair. I have
known great sinners, who, about to appear before God (you are not yet
at this point I know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in
the best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a
good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying
morning and evening a 'Hail Mary, full of grace,' and 'Our Father which
art in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. That won't cost
you anything. Will you promise me?"
The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day. He chatted
with the landlady; and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and
puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as he could, he
fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression
of face.
His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire
to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to which Monsieur
Bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better
than one; it was no risk anyhow.
The druggist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the
priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Hippolyte's convalescence,
and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, "Leave him alone! leave him
alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism." But the good woman
would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. From a spirit
of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a basin
filled with holy-water and a branch of box.
Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and
the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards
the stomach. It was all very well to vary the potions and change the
poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last
Charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when Mere Lefrancois,
asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet
of Neufchatel, who was a celebrity.
A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position
and self-possessed, Charles's colleague did not refrain from laughing
disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then
having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the
chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such
a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted
out in the shop--
"These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry
of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of
monstrosities that the Government ought to prohibit. But they want to do
the clever, and they cram you with remedies without, troubling about
the consequences. We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants,
coxcombs, fops! We are practitioners; we cure people, and we should
not dream of operating on anyone who is in perfect health. Straighten
club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one wished,
for example, to make a hunchback straight!"
Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his
discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he needed to humour Monsier
Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville. So he
did not take up the defence of Bovary; he did not even make a single
remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the
more serious interests of his business.
This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great event in the
village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the Grande
Rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as
if an execution had been expected. At the grocer's they discussed
Hippolyte's illness; the shops did no business, and Madame Tuvache, the
mayor's wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to
see the operator arrive.
He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of the right
side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it
happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and
on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red
sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly.
After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "Lion d'Or," the
doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. Then he
went into the stable to see that she was eating her oats all right; for
on arriving at a patient's he first of all looked after his mare and his
gig. People even said about this--
"Ah! Monsieur Canivet's a character!"
And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. The
universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed
the smallest of his habits.
Homais presented himself.
"I count on you," said the doctor. "Are we ready? Come along!"
But the druggist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to
assist at such an operation.
"When one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you know,
is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!"
"Pshaw!" interrupted Canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to me inclined
to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn't astonish me, for you chemist fellows
are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your
constitutions. Now just look at me. I get up every day at four o'clock;
I shave with cold water (and am never cold). I don't wear flannels, and
I never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! I live now in one way,
now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I
am not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a
Christian as the first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will say,
habit! habit!"
Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was sweating with
agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation,
in which the druggist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a
general; and this comparison was pleasing to Canivet, who launched out
on the exigencies of his art. He looked upon, it as a sacred office,
although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At last, coming back
to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Homais, the same
that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for someone to hold the
limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for, and Monsieur Canivet having
turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the druggist
stayed with Artemise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons,
and with ears strained towards the door.
Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house.
He kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless
chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring.
"What a mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" Perhaps, after all, he had
made some slip. He thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. But the
most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would
ever believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would
spread as far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could
say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue;
he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute
him. He saw himself dishonoured, ruined, lost; and his imagination,
assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty
cask borne by the sea and floating upon the waves.
Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt
another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. As if
twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity.
Charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the
floor.
"Sit down," she said; "you fidget me."
He sat down again.
How was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed
herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had
she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She recalled all her
instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of
marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded
swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself,
all that she might have had! And for what? for what?
In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending
cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to fainting. She knit her
brows with a nervous gesture, then went on. And it was for him, for this
creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! For he
was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name
would henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to love
him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another!
"But it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed Bovary, who was
meditating.
At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a
leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma, shuddering, raised her head in
order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked at the other in
silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they
by their inner thoughts. Charles gazed at her with the dull look of
a drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the
sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by
sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered.
Emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral
that she had broken, fixed on Charles the burning glance of her eyes
like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. Everything in him irritated
her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his
existence, in fine. She repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and
what still remained of it rumbled away beneath the furious blows of her
pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery.
The memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she
threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh
enthusiasm; and Charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as
absent forever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about
to die and were passing under her eyes.
There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Charles looked up, and
through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in
the broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with his
handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his
hand, and both were going towards the chemist's.
Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement Charles
turned to his wife saying to her--
"Oh, kiss me, my own!"
"Leave me!" she said, red with anger.
"What is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "Be calm; compose yourself.
You know well enough that I love you. Come!"
"Enough!" she cried with a terrible look.
And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so violently that the
barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor.
Charles sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to discover
what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping,
and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round
him.
When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress
waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. They threw
their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow
beneath the warmth of that kiss.
| 6,583 | Chapter 11 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-11 | One day it was learned that a doctor in Rouen had published a remarkable new surgical procedure for curing clubfoot. Emma and Homais urged Charles to carry out the new operation on Hippolyte, the crippled servant at the inn. Emma hoped in this way to advance Bovary in his career and thus satisfy her desire to be a good wife; she had many daydreams about the wealth and increased prestige to which his success would entitle them. Homais expected to gain personal repute from his own part in the operation and to bring more business to Yonville as word of the cure spread. Neither Homais nor Emma was particularly concerned with the safety of the operation or the well-being of Hippolyte. Bovary was dubious about the new technique and was unwilling to cooperate, but, under the combined pressure of Emma and Homais, finally gave in. Moreover, nearly everyone in the town, including the mayor, was a staunch advocate of the new operation, for they had all been convinced by Homais of its advantage to them. Their ceaseless prodding continued until Bovary was ready to proceed. Hippolyte was terrified and confused by the whole idea, but he was a simple youth and was induced to volunteer his body for the sake of Yonville and Science. The operation was carried out by Homais and Charles in the local inn. At first it seemed a success, but Hippolyte soon became ill and suffered terrible pain. It was discovered that his leg was infested with gangrene. Bovary was very upset and unable to act; so a consultant was called in from another town. The doctor sternly admonished Bovary for his foolish treatment and amputated the patient's leg. Homais, meanwhile, disclaimed any responsibility, and Emma was disgusted by what she interpreted as a further demonstration of Charles' stupid incompetence. In fact, however, the fault was not entirely Bovary's although no one recognized this. Some of the blame also belonged to the specialist who had published an untested and undependable "cure." Bovary and Emma were both depressed by this incident, although for different reasons. He was ashamed of what he had done and felt that he had been irresponsible. She reproached herself for ever having had faith in him and decided that she was now absolved of any responsibility to her husband. Her passion for Rodolphe flared up again, and she saw him that night for the first time in many days. Charles, in his simplicity, assumed that Emma's depression had been caused by sympathy for him and was gratified by her demonstration of devotion. | This chapter interrupts the progress of the love affair. At the end of the last chapter, Emma had begun to repent of her love for Rodolphe. Now she turns to Charles, and when Homais suggests the operation, she encourages it, thinking that if Charles were famous she could respect him. Through it all, Homais and Emma never give any thought to Charles or to Hippolyte, but instead see in the operation how they could personally benefit from the fame. We know, and later in retrospect Emma realizes, that Charles is not capable of such an operation, and it is only through the goading of Emma and Homais that he ever consents. The operation having failed, Emma now repents of her past virtue. In other words, Charles' ineptitude and stupidity now give her full justification to carry out her affair with no tinge of recrimination. Thus this interlude functions to again convince Emma of Charles' ignorance and to justify her infidelity. The description of the operation, the gangrene with its smell, the interest of the crowd, and the suffering of Hippolyte are all masterfully rendered. And the absurdity of Homais' letter, composed immediately after the operation, should be compared with the equally absurd letter describing the agricultural show in Chapter 8. | 606 | 210 |
2,413 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_12_to_13.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_16_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 12-13 | chapters 12-13 | null | {"name": "Chapters 12-13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-1213", "summary": "The liaison between Emma and Rodolphe began again and now evolved with greater ardor. As her passion for Rodolphe increased, Emma found that she disliked Bovary even more, and she began to speak vaguely of leaving him someday. When she was not with Rodolphe, Emma suffered from boredom and was irritated by all of Charles' mannerisms and acts. She began to feel sorry for herself because of her unhappy marriage and found some solace in catering to her material desires. She fell an easy victim to the wily merchant, Lheureux, who cajoled her into many purchases that she could not afford. Rodolphe, meanwhile, was growing tired of Emma. The novelty of her love was wearing off, and her ridiculous whims annoyed him. Bovary's mother paid the family a visit. She and Emma had their usual fight, though Emma was finally induced by Charles to apologize. She was mortified by this and when she saw Rodolphe that night, Emma asked him to take her away from all her misery. He reminded her of the baby, and, as an afterthought, Emma decided to take the child with her. In the next few days Bovary and his mother were amazed and pleased at the changes that came over Emma; she was quiet and docile now and seemed a new person. But at her secret meetings with Rodolphe, Emma was planning to run away and start her life again. The happiness that such plans gave her added new highlights and softness to her beauty. She was so gentle and lovely that Bovary was reminded of the first days of their marriage, and his love for her and Berthe deepened. Emma's thoughts, though, were always far off, contemplating exotic lands and adventures. Despite Rodolphe's procrastination, the final plans for their departure were made. He and Emma would leave Yonville separately, meet in Rouen, and then go on together to Paris. On the night before the day selected, they met in Emma's garden to make the last arrangements. Emma was in high spirits and seemed more beautiful than ever. Rodolphe was reserved and thoughtful. After leaving her he argued with himself for a while. The problems and burdens of life with Emma, he decided, would not be worth the sensual pleasure she could offer him. That night Rodolphe sat at his desk and mused for a while about the many women he had known. After some trouble he composed a letter which he felt would end their affair with the fewest complications. He wrote her that he loved her very much and that this was why he was abandoning her. He said that the life he could offer would provide her only with pain and indignity, and he could not bear to do this. And, he thought, this was really not too far from the truth after all. Much satisfied with his work, Rodolphe went to sleep. Emma received this note the next morning and became faint from shock. In her confusion she dropped the crumbled up letter in the attic and forgot about it. Rodolphe had told her that he was leaving Yonville to protect her from him, and a few moments later she saw his carriage drive by. This awful reminder of what had just happened was like a blow to her heart. She screamed aloud and fell unconscious. Emma became seriously ill. She had a high fever and delirium for 43 days and was often close to death. Bovary never left her side and neglected all his affairs to care for her. Specialists were called in from Rouen and elsewhere, and every effort was made to cure her, but for a long time nothing had any success. By October, Emma began to regain her strength. She still had fainting spells and weak periods, but she was able to move around a little, and was clearly on the road to recovery.", "analysis": "These two chapters present the passionate renewal of Emma and Rodolphe's love affair after the disappointing interlude connected with Hippolyte's foot. Emma's romanticism now forces her to bring the romance to a climax. She is not satisfied with having an affair with Rodolphe. She insists that they flee together to some strange land. This emphasis on flight is another romantic concept. And while she is insisting that they go away, she begins to go deeper in debt to Lheureux by ordering expensive gifts for Rodolphe and the necessary things for the trip. After Emma receives Rodolphe's letter, she immediately begins to think of suicide. This foreshadows her actual suicide later on. Emma's sickness caused by her betrayal suggests that perhaps she felt a love for Rodolphe that is indeed deeper than that of a common woman. Perhaps Flaubert is here indicating that Emma, in spite of her romanticism, is capable of a deep devotion. But most critics prefer to read this scene as Emma's reaction to the loss of her dream and the realization of the emptiness and uselessness of life without her dream. Her sickness, therefore, is simply a result of the betrayal and the loss of her ideal which bring to her the realization that she must continue the empty life that she had lived before her encounter with Rodolphe. It should be noted here that in spite of Charles' dullness and stupidity, he does possess a dogged devotion to Emma. He gives up his practice and remains by her side during her entire illness. Of course, it could be said that his devotion is the same that an animal would have for his master, but it is, nevertheless, a redeeming characteristic in Charles' otherwise flat personality."} |
They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle of the
day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to
Justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La Huchette. Rodolphe
would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that
her husband was odious, her life frightful.
"But what can I do?" he cried one day impatiently.
"Ah! if you would--"
She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look
lost.
"Why, what?" said Rodolphe.
She sighed.
"We would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!"
"You are really mad!" he said laughing. "How could that be possible?"
She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned
the conversation.
What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair
as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her
affection.
Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her
husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed
the other. Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have
such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found
themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing
the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose
black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once
so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience
in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that she
filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never
enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs.
She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. When he
was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and
prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince.
The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Felicite
did not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her
company, watched her at work.
With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he
greedily watched all these women's clothes spread about him, the dimity
petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running
strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.
"What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the
crinoline or the hooks and eyes.
"Why, haven't you ever seen anything?" Felicite answered laughing. "As
if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn't wear the same."
"Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!" And he added with a meditative air, "As
if she were a lady like madame!"
But Felicite grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She was six
years older than he, and Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, was
beginning to pay court to her.
"Let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "You'd better be
off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. Before you
meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've got a beard to your
chin."
"Oh, don't be cross! I'll go and clean her boots."
And he at once took down from the shelf Emma's boots, all coated with
mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his
fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight.
"How afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who wasn't so
particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff
of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her.
Emma had a number in her cupboard that she squandered one after the
other, without Charles allowing himself the slightest observation. So
also he disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought
proper to make a present of to Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork,
and it had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black
trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring
to use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him
another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to defray
the expense of this purchase.
So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One saw him
running about the village as before, and when Charles heard from afar
the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction.
It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order;
this provided him with an excuse for visiting Emma. He chatted with her
about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made
himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. Emma yielded to
this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have
a very handsome ridding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at Rouen
to give to Rodolphe. The week after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her
table.
But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and
seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was much embarrassed;
all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a
fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any
quantity of other things, and Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur
Derozeray's account, which he was in the habit of paying every year
about Midsummer.
She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost
patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some
in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received.
"Oh, very well, take them!" said Emma.
"I was only joking," he replied; "the only thing I regret is the whip.
My word! I'll ask monsieur to return it to me."
"No, no!" she said.
"Ah! I've got you!" thought Lheureux.
And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in an
undertone, and with his usual low whistle--
"Good! we shall see! we shall see!"
She was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming in
put on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper "from Monsieur
Derozeray's." Emma pounced upon and opened it. It contained fifteen
napoleons; it was the account. She heard Charles on the stairs; threw
the gold to the back of her drawer, and took out the key.
Three days after Lheureux reappeared.
"I have an arrangement to suggest to you," he said. "If, instead of the
sum agreed on, you would take--"
"Here it is," she said placing fourteen napoleons in his hand.
The tradesman was dumfounded. Then, to conceal his disappointment, he
was profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which Emma
declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of
her apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change.
She promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on.
"Pshaw!" she thought, "he won't think about it again."
Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Rodolphe had
received a seal with the motto Amor nel cor* furthermore, a scarf for
a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the Viscount's, that
Charles had formerly picked up in the road, and that Emma had kept.
These presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she
insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and
overexacting.
*A loving heart.
Then she had strange ideas.
"When midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me."
And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of
reproaches that always ended with the eternal question--
"Do you love me?"
"Why, of course I love you," he answered.
"A great deal?"
"Certainly!"
"You haven't loved any others?"
"Did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing.
Emma cried, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with
puns.
"Oh," she went on, "I love you! I love you so that I could not live
without you, do you see? There are times when I long to see you again,
when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself, Where is
he? Perhaps he is talking to other women. They smile upon him; he
approaches. Oh no; no one else pleases you. There are some more
beautiful, but I love you best. I know how to love best. I am your
servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are
beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!"
He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as
original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty,
gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony
of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He
did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of
sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine
and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the
candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be
discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in
the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of
his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human
speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to
make bears dance when we long to move the stars.
But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him who, in no
matter what circumstance, holds back, Rodolphe saw other delights to be
got out of this love. He thought all modesty in the way. He treated her
quite sans facon.* He made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers
was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of
voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank
into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in
his butt of Malmsey.
*Off-handedly.
By the mere effect of her love Madame Bovary's manners changed.
Her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the
impropriety of walking out with Monsieur Rodolphe, a cigarette in her
mouth, "as if to defy the people." At last, those who still doubted
doubted no longer when one day they saw her getting out of the
"Hirondelle," her waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and Madame
Bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken
refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalised of the women-folk.
Many other things displeased her. First, Charles had not attended to
her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the "ways of the house"
annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were
quarrels, especially one on account of Felicite.
Madame Bovary senior, the evening before, passing along the passage,
had surprised her in company of a man--a man with a brown collar, about
forty years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly escaped
through the kitchen. Then Emma began to laugh, but the good lady grew
angry, declaring that unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to
look after those of one's servants.
"Where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law, with so
impertinent a look that Madame Bovary asked her if she were not perhaps
defending her own case.
"Leave the room!" said the young woman, springing up with a bound.
"Emma! Mamma!" cried Charles, trying to reconcile them.
But both had fled in their exasperation. Emma was stamping her feet as
she repeated--
"Oh! what manners! What a peasant!"
He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She stammered
"She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!"
And she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologise. So
Charles went back again to his wife and implored her to give way; he
knelt to her; she ended by saying--
"Very well! I'll go to her."
And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity
of a marchioness as she said--
"Excuse me, madame."
Then, having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on her
bed and cried there like a child, her face buried in the pillow.
She and Rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything extraordinary
occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white paper to the blind,
so that if by chance he happened to be in Yonville, he could hurry to
the lane behind the house. Emma made the signal; she had been waiting
three-quarters of an hour when she suddenly caught sight of Rodolphe at
the corner of the market. She felt tempted to open the window and call
him, but he had already disappeared. She fell back in despair.
Soon, however, it seemed to her that someone was walking on the
pavement. It was he, no doubt. She went downstairs, crossed the yard. He
was there outside. She threw herself into his arms.
"Do take care!" he said.
"Ah! if you knew!" she replied.
And she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly,
exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of parentheses
that he understood nothing of it.
"Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted! be patient!"
"But I have been patient; I have suffered for four years. A love like
ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. They torture me! I can
bear it no longer! Save me!"
She clung to Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears, flashed like flames
beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her so much, so
that he lost his head and said "What is, it? What do you wish?"
"Take me away," she cried, "carry me off! Oh, I pray you!"
And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the
unexpected consent if breathed forth in a kiss.
"But--" Rodolphe resumed.
"What?"
"Your little girl!"
She reflected a few moments, then replied--
"We will take her! It can't be helped!"
"What a woman!" he said to himself, watching her as she went. For she
had run into the garden. Someone was calling her.
On the following days Madame Bovary senior was much surprised at the
change in her daughter-in-law. Emma, in fact, was showing herself more
docile, and even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe for
pickling gherkins.
Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she wish by a sort of
voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness of the
things she was about to leave?
But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as lost in the
anticipated delight of her coming happiness.
It was an eternal subject for conversation with Rodolphe. She leant on
his shoulder murmuring--
"Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you think about it? Can it be? It
seems to me that the moment I feel the carriage start, it will be as if
we were rising in a balloon, as if we were setting out for the clouds.
Do you know that I count the hours? And you?"
Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had
that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from
success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances.
Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young
illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers
grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all
the plenitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for
her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong
inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner
of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. One would have
thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair
upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the
changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. Her
voice now took more mellow infections, her figure also; something subtle
and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from the
line of her foot. Charles, as when they were first married, thought her
delicious and quite irresistible.
When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to wake
her. The porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam upon the
ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed as it were a
white hut standing out in the shade, and by the bedside Charles looked
at them. He seemed to hear the light breathing of his child. She would
grow big now; every season would bring rapid progress. He already saw
her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on
her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. Then she would have to
be sent to the boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to
be done? Then he reflected. He thought of hiring a small farm in the
neighbourhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way to his
patients. He would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the
savings-bank. Then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter where;
besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon that, for he
wanted Berthe to be well-educated, to be accomplished, to learn to play
the piano. Ah! how pretty she would be later on when she was fifteen,
when, resembling her mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats
in the summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters.
He pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side beneath
the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would look
after the house; she would fill all the home with her charm and her
gaiety. At last, they would think of her marriage; they would find her
some good young fellow with a steady business; he would make her happy;
this would last for ever.
Emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off by her
side she awakened to other dreams.
To the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week towards a
new land, whence they would return no more. They went on and on, their
arms entwined, without a word. Often from the top of a mountain there
suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with domes, and bridges, and
ships, forests of citron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose
pointed steeples were storks' nests. They went at a walking-pace because
of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of
flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bodices. They heard the
chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur of
guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps
of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled
beneath playing waters. And then, one night they came to a fishing
village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and
in front of the huts. It was there that they would stay; they would live
in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a
gulf, by the sea. They would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and
their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and
star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. However, in the
immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood
forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and
it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonised, azure, and bathed in
sunshine. But the child began to cough in her cot or Bovary snored
more loudly, and Emma did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn
whitened the windows, and when little Justin was already in the square
taking down the shutters of the chemist's shop.
She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said to him--
"I want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar."
"You are going on a journey?" he asked.
"No; but--never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and quickly?"
He bowed.
"Besides, I shall want," she went on, "a trunk--not too heavy--handy."
"Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half, as they
are being made just now."
"And a travelling bag."
"Decidedly," thought Lheureux, "there's a row on here."
"And," said Madame Bovary, taking her watch from her belt, "take this;
you can pay yourself out of it."
But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one another;
did he doubt her? What childishness!
She insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and Lheureux
had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she called him
back.
"You will leave everything at your place. As to the cloak"--she seemed
to be reflecting--"do not bring it either; you can give me the maker's
address, and tell him to have it ready for me."
It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to leave
Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen. Rodolphe would
have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to
Paris in order to have the whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as
Marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without
stopping to Genoa. She would take care to send her luggage to Lheureux
whence it would be taken direct to the "Hirondelle," so that no one
would have any suspicion. And in all this there never was any allusion
to the child. Rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer
thought about it.
He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs;
then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill;
next he went on a journey. The month of August passed, and, after all
these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the
4th September--a Monday.
At length the Saturday before arrived.
Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual.
"Everything is ready?" she asked him.
"Yes."
Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the
terrace on the kerb-stone of the wall.
"You are sad," said Emma.
"No; why?"
And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion.
"It is because you are going away?" she went on; "because you are
leaving what is dear to you--your life? Ah! I understand. I have nothing
in the world! you are all to me; so shall I be to you. I will be your
people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!"
"How sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms.
"Really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "Do you love me? Swear it
then!"
"Do I love you--love you? I adore you, my love."
The moon, full and purple-coloured, was rising right out of the earth
at the end of the meadow. She rose quickly between the branches of the
poplars, that hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced with
holes. Then she appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens
that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the
river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the
silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a heedless
serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster
candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together.
The soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches.
Emma, her eyes half closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind
that was blowing. They did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of
their reverie. The tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts,
full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume
of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense
and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over
the grass. Often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on
the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach
falling all alone from the espalier.
"Ah! what a lovely night!" said Rodolphe.
"We shall have others," replied Emma; and, as if speaking to herself:
"Yet, it will be good to travel. And yet, why should my heart be
so heavy? Is it dread of the unknown? The effect of habits left? Or
rather--? No; it is the excess of happiness. How weak I am, am I not?
Forgive me!"
"There is still time!" he cried. "Reflect! perhaps you may repent!"
"Never!" she cried impetuously. And coming closer to him: "What ill
could come to me? There is no desert, no precipice, no ocean I would not
traverse with you. The longer we live together the more it will be like
an embrace, every day closer, more heart to heart. There will be
nothing to trouble us, no cares, no obstacle. We shall be alone, all to
ourselves eternally. Oh, speak! Answer me!"
At regular intervals he answered, "Yes--Yes--" She had passed her hands
through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big
tears which were falling, "Rodolphe! Rodolphe! Ah! Rodolphe! dear little
Rodolphe!"
Midnight struck.
"Midnight!" said she. "Come, it is to-morrow. One day more!"
He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for
their flight, Emma said, suddenly assuming a gay air--
"You have the passports?"
"Yes."
"You are forgetting nothing?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Certainly."
"It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at
midday?"
He nodded.
"Till to-morrow then!" said Emma in a last caress; and she watched him
go.
He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water's
edge between the bulrushes--
"To-morrow!" she cried.
He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across
the meadow.
After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white
gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with
such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should
fall.
"What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No matter! She
was a pretty mistress!"
And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love,
came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against
her.
"For, after all," he exclaimed, gesticulating, "I can't exile
myself--have a child on my hands."
He was saying these things to give himself firmness.
"And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand
times no! That would be too stupid."
No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau
under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But when he had
the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting
on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded
into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly
placed a distance between them.
To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the
bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters
from women, and from it came an odour of dry dust and withered
roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a
handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he
had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature
given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her
languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this
image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma's features little
by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the
painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other.
Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations
relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business
notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In
order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the
others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and
things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and
hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box,
broke when it was opened.
Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style
of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or
jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love,
others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain
gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered
nothing at all.
In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each
other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalised
them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself
for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into
his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to
the cupboard, saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!" Which summed
up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard,
had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that
which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like
them, leave a name carved upon the wall.
"Come," said he, "let's begin."
He wrote--
"Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life."
"After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her
interest; I am honest."
"Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an
abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were
coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. Ah!
unhappy that we are--insensate!"
Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.
"If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would stop
nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one
could make women like that listen to reason!" He reflected, then went
on--
"I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound
devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is
the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. Lassitude
would have come to us, and who knows if I should not even have had the
atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since
I should have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come
to you tortures me, Emma. Forget me! Why did I ever know you? Why were
you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate."
"That's a word that always tells," he said to himself.
"Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees,
certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in that
case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at once your
charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable
woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. Nor had I
reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal
happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the
consequences."
"Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much
the worse; it must be stopped!"
"The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would have
persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet questions,
calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult to you! Oh! And I, who would
place you on a throne! I who bear with me your memory as a talisman! For
I am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you.
I am going away. Whither I know not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always.
Preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name
to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers."
The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to, shut the window,
and when he had sat down again--
"I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt
me up."
"I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have wished to
flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again.
No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later on we shall talk together
very coldly of our old love. Adieu!"
And there was a last "adieu" divided into two words! "A Dieu!" which he
thought in very excellent taste.
"Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself. "'Yours devotedly?' No!
'Your friend?' Yes, that's it."
"Your friend."
He re-read his letter. He considered it very good.
"Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "She'll think me harder
than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can't
cry; it isn't my fault." Then, having emptied some water into a glass,
Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the
paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he
came upon the one "Amor nel cor."
"That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never mind!"
After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.
The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late),
Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put his letter at
the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his
ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Bovary. He made use of this
means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season fruits
or game.
"If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that I have gone on
a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands.
Get along and take care!"
Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the
apricots, and walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound
galoshes, made his way to Yonville.
Madame Bovary, when he got to her house, was arranging a bundle of linen
on the kitchen-table with Felicite.
"Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you--from the master."
She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for
some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he
himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a
present could so move anyone. At last he went out. Felicite remained.
She could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting room as if to take
the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found
the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her,
Emma flew to her room terrified.
Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and
she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and
ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her
fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second floor she stopped
before the attic door, which was closed.
Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish
it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! "Ah, no!
here," she thought, "I shall be all right."
Emma pushed open the door and went in.
The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples,
stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew
back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap.
Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it was lost
to sight. Down below, underneath her, the village square was empty; the
stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were
motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower storey, rose a
kind of humming with strident modulations. It was Binet turning.
She leant against the embrasure of the window, and reread the letter
with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the
more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled
him with her arms, and throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast
like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven
intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth might
crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was
free. She advanced, looking at the paving-stones, saying to herself,
"Come! come!"
The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of
her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the
oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on
end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging,
surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air
was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself
be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice
calling her.
"Emma! Emma!" cried Charles.
She stopped.
"Wherever are you? Come!"
The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint
with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a
hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite.
"Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table."
And she had to go down to sit at table.
She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as
if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to
this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance
of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find
it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent
a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was
afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced
these words in a strange manner:
"We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems."
"Who told you?" she said, shuddering.
"Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "Why,
Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe Francais. He has
gone on a journey, or is to go."
She gave a sob.
"What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time
to time for a change, and, ma foi, I think he's right, when one has a
fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend.
He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--"
He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She put
back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles,
without noticing his wife's colour, had them brought to him, took one,
and bit into it.
"Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!"
And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently.
"Do just smell! What an odour!" he remarked, passing it under her nose
several times.
"I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the
spasm passed; then--
"It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down
and go on eating." For she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her,
attending to her, that she should not be left alone.
Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the
apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate.
Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma
uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground.
In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for
Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by
Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma had recognised him
by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the
twilight.
The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house ran thither. The
table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and
cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles was calling for help;
Berthe, scared, was crying; and Felicite, whose hands trembled, was
unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively.
"I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the
druggist.
Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle--
"I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person for
you!"
"Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it is your Charles, who
loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss her!"
The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But
turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice "No, no! no one!"
She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stretched
at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open,
motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from
her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow.
Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist,
near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the
serious occasions of life.
"Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "I think the paroxysm
is past."
"Yes, she is resting a little now," answered Charles, watching her
sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!"
Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles answered that
she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots.
"Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it might be that the
apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to
certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both
in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the
importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their
ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a
thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more
delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt
hartshorn, of new bread--"
"Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a low voice.
"And not only," the druggist went on, "are human beings subject to such
anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly
aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called
catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example
whose authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at
present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into
convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even
makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at Guillaume
Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could produce such
ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is extremely curious, is it not?"
"Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to him.
"This shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign
self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system.
With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I confess, very
susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend to you, my dear
friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence
of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless
physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification.
Then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked
upon?"
"In what way? How?" said Bovary.
"Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the question,' as
I lately read in a newspaper."
But Emma, awaking, cried out--
"The letter! the letter!"
They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain-fever had
set in.
For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his
patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse,
putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as
Neufchatel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again.
He called Monsieur Canivet into consultation; he sent for Dr. Lariviere,
his old master, from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was
Emma's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even
seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after
all their troubles.
About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by
pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her
strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon,
and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his
arm, for a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing
beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers,
and leaning against Charles's shoulder. She smiled all the time.
They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She drew
herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. She looked
far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great
bonfires of grass smoking on the hills.
"You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary. And, pushing her
gently to make her go into the arbour, "Sit down on this seat; you'll be
comfortable."
"Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice.
She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness
recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more
complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the
head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the
first signs of cancer.
And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters.
| 11,878 | Chapters 12-13 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-1213 | The liaison between Emma and Rodolphe began again and now evolved with greater ardor. As her passion for Rodolphe increased, Emma found that she disliked Bovary even more, and she began to speak vaguely of leaving him someday. When she was not with Rodolphe, Emma suffered from boredom and was irritated by all of Charles' mannerisms and acts. She began to feel sorry for herself because of her unhappy marriage and found some solace in catering to her material desires. She fell an easy victim to the wily merchant, Lheureux, who cajoled her into many purchases that she could not afford. Rodolphe, meanwhile, was growing tired of Emma. The novelty of her love was wearing off, and her ridiculous whims annoyed him. Bovary's mother paid the family a visit. She and Emma had their usual fight, though Emma was finally induced by Charles to apologize. She was mortified by this and when she saw Rodolphe that night, Emma asked him to take her away from all her misery. He reminded her of the baby, and, as an afterthought, Emma decided to take the child with her. In the next few days Bovary and his mother were amazed and pleased at the changes that came over Emma; she was quiet and docile now and seemed a new person. But at her secret meetings with Rodolphe, Emma was planning to run away and start her life again. The happiness that such plans gave her added new highlights and softness to her beauty. She was so gentle and lovely that Bovary was reminded of the first days of their marriage, and his love for her and Berthe deepened. Emma's thoughts, though, were always far off, contemplating exotic lands and adventures. Despite Rodolphe's procrastination, the final plans for their departure were made. He and Emma would leave Yonville separately, meet in Rouen, and then go on together to Paris. On the night before the day selected, they met in Emma's garden to make the last arrangements. Emma was in high spirits and seemed more beautiful than ever. Rodolphe was reserved and thoughtful. After leaving her he argued with himself for a while. The problems and burdens of life with Emma, he decided, would not be worth the sensual pleasure she could offer him. That night Rodolphe sat at his desk and mused for a while about the many women he had known. After some trouble he composed a letter which he felt would end their affair with the fewest complications. He wrote her that he loved her very much and that this was why he was abandoning her. He said that the life he could offer would provide her only with pain and indignity, and he could not bear to do this. And, he thought, this was really not too far from the truth after all. Much satisfied with his work, Rodolphe went to sleep. Emma received this note the next morning and became faint from shock. In her confusion she dropped the crumbled up letter in the attic and forgot about it. Rodolphe had told her that he was leaving Yonville to protect her from him, and a few moments later she saw his carriage drive by. This awful reminder of what had just happened was like a blow to her heart. She screamed aloud and fell unconscious. Emma became seriously ill. She had a high fever and delirium for 43 days and was often close to death. Bovary never left her side and neglected all his affairs to care for her. Specialists were called in from Rouen and elsewhere, and every effort was made to cure her, but for a long time nothing had any success. By October, Emma began to regain her strength. She still had fainting spells and weak periods, but she was able to move around a little, and was clearly on the road to recovery. | These two chapters present the passionate renewal of Emma and Rodolphe's love affair after the disappointing interlude connected with Hippolyte's foot. Emma's romanticism now forces her to bring the romance to a climax. She is not satisfied with having an affair with Rodolphe. She insists that they flee together to some strange land. This emphasis on flight is another romantic concept. And while she is insisting that they go away, she begins to go deeper in debt to Lheureux by ordering expensive gifts for Rodolphe and the necessary things for the trip. After Emma receives Rodolphe's letter, she immediately begins to think of suicide. This foreshadows her actual suicide later on. Emma's sickness caused by her betrayal suggests that perhaps she felt a love for Rodolphe that is indeed deeper than that of a common woman. Perhaps Flaubert is here indicating that Emma, in spite of her romanticism, is capable of a deep devotion. But most critics prefer to read this scene as Emma's reaction to the loss of her dream and the realization of the emptiness and uselessness of life without her dream. Her sickness, therefore, is simply a result of the betrayal and the loss of her ideal which bring to her the realization that she must continue the empty life that she had lived before her encounter with Rodolphe. It should be noted here that in spite of Charles' dullness and stupidity, he does possess a dogged devotion to Emma. He gives up his practice and remains by her side during her entire illness. Of course, it could be said that his devotion is the same that an animal would have for his master, but it is, nevertheless, a redeeming characteristic in Charles' otherwise flat personality. | 862 | 289 |
2,413 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_14_to_15.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_17_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 14-15 | chapters 14-15 | null | {"name": "Chapters 14-15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-1415", "summary": "In addition to his concern about Emma, Charles was also bothered by financial worries. The illness had been very expensive, and other bills were piling up. Moreover, Lheureux suddenly presented him with a statement of Emma's debts. Not knowing what else to do, Bovary borrowed money from Lheureux and signed several notes at a high rate of interest. All through the winter months Emma's convalescence continued. During a crisis in her illness, Emma's religious sentiments had reawakened. Now she was very devout and spent much of her time reading religious books or conversing with the priest. By spring Emma was relatively strong again and returned to her household duties. Her religious feelings remained firm, and everyone was surprised by her new generosity, spirituality, and stern principles. One day at Homais' suggestion, Bovary decided to take Emma to the theater at Rouen. He hoped that such an outing would be good for her health. Emma was not eager to go, but Bovary was so persistent that she agreed. On the day of the trip they excitedly left for the city. Emma was embarrassed and upset by Charles' behavior and appearance all that afternoon. She wanted very much to seem a sophisticated, cosmopolitan lady, and she felt that he was just a country bumpkin. She was tense and self-conscious wherever they went. Despite this, however, Emma enjoyed the opera, Lucie de Lammermoor, very much. She found that the story reminded her of events in her own life. During the intermission they were both surprised to encounter Leon, who now lived and worked in Rouen. The three went to a cafe together, where Bovary and Leon talked at length about Yonville, their mutual friends, and old times. Leon also told them a little about his present position and his experiences at the university. Emma was impressed by Leon's suave, citified manners and dress. When they discussed the opera they had just left, Leon at first ridiculed it until he learned that perhaps Emma could stay over to see the second part again. He then praised the opera so highly that Charles suggested that Emma stay while he return to his practice. In any case, before they separated, the Bovarys and Leon arranged to meet again the next day.", "analysis": "After Emma's recovery from her illness, she falls back into the old, established, neurotic pattern of taking up something only to drop it for something else. She gave herself so completely to religion that even the cure thought she went too far. Then she began charity work even though her own household needed attention. Once at the opera, Emma becomes immersed in the romantic world on the stage. She begins to identify with the heroine and she is entranced with the tenor. Here Flaubert's art is very subtle. The objective description of the artist says little, but implies that the artist is false. Like Emma, he misrepresents art. He uses tricks to cover up for his lack of art. There is \"something of the hair dresser and the toreador\" about him. Thus, Emma is lost in this false and sentimental world of cheap art. The scene at the opera prepares the reader and also Emma for the reintroduction of Leon. The romantic elements of the opera provide an apt meeting place to rekindle their attraction to each other."} |
To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Monsieur Homais for all
the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man, he was not
obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a little at such an
obligation. Then the expenses of the household, now that the servant was
mistress, became terrible. Bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen
grumbled; Monsieur Lheureux especially harassed him. In fact, at
the height of Emma's illness, the latter, taking advantage of the
circumstances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak,
the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other
things. It was very well for Charles to say he did not want them. The
tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and
that he would not take them back; besides, it would vex madame in her
convalescence; the doctor had better think it over; in short, he was
resolved to sue him rather than give up his rights and take back his
goods. Charles subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the shop.
Felicite forgot; he had other things to attend to; then thought no more
about them. Monsieur Lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns
threatening and whining, so managed that Bovary ended by signing a
bill at six months. But hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea
occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux.
So, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them,
adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished. Lheureux
ran off to his shop, brought back the money, and dictated another bill,
by which Bovary undertook to pay to his order on the 1st of September
next the sum of one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred
and eighty already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus
lending at six per cent in addition to one-fourth for commission: and
the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in
twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty francs. He
hoped that the business would not stop there; that the bills would not
be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his poor little money,
having thriven at the doctor's as at a hospital, would come back to him
one day considerably more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag.
Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudicator for a
supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchatel; Monsieur Guillaumin
promised him some shares in the turf-pits of Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of
establishing a new diligence service between Arcueil and Rouen, which
no doubt would not be long in ruining the ramshackle van of the "Lion
d'Or," and that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more
luggage, would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville.
Charles several times asked himself by what means he should next year be
able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined expedients, such
as applying to his father or selling something. But his father would be
deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that
he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from
his mind. He reproached himself with forgetting Emma, as if, all his
thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to
be constantly thinking of her.
The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence slow. When it
was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the window that overlooked the
square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on
that side were always down. She wished the horse to be sold; what she
formerly liked now displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to
the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the
servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on
the market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain
began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for
the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no
relation to her. The most important was the arrival of the "Hirondelle"
in the evening. Then the landlady shouted out, and other voices
answered, while Hippolyte's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the
boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in;
then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five
o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school,
dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of
the shutters with their rulers one after the other.
It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He
inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion, in a
coaxing little prattle that was not without its charm. The mere thought
of his cassock comforted her.
One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself
dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the
preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the
night table covered with syrups into an altar, and while Felicite was
strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing
over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from
all feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was
beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would
be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into
vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew
from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial
joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the Saviour
presented to her. The curtains of the alcove floated gently round her
like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table
seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back,
fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived
in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green
palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to
earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms.
This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing
that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her
sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion
and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride, at length
found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she
saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a
wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then,
in the place of happiness, still greater joys--another love beyond all
loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She
saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the
earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become
a saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her
room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might
kiss it every evening.
The cure marvelled at this humour, although Emma's religion, he thought,
might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. But
not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a
certain limit he wrote to Monsieur Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor,
to send him "something good for a lady who was very clever." The
bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off
hardware to niggers, packed up, pellmell, everything that was then the
fashion in the pious book trade. There were little manuals in questions
and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur
de Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with
a honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent
blue-stockings. There were the "Think of it; the Man of the World at
Mary's Feet, by Monsieur de ***, decorated with many Orders"; "The
Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young," etc.
Madame Bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself
seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much
hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance
of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking
people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with
religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that
they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was
looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped
from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic
melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive.
As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the bottom of
her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than
a king's mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation escaped from this embalmed
love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the
immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. When she knelt on her
Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that
she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery.
It was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens,
and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic
dupery.
This searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the more,
and in the pride of her devoutness Emma compared herself to those grand
ladies of long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of La
Valliere, and who, trailing with so much majesty the lace-trimmed trains
of their long gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet of
Christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded.
Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She sewed clothes for the
poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and Charles one day, on coming
home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table
eating soup. She had her little girl, whom during her illness her
husband had sent back to the nurse, brought home. She wanted to teach
her to read; even when Berthe cried, she was not vexed. She had made
up her mind to resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about
everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her child, "Is
your stomach-ache better, my angel?"
Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this mania
of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own house-linen;
but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in
this quiet house, and she even stayed there till after Easter, to escape
the sarcasms of old Bovary, who never failed on Good Friday to order
chitterlings.
Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened her a
little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways, Emma almost
every day had other visitors. These were Madame Langlois, Madame Caron,
Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and regularly from two to five o'clock
the excellent Madame Homais, who, for her part, had never believed any
of the tittle-tattle about her neighbour. The little Homais also came to
see her; Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom,
and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even
Madame Bovary; taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She began by
taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when
he for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees
unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him, poor child! like a sudden
entrance into something new and strange, whose splendour terrified him.
Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his timidity.
She had no suspicion that the love vanished from her life was there,
palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that
youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. Besides, she
now enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so
affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one
could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from
virtue. One evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who
had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext.
Then suddenly--
"So you love him?" she said.
And without waiting for any answer from Felicite, who was blushing, she
added, "There! run along; enjoy yourself!"
In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end,
despite Bovary's remonstrances. However, he was glad to see her at last
manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more
wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mere Rollet, the nurse,
who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too
often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better
off for teeth than a cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family,
successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented
church less assiduously, to the great approval of the druggist, who said
to her in a friendly way--
"You were going in a bit for the cassock!"
As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he came out
after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the
air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This was the time when
Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and
they drank together to madame's complete restoration.
Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace
wall, fishing for crayfish. Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he
thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles.
"You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to
the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on
the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with
little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at
restaurants."
But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their
faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this
joke--
"Its goodness strikes the eye!"
He was, in fact, a good fellow and one day he was not even scandalised
at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction
by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor,
Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion,
and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for
morals than literature.
But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he
contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of
pleasure, taught virtue.
"'Castigat ridendo mores,'* Monsieur Bournisien! Thus consider the
greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with
philosophical reflections, that made them a vast school of morals and
diplomacy for the people."
*It corrects customs through laughter.
"I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,' in which
there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a
T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the
ending--"
"Certainly," continued Homais, "there is bad literature as there is bad
pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts
seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times
that imprisoned Galileo."
"I know very well," objected the cure, "that there are good works,
good authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes
united in a bewitching apartment, decorated rouge, those lights, those
effeminate voices, all this must, in the long-run, engender a
certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and impure
temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers.
Finally," he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice while
he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, "if the Church has
condemned the theatre, she must be right; we must submit to her
decrees."
"Why," asked the druggist, "should she excommunicate actors? For
formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the
middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called
'Mysteries,' which often offended against the laws of decency."
The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the
chemist went on--
"It's like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know, more than one
piquant detail, matters really libidinous!"
And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien--
"Ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young
girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie--"
"But it is the Protestants, and not we," cried the other impatiently,
"who recommend the Bible."
"No matter," said Homais. "I am surprised that in our days, in this
century of enlightenment, anyone should still persist in proscribing an
intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes
even hygienic; is it not, doctor?"
"No doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the
same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any
ideas.
The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot
a Parthian arrow.
"I've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers
kicking about."
"Come, come!" said the cure.
"Ah! I've known some!" And separating the words of his sentence, Homais
repeated, "I--have--known--some!"
"Well, they were wrong," said Bournisien, resigned to anything.
"By Jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed the druggist.
"Sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that the druggist
was intimidated by them.
"I only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a tone, "that toleration
is the surest way to draw people to religion."
"That is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow, sitting down again
on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments.
Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor--
"That's what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see, in a
way!--Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were only
for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If anyone
could take my place, I would accompany you myself. Be quick about it.
Lagardy is only going to give one performance; he's engaged to go to
England at a high salary. From what I hear, he's a regular dog; he's
rolling in money; he's taking three mistresses and a cook along with
him. All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require
a dissolute life, that suits the imagination to some extent. But they
die at the hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay
by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till to-morrow."
The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary's head, for he at
once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the
fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, Charles did not give
in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. He saw
nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs
which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large,
and the falling in of Lheureux's bills was still so far off that
there was no need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she
was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of
worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight
o'clock they set out in the "Hirondelle."
The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who thought
himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go.
"Well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them; "happy mortals that you
are!"
Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with
four flounces--
"You are as lovely as a Venus. You'll cut a figure at Rouen."
The diligence stopped at the "Croix-Rouge" in the Place Beauvoisine. It
was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables
and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens
pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers--a
good old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on
winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black
tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow
by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always
smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in Sundayclothes, has
a cafe on the street, and towards the countryside a kitchen-garden.
Charles at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery,
the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them;
was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the
inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole
length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.
Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor was
much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to
swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the
theatre, which were still closed.
The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between
the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills
repeated in quaint letters "Lucie de Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc." The
weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the
curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads;
and now and then a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the
border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses.
A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air
that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from
the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black warehouses where they made
casks.
For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to have a
little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in
his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his
stomach.
Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She
involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the
right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the
reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger
the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the
dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent
forward with the air of a duchess.
The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their
cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing.
They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of
business; but "business" was not forgotten; they still talked cottons,
spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen,
inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like
silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting
about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink
or applegreen cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them leaning
on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow
gloves.
Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the
ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over
the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and
first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins
squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But three
knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass
instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a
country-scene.
It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to
the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing
a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked
the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. Another appeared;
they went away, and the hunters started afresh. She felt herself
transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott.
She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes
re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel helping
her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase,
while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with
the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies,
and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her
nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery,
the actors, the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the
velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated
amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a young
woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. She was
left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the
warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She
plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life,
would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy
appeared.
He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of
marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly
clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against
his left thigh, and he cast round laughing looks showing his white
teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night
on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love
with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for
other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his
artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into
his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his
person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable
coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis
than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan
nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the
toreador.
From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his arms,
he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of
rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes
escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward
to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was
filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn
out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the
drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognised all the intoxication
and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna
seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that
charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had
loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit
night when they said, "To-morrow! to-morrow!" The theatre rang with
cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of
the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they
uttered the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the
vibrations of the last chords.
"But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?"
"No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!"
"Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on
before said, 'I love Lucie and she loves me!' Besides, he went off with
her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn't he--the
ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?"
Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began
in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master
Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucie,
thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that
he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered
very much with the words.
"What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be quiet!"
"Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "I like
to understand things."
"Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently.
Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms
in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed
of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the
little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like
this woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous,
without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if
in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the
disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some
great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty
blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that
happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire.
She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So,
striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this
reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to
please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when
at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a
black cloak.
His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the
instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury,
dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal
provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie uttered her shrill plaint,
Arthur at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the
bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the
women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were
all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and
stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. The
outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with
jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left
with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of
his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought must have an
inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion.
All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part
that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the
character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant,
extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had
willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With
him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled from
capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the
flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each
evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work she would
have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung
for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked
at her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was
certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength,
as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out,
"Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour
and all my dreams!"
The curtain fell.
The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the
fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the
crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her arm-chair with
palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing that she would faint, ran
to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water.
He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were
jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and
he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short
sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered
cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband,
who was a millowner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was with
her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured
taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement.
At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath--
"Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a
crowd--SUCH a crowd!"
He added--
"Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Leon!"
"Leon?"
"Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects." And as he finished
these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box.
He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Bovary
extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will.
She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon
the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window.
But soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an
effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a
few hurried words.
"Ah, good-day! What! you here?"
"Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning.
"So you are at Rouen?"
"Yes."
"And since when?"
"Turn them out! turn them out!" People were looking at them. They were
silent.
But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests,
the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all
were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous
and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at the
druggist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour,
the tete-a-tete by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so
protracted, so discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless
forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances
had brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her, leaning
with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt
herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon
her hair.
"Does this amuse you?" said he, bending over her so closely that the end
of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly--
"Oh, dear me, no, not much."
Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an
ice somewhere.
"Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this is
going to be tragic."
But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of the
singer seemed to her exaggerated.
"She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was listening.
"Yes--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of his
pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion.
Then with a sigh Leon said--
"The heat is--"
"Unbearable! Yes!"
"Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary.
"Yes, I am stifling; let us go."
Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and
all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside
the windows of a cafe.
First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted Charles
from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Leon; and the
latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large
office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different
in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere
Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to
say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end.
People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or
shouting at the top of their voices, "O bel ange, ma Lucie!*" Then Leon,
playing the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tambourini,
Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and, compared with them, Lagardy, despite his
grand outbursts, was nowhere.
*Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie.
"Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet,
"they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. I regret leaving
before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me."
"Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance."
But Charles replied that they were going back next day. "Unless," he
added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone, kitten?"
And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented
itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the
last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then Charles insisted--
"You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are wrong if
you feel that this is doing you the least good."
The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood
discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his purse; the
clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of
silver that he made chink on the marble.
"I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the money which you are--"
The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat
said--
"It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow at six o'clock?"
Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but
that nothing prevented Emma--
"But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I am not sure--"
"Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel." Then to
Leon, who was walking along with them, "Now that you are in our part of
the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then."
The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover,
to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And they parted
before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the clock in the cathedral
struck half-past eleven.
Part III
| 9,939 | Chapters 14-15 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-1415 | In addition to his concern about Emma, Charles was also bothered by financial worries. The illness had been very expensive, and other bills were piling up. Moreover, Lheureux suddenly presented him with a statement of Emma's debts. Not knowing what else to do, Bovary borrowed money from Lheureux and signed several notes at a high rate of interest. All through the winter months Emma's convalescence continued. During a crisis in her illness, Emma's religious sentiments had reawakened. Now she was very devout and spent much of her time reading religious books or conversing with the priest. By spring Emma was relatively strong again and returned to her household duties. Her religious feelings remained firm, and everyone was surprised by her new generosity, spirituality, and stern principles. One day at Homais' suggestion, Bovary decided to take Emma to the theater at Rouen. He hoped that such an outing would be good for her health. Emma was not eager to go, but Bovary was so persistent that she agreed. On the day of the trip they excitedly left for the city. Emma was embarrassed and upset by Charles' behavior and appearance all that afternoon. She wanted very much to seem a sophisticated, cosmopolitan lady, and she felt that he was just a country bumpkin. She was tense and self-conscious wherever they went. Despite this, however, Emma enjoyed the opera, Lucie de Lammermoor, very much. She found that the story reminded her of events in her own life. During the intermission they were both surprised to encounter Leon, who now lived and worked in Rouen. The three went to a cafe together, where Bovary and Leon talked at length about Yonville, their mutual friends, and old times. Leon also told them a little about his present position and his experiences at the university. Emma was impressed by Leon's suave, citified manners and dress. When they discussed the opera they had just left, Leon at first ridiculed it until he learned that perhaps Emma could stay over to see the second part again. He then praised the opera so highly that Charles suggested that Emma stay while he return to his practice. In any case, before they separated, the Bovarys and Leon arranged to meet again the next day. | After Emma's recovery from her illness, she falls back into the old, established, neurotic pattern of taking up something only to drop it for something else. She gave herself so completely to religion that even the cure thought she went too far. Then she began charity work even though her own household needed attention. Once at the opera, Emma becomes immersed in the romantic world on the stage. She begins to identify with the heroine and she is entranced with the tenor. Here Flaubert's art is very subtle. The objective description of the artist says little, but implies that the artist is false. Like Emma, he misrepresents art. He uses tricks to cover up for his lack of art. There is "something of the hair dresser and the toreador" about him. Thus, Emma is lost in this false and sentimental world of cheap art. The scene at the opera prepares the reader and also Emma for the reintroduction of Leon. The romantic elements of the opera provide an apt meeting place to rekindle their attraction to each other. | 510 | 179 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/25.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_18_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 1 | chapter 1 | null | {"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-1", "summary": "While attending law school in Paris, Leon was a model student. But he did experience a new way of life even though he remained quiet and respectable. And now that he has returned to Rouen, he has brought with him many of the manners and sophistication that he learned in Paris. He dressed and acted in the Parisian style and felt especially self-confident in Rouen, where he considered himself to be a sophisticate among the local provincials. At first in Paris he had often thought about Emma, but gradually she became a blurred memory. Now his old feelings for her were reawakened. He visited Emma at her hotel the next day while Bovary was out. She and Leon were pleased by this opportunity to see each other in private, and they held an animated conversation for several hours. Their old intimacy was renewed, although both withheld several personal details of their recent experiences. Emma and Leon recalled their sad parting in Yonville and the times they had spent together there and discussed with a new frankness their mutual affection. Before leaving, Leon kissed Emma, and they arranged to have a secret meeting at the cathedral the next day. In the morning, Leon arrived punctually at the place of the rendezvous. Emma was late and tried at first to avoid him, for she hoped to prevent herself from falling in love with him again. She tried to pray but her mind was not on it. Then she readily accepted an invitation from the beadle of the church to see the various parts of the cathedral. Leon suffered the sightseeing as long as possible and then pulled Emma away from the church and into a carriage he had sent for. The carriage driver could not understand why two people would want to ride aimlessly about the countryside on such a pretty day with all the curtains pulled. Every time he made an attempt to stop, he was severely reprimanded by Leon. They were together in the carriage so long that Emma missed the Hirondelle that was to take her back to Yonville. She had to hire a special hack to catch the Hirondelle before it reached Yonville.", "analysis": "Chapter 1 presents Leon's background so as to show how he has changed during the interim. He is no longer so retiring and bashful. Paris has given him a sense of self-assurance which will allow him now to approach Madame Bovary. But we should also note that even though both he and Emma have changed, their talk is still filled with commonplace romantic cliches and platitudes. Flaubert's description of the church where Leon is to meet Emma is a masterpiece of realistic description and subtle suggestion. Flaubert describes the church in terms of a lady's boudoir where the church is waiting to \"gather the confession of her love.\" These descriptions sum up everything about Emma's own religion -- a religion which Emma sees only in her own way. Thus, after Emma enters, she immediately attempts to pray, but her thoughts are not on religion but instead on herself and her relationship with Leon. Throughout the entire scene, it is ironic that both Emma and Leon are seething with a burning passion while the slow, bungling guide shows them through the cold, ancient church. Their view of the huge, magnificent church should be contrasted with the final scene, that of Emma and Leon riding in a small closed carriage while consummating their love. The carriage is even described as being \"sealed tighter than a tomb,\" and if the image is extended, this is the beginning of Emma's last fated episode which will lead to her suicide."} |
Monsieur Leon, while studying law, had gone pretty often to the
dancing-rooms, where he was even a great success amongst the grisettes,
who thought he had a distinguished air. He was the best-mannered of the
students; he wore his hair neither too long nor too short, didn't spend
all his quarter's money on the first day of the month, and kept on good
terms with his professors. As for excesses, he had always abstained from
them, as much from cowardice as from refinement.
Often when he stayed in his room to read, or else when sitting of an
evening under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg, he let his Code fall to
the ground, and the memory of Emma came back to him. But gradually this
feeling grew weaker, and other desires gathered over it, although it
still persisted through them all. For Leon did not lose all hope; there
was for him, as it were, a vague promise floating in the future, like a
golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree.
Then, seeing her again after three years of absence his passion
reawakened. He must, he thought, at last make up his mind to possess
her. Moreover, his timidity had worn off by contact with his gay
companions, and he returned to the provinces despising everyone who had
not with varnished shoes trodden the asphalt of the boulevards. By
the side of a Parisienne in her laces, in the drawing-room of some
illustrious physician, a person driving his carriage and wearing many
orders, the poor clerk would no doubt have trembled like a child; but
here, at Rouen, on the harbour, with the wife of this small doctor
he felt at his ease, sure beforehand he would shine. Self-possession
depends on its environment. We don't speak on the first floor as on the
fourth; and the wealthy woman seems to have, about her, to guard her
virtue, all her banknotes, like a cuirass in the lining of her corset.
On leaving the Bovarys the night before, Leon had followed them
through the streets at a distance; then having seen them stop at the
"Croix-Rouge," he turned on his heel, and spent the night meditating a
plan.
So the next day about five o'clock he walked into the kitchen of the
inn, with a choking sensation in his throat, pale cheeks, and that
resolution of cowards that stops at nothing.
"The gentleman isn't in," answered a servant.
This seemed to him a good omen. He went upstairs.
She was not disturbed at his approach; on the contrary, she apologised
for having neglected to tell him where they were staying.
"Oh, I divined it!" said Leon.
He pretended he had been guided towards her by chance, by, instinct. She
began to smile; and at once, to repair his folly, Leon told her that he
had spent his morning in looking for her in all the hotels in the town
one after the other.
"So you have made up your mind to stay?" he added.
"Yes," she said, "and I am wrong. One ought not to accustom oneself to
impossible pleasures when there are a thousand demands upon one."
"Oh, I can imagine!"
"Ah! no; for you, you are a man!"
But men too had had their trials, and the conversation went off into
certain philosophical reflections. Emma expatiated much on the misery of
earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in which the heart remains
entombed.
To show off, or from a naive imitation of this melancholy which called
forth his, the young man declared that he had been awfully bored during
the whole course of his studies. The law irritated him, other vocations
attracted him, and his mother never ceased worrying him in every one
of her letters. As they talked they explained more and more fully the
motives of their sadness, working themselves up in their progressive
confidence. But they sometimes stopped short of the complete exposition
of their thought, and then sought to invent a phrase that might express
it all the same. She did not confess her passion for another; he did not
say that he had forgotten her.
Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls after masked
balls; and no doubt she did not recollect the rendezvous of old when she
ran across the fields in the morning to her lover's house. The noises
of the town hardly reached them, and the room seemed small, as if
on purpose to hem in their solitude more closely. Emma, in a dimity
dressing-gown, leant her head against the back of the old arm-chair; the
yellow wall-paper formed, as it were, a golden background behind her,
and her bare head was mirrored in the glass with the white parting in
the middle, and the tip of her ears peeping out from the folds of her
hair.
"But pardon me!" she said. "It is wrong of me. I weary you with my
eternal complaints."
"No, never, never!"
"If you knew," she went on, raising to the ceiling her beautiful eyes,
in which a tear was trembling, "all that I had dreamed!"
"And I! Oh, I too have suffered! Often I went out; I went away. I
dragged myself along the quays, seeking distraction amid the din of the
crowd without being able to banish the heaviness that weighed upon me.
In an engraver's shop on the boulevard there is an Italian print of one
of the Muses. She is draped in a tunic, and she is looking at the
moon, with forget-me-nots in her flowing hair. Something drove me there
continually; I stayed there hours together." Then in a trembling voice,
"She resembled you a little."
Madame Bovary turned away her head that he might not see the
irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips.
"Often," he went on, "I wrote you letters that I tore up."
She did not answer. He continued--
"I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought I
recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the carriages
through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil like yours."
She seemed resolved to let him go on speaking without interruption.
Crossing her arms and bending down her face, she looked at the rosettes
on her slippers, and at intervals made little movements inside the satin
of them with her toes.
At last she sighed.
"But the most wretched thing, is it not--is to drag out, as I do, a
useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we
should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice."
He started off in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having
himself an incredible longing for self-sacrifice that he could not
satisfy.
"I should much like," she said, "to be a nurse at a hospital."
"Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere any
calling--unless perhaps that of a doctor."
With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Emma interrupted him to speak of
her illness, which had almost killed her. What a pity! She should not be
suffering now! Leon at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening
he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug
with velvet stripes he had received from her. For this was how they
would have wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were now
adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always
thins out the sentiment.
But at this invention of the rug she asked, "But why?"
"Why?" He hesitated. "Because I loved you so!" And congratulating
himself at having surmounted the difficulty, Leon watched her face out
of the corner of his eyes.
It was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds across. The
mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed to be lifted from her
blue eyes; her whole face shone. He waited. At last she replied--
"I always suspected it."
Then they went over all the trifling events of that far-off existence,
whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up in one word. They
recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the
furniture of her room, the whole of her house.
"And our poor cactuses, where are they?"
"The cold killed them this winter."
"Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them again as
of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down upon your blinds,
and I saw your two bare arms passing out amongst the flowers."
"Poor friend!" she said, holding out her hand to him.
Leon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep
breath--
"At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that
took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to see you; but you, no
doubt, do not remember it."
"I do," she said; "go on."
"You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out, standing on
the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with small blue flowers; and
without any invitation from you, in spite of myself, I went with you.
Every moment, however, I grew more and more conscious of my folly, and
I went on walking by you, not daring to follow you completely, and
unwilling to leave you. When you went into a shop, I waited in the
street, and I watched you through the window taking off your gloves and
counting the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache's;
you were let in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy
door that had closed after you."
Madame Bovary, as she listened to him, wondered that she was so old. All
these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out her life; it was
like some sentimental immensity to which she returned; and from time to
time she said in a low voice, her eyes half closed--
"Yes, it is true--true--true!"
They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the Beauvoisine
quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and large empty hotels.
They no longer spoke, but they felt as they looked upon each other a
buzzing in their heads, as if something sonorous had escaped from the
fixed eyes of each of them. They were hand in hand now, and the past,
the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were confounded in the
sweetness of this ecstasy. Night was darkening over the walls, on which
still shone, half hidden in the shade, the coarse colours of four bills
representing four scenes from the "Tour de Nesle," with a motto in
Spanish and French at the bottom. Through the sash-window a patch of
dark sky was seen between the pointed roofs.
She rose to light two wax-candles on the drawers, then she sat down
again.
"Well!" said Leon.
"Well!" she replied.
He was thinking how to resume the interrupted conversation, when she
said to him--
"How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such sentiments to
me?"
The clerk said that ideal natures were difficult to understand. He from
the first moment had loved her, and he despaired when he thought of the
happiness that would have been theirs, if thanks to fortune, meeting her
earlier, they had been indissolubly bound to one another.
"I have sometimes thought of it," she went on.
"What a dream!" murmured Leon. And fingering gently the blue binding of
her long white sash, he added, "And who prevents us from beginning now?"
"No, my friend," she replied; "I am too old; you are too young. Forget
me! Others will love you; you will love them."
"Not as you!" he cried.
"What a child you are! Come, let us be sensible. I wish it."
She showed him the impossibility of their love, and that they must
remain, as formerly, on the simple terms of a fraternal friendship.
Was she speaking thus seriously? No doubt Emma did not herself know,
quite absorbed as she was by the charm of the seduction, and the
necessity of defending herself from it; and contemplating the young
man with a moved look, she gently repulsed the timid caresses that his
trembling hands attempted.
"Ah! forgive me!" he cried, drawing back.
Emma was seized with a vague fear at this shyness, more dangerous to her
than the boldness of Rodolphe when he advanced to her open-armed. No man
had ever seemed to her so beautiful. An exquisite candour emanated from
his being. He lowered his long fine eyelashes, that curled upwards.
His cheek, with the soft skin reddened, she thought, with desire of her
person, and Emma felt an invincible longing to press her lips to it.
Then, leaning towards the clock as if to see the time--
"Ah! how late it is!" she said; "how we do chatter!"
He understood the hint and took up his hat.
"It has even made me forget the theatre. And poor Bovary has left me
here especially for that. Monsieur Lormeaux, of the Rue Grand-Pont, was
to take me and his wife."
And the opportunity was lost, as she was to leave the next day.
"Really!" said Leon.
"Yes."
"But I must see you again," he went on. "I wanted to tell you--"
"What?"
"Something--important--serious. Oh, no! Besides, you will not go; it is
impossible. If you should--listen to me. Then you have not understood
me; you have not guessed--"
"Yet you speak plainly," said Emma.
"Ah! you can jest. Enough! enough! Oh, for pity's sake, let me see you
once--only once!"
"Well--" She stopped; then, as if thinking better of it, "Oh, not here!"
"Where you will."
"Will you--" She seemed to reflect; then abruptly, "To-morrow at eleven
o'clock in the cathedral."
"I shall be there," he cried, seizing her hands, which she disengaged.
And as they were both standing up, he behind her, and Emma with her head
bent, he stooped over her and pressed long kisses on her neck.
"You are mad! Ah! you are mad!" she said, with sounding little laughs,
while the kisses multiplied.
Then bending his head over her shoulder, he seemed to beg the consent of
her eyes. They fell upon him full of an icy dignity.
Leon stepped back to go out. He stopped on the threshold; then he
whispered with a trembling voice, "Tomorrow!"
She answered with a nod, and disappeared like a bird into the next room.
In the evening Emma wrote the clerk an interminable letter, in which she
cancelled the rendezvous; all was over; they must not, for the sake of
their happiness, meet again. But when the letter was finished, as she
did not know Leon's address, she was puzzled.
"I'll give it to him myself," she said; "he will come."
The next morning, at the open window, and humming on his balcony, Leon
himself varnished his pumps with several coatings. He put on white
trousers, fine socks, a green coat, emptied all the scent he had into
his handkerchief, then having had his hair curled, he uncurled it again,
in order to give it a more natural elegance.
"It is still too early," he thought, looking at the hairdresser's
cuckoo-clock, that pointed to the hour of nine. He read an old fashion
journal, went out, smoked a cigar, walked up three streets, thought it
was time, and went slowly towards the porch of Notre Dame.
It was a beautiful summer morning. Silver plate sparkled in the
jeweller's windows, and the light falling obliquely on the cathedral
made mirrors of the corners of the grey stones; a flock of birds
fluttered in the grey sky round the trefoil bell-turrets; the square,
resounding with cries, was fragrant with the flowers that bordered its
pavement, roses, jasmines, pinks, narcissi, and tube-roses, unevenly
spaced out between moist grasses, catmint, and chickweed for the birds;
the fountains gurgled in the centre, and under large umbrellas, amidst
melons, piled up in heaps, flower-women, bare-headed, were twisting
paper round bunches of violets.
The young man took one. It was the first time that he had bought flowers
for a woman, and his breast, as he smelt them, swelled with pride, as if
this homage that he meant for another had recoiled upon himself.
But he was afraid of being seen; he resolutely entered the church. The
beadle, who was just then standing on the threshold in the middle of the
left doorway, under the "Dancing Marianne," with feather cap, and rapier
dangling against his calves, came in, more majestic than a cardinal, and
as shining as a saint on a holy pyx.
He came towards Leon, and, with that smile of wheedling benignity
assumed by ecclesiastics when they question children--
"The gentleman, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? The gentleman
would like to see the curiosities of the church?"
"No!" said the other.
And he first went round the lower aisles. Then he went out to look at
the Place. Emma was not coming yet. He went up again to the choir.
The nave was reflected in the full fonts with the beginning of the
arches and some portions of the glass windows. But the reflections of
the paintings, broken by the marble rim, were continued farther on upon
the flag-stones, like a many-coloured carpet. The broad daylight from
without streamed into the church in three enormous rays from the three
opened portals. From time to time at the upper end a sacristan passed,
making the oblique genuflexion of devout persons in a hurry. The crystal
lustres hung motionless. In the choir a silver lamp was burning, and
from the side chapels and dark places of the church sometimes rose
sounds like sighs, with the clang of a closing grating, its echo
reverberating under the lofty vault.
Leon with solemn steps walked along by the walls. Life had never seemed
so good to him. She would come directly, charming, agitated, looking
back at the glances that followed her, and with her flounced dress, her
gold eyeglass, her thin shoes, with all sorts of elegant trifles that he
had never enjoyed, and with the ineffable seduction of yielding virtue.
The church like a huge boudoir spread around her; the arches bent down
to gather in the shade the confession of her love; the windows shone
resplendent to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she
might appear like an angel amid the fumes of the sweet-smelling odours.
But she did not come. He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell upon a
blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets. He looked at
it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fishes and the
button-holes of the doublets, while his thoughts wandered off towards
Emma.
The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individual who
took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He seemed to him
to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a
sort, and almost committing sacrilege.
But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined
cloak--it was she! Leon rose and ran to meet her.
Emma was pale. She walked fast.
"Read!" she said, holding out a paper to him. "Oh, no!"
And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin,
where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray.
The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless
experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a
rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness;
then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end.
Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden
resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine
aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle. She
breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases,
and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the
tumult of her heart.
She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward,
hurriedly saying--
"Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? Madame would like to
see the curiosities of the church?"
"Oh, no!" cried the clerk.
"Why not?" said she. For she clung with her expiring virtue to the
Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs--anything.
Then, in order to proceed "by rule," the beadle conducted them right to
the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with his cane a large
circle of block-stones without inscription or carving--
"This," he said majestically, "is the circumference of the beautiful
bell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds. There was not its
equal in all Europe. The workman who cast it died of the joy--"
"Let us go on," said Leon.
The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to the chapel of
the Virgin, he stretched forth his arm with an all-embracing gesture
of demonstration, and, prouder than a country squire showing you his
espaliers, went on--
"This simple stone covers Pierre de Breze, lord of Varenne and of
Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who died at
the battle of Montlhery on the 16th of July, 1465."
Leon bit his lips, fuming.
"And on the right, this gentleman all encased in iron, on the
prancing horse, is his grandson, Louis de Breze, lord of Breval and of
Montchauvet, Count de Maulevrier, Baron de Mauny, chamberlain to the
king, Knight of the Order, and also governor of Normandy; died on the
23rd of July, 1531--a Sunday, as the inscription specifies; and below,
this figure, about to descend into the tomb, portrays the same person.
It is not possible, is it, to see a more perfect representation of
annihilation?"
Madame Bovary put up her eyeglasses. Leon, motionless, looked at her,
no longer even attempting to speak a single word, to make a gesture,
so discouraged was he at this two-fold obstinacy of gossip and
indifference.
The everlasting guide went on--
"Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de
Poitiers, Countess de Breze, Duchess de Valentinois, born in 1499, died
in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is the Holy Virgin. Now
turn to this side; here are the tombs of the Ambroise. They were both
cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister under Louis
thousand gold crowns for the poor."
And without stopping, still talking, he pushed them into a chapel
full of balustrades, some put away, and disclosed a kind of block that
certainly might once have been an ill-made statue.
"Truly," he said with a groan, "it adorned the tomb of Richard Coeur de
Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, sir,
who reduced it to this condition. They had buried it for spite in the
earth, under the episcopal seat of Monsignor. See! this is the door by
which Monsignor passes to his house. Let us pass on quickly to see the
gargoyle windows."
But Leon hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized Emma's
arm. The beadle stood dumfounded, not able to understand this untimely
munificence when there were still so many things for the stranger to
see. So calling him back, he cried--
"Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!"
"No, thank you!" said Leon.
"You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less
than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it--"
Leon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly
two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would
vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong
cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like
the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier.
"But where are we going?" she said.
Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Bovary
was already, dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they
heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Leon
turned back.
"Sir!"
"What is it?"
And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing
against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works
"which treated of the cathedral."
"Idiot!" growled Leon, rushing out of the church.
A lad was playing about the close.
"Go and get me a cab!"
The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they
were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.
"Ah! Leon! Really--I don't know--if I ought," she whispered. Then with a
more serious air, "Do you know, it is very improper--"
"How so?" replied the clerk. "It is done at Paris."
And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her.
Still the cab did not come. Leon was afraid she might go back into the
church. At last the cab appeared.
"At all events, go out by the north porch," cried the beadle, who was
left alone on the threshold, "so as to see the Resurrection, the Last
Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-flames."
"Where to, sir?" asked the coachman.
"Where you like," said Leon, forcing Emma into the cab.
And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue Grand-Pont,
crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoleon, the Pont Neuf, and
stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille.
"Go on," cried a voice that came from within.
The cab went on again, and as soon as it reached the Carrefour
Lafayette, set off down-hill, and entered the station at a gallop.
"No, straight on!" cried the same voice.
The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours, trotted
quietly beneath the elm-trees. The coachman wiped his brow, put his
leather hat between his knees, and drove his carriage beyond the side
alley by the meadow to the margin of the waters.
It went along by the river, along the towing-path paved with sharp
pebbles, and for a long while in the direction of Oyssel, beyond the
isles.
But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatremares, Sotteville, La
Grande-Chaussee, the Rue d'Elbeuf, and made its third halt in front of
the Jardin des Plantes.
"Get on, will you?" cried the voice more furiously.
And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the
Quai'des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the bridge, by
the Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital gardens, where old
men in black coats were walking in the sun along the terrace all green
with ivy. It went up the Boulevard Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard
Cauchoise, then the whole of Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills.
It came back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, wandered
about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont
Gargan, at La Rougue-Marc and Place du Gaillardbois; in the Rue
Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien,
Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise--in front of the Customs, at the "Vieille
Tour," the "Trois Pipes," and the Monumental Cemetery. From time to time
the coachman, on his box cast despairing eyes at the public-houses.
He could not understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these
individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at
once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his
perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up
against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and
almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and depression.
And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the
streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken
eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds
drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb,
and tossing about like a vessel.
Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun
beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared hand passed
beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps
of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off lighted like white
butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom.
At about six o'clock the carriage stopped in a back street of the
Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out, who walked with her veil down,
and without turning her head.
| 7,284 | Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-1 | While attending law school in Paris, Leon was a model student. But he did experience a new way of life even though he remained quiet and respectable. And now that he has returned to Rouen, he has brought with him many of the manners and sophistication that he learned in Paris. He dressed and acted in the Parisian style and felt especially self-confident in Rouen, where he considered himself to be a sophisticate among the local provincials. At first in Paris he had often thought about Emma, but gradually she became a blurred memory. Now his old feelings for her were reawakened. He visited Emma at her hotel the next day while Bovary was out. She and Leon were pleased by this opportunity to see each other in private, and they held an animated conversation for several hours. Their old intimacy was renewed, although both withheld several personal details of their recent experiences. Emma and Leon recalled their sad parting in Yonville and the times they had spent together there and discussed with a new frankness their mutual affection. Before leaving, Leon kissed Emma, and they arranged to have a secret meeting at the cathedral the next day. In the morning, Leon arrived punctually at the place of the rendezvous. Emma was late and tried at first to avoid him, for she hoped to prevent herself from falling in love with him again. She tried to pray but her mind was not on it. Then she readily accepted an invitation from the beadle of the church to see the various parts of the cathedral. Leon suffered the sightseeing as long as possible and then pulled Emma away from the church and into a carriage he had sent for. The carriage driver could not understand why two people would want to ride aimlessly about the countryside on such a pretty day with all the curtains pulled. Every time he made an attempt to stop, he was severely reprimanded by Leon. They were together in the carriage so long that Emma missed the Hirondelle that was to take her back to Yonville. She had to hire a special hack to catch the Hirondelle before it reached Yonville. | Chapter 1 presents Leon's background so as to show how he has changed during the interim. He is no longer so retiring and bashful. Paris has given him a sense of self-assurance which will allow him now to approach Madame Bovary. But we should also note that even though both he and Emma have changed, their talk is still filled with commonplace romantic cliches and platitudes. Flaubert's description of the church where Leon is to meet Emma is a masterpiece of realistic description and subtle suggestion. Flaubert describes the church in terms of a lady's boudoir where the church is waiting to "gather the confession of her love." These descriptions sum up everything about Emma's own religion -- a religion which Emma sees only in her own way. Thus, after Emma enters, she immediately attempts to pray, but her thoughts are not on religion but instead on herself and her relationship with Leon. Throughout the entire scene, it is ironic that both Emma and Leon are seething with a burning passion while the slow, bungling guide shows them through the cold, ancient church. Their view of the huge, magnificent church should be contrasted with the final scene, that of Emma and Leon riding in a small closed carriage while consummating their love. The carriage is even described as being "sealed tighter than a tomb," and if the image is extended, this is the beginning of Emma's last fated episode which will lead to her suicide. | 473 | 247 |
2,413 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_3_chapters_2_to_4.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_19_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapters 2-4 | chapters 2-4 | null | {"name": "Chapters 2-4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapters-24", "summary": "On her return to Yonville, Emma learned that Bovary's father had died. Charles was very upset, particularly because he had not seen the man in a long time. Emma felt no sorrow but made the usual sympathetic gestures, which her husband misunderstood and appreciated very much. After a while, Mrs. Bovary came to stay with them. Emma was polite and attentive but was annoyed because the necessity for being kind to the mourners distracted her from thoughts of Leon. At about this time Lheureux made another appearance and presented Emma with her unpaid bills. He also managed to sell her some more high-priced merchandise. When Emma expressed a worry about managing to pay, he suggested that she get a power of attorney from Bovary. That way, he said, she would not have to bother her husband with \"petty\" financial matters and could find a convenient method to settle her debts. Emma convinced Bovary of the wisdom of this scheme without too much trouble, since he had no idea of the true amount of their debts. Emma even induced him to use the services of Leon, instead of the local attorney, for drawing up the papers, and Bovary trustingly arranged to send her alone to Rouen to take care of this business. Emma spent the next three days in Rouen with Leon. He rented an expensive hotel room for the occasion, and this short period was like a honeymoon for them. They went to some of the best restaurants and places of entertainment and spent most of their time in lovemaking and romantic pursuits. Leon became completely involved in his affair with Emma; he neglected his work and saw little of his friends. The arrival of her letters became a major event in his life, and he even paid a few visits to Yonville, either in secret or on various false pretexts, to see her. Emma, meanwhile, was getting even more deeply enmeshed in financial obligations to Lheureux. In order to see Leon more often, she began to show a renewed interest in the piano, and soon got Bovary to arrange for her to take a weekly lesson with a teacher in Rouen.", "analysis": "Before Emma can continue with her affair with Leon, she is interrupted by the death of her father-in-law. Then she must think of some plan whereby she can get back to Rouen and Leon. Monsieur Lheureux gives her the pretext. Knowing how easily he can convince Emma to buy things from him, he tells her to get Charles' power of attorney. His plan is to eventually foreclose on everything and thereby make a large profit. But his suggestions offer to Emma a pretext for going to Rouen to consult with Leon. So she convinces Charles that she should handle everything. The very short Chapter 3 covers the three days Emma spent with Leon in Rouen. The three days were described as \"a real honeymoon.\" But the readers should remember that this is the third one. The episode is described in romantic terms of bliss and joy. For these few days, the image of beauty and innocence was restored to Emma, but the scene ends on an uglier note. Amid her renewed joys, she is reminded of her sordid affair with Rodolphe by hearing the boatman relate how Rodolphe had taken the same ride last week with some other lady. The short fourth chapter shows Emma and Leon continuing in their plans to make their meetings definite and to meet at least once a week. This of course means that Emma will have to go deeper in debt."} |
On reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the
diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had at
last started.
Yet nothing forced her to go; but she had given her word that she would
return that same evening. Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her
heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is for some women at
once the chastisement and atonement of adultery.
She packed her box quickly, paid her bill, took a cab in the yard,
hurrying on the driver, urging him on, every moment inquiring about
the time and the miles traversed. He succeeded in catching up the
"Hirondelle" as it neared the first houses of Quincampoix.
Hardly was she seated in her corner than she closed her eyes, and opened
them at the foot of the hill, when from afar she recognised Felicite,
who was on the lookout in front of the farrier's shop. Hivert pulled
in his horses and, the servant, climbing up to the window, said
mysteriously--
"Madame, you must go at once to Monsieur Homais. It's for something
important."
The village was silent as usual. At the corner of the streets were small
pink heaps that smoked in the air, for this was the time for jam-making,
and everyone at Yonville prepared his supply on the same day. But in
front of the chemist's shop one might admire a far larger heap, and that
surpassed the others with the superiority that a laboratory must have
over ordinary stores, a general need over individual fancy.
She went in. The large arm-chair was upset, and even the "Fanal de
Rouen" lay on the ground, outspread between two pestles. She pushed open
the lobby door, and in the middle of the kitchen, amid brown jars full
of picked currants, of powdered sugar and lump sugar, of the scales on
the table, and of the pans on the fire, she saw all the Homais, small
and large, with aprons reaching to their chins, and with forks in their
hands. Justin was standing up with bowed head, and the chemist was
screaming--
"Who told you to go and fetch it in the Capharnaum."
"What is it? What is the matter?"
"What is it?" replied the druggist. "We are making preserves; they are
simmering; but they were about to boil over, because there is too
much juice, and I ordered another pan. Then he, from indolence, from
laziness, went and took, hanging on its nail in my laboratory, the key
of the Capharnaum."
It was thus the druggist called a small room under the leads, full of
the utensils and the goods of his trade. He often spent long hours there
alone, labelling, decanting, and doing up again; and he looked upon
it not as a simple store, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there
afterwards issued, elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses,
infusions, lotions, and potions, that would bear far and wide his
celebrity. No one in the world set foot there, and he respected it so,
that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers,
was the spot where he displayed his pride, the Capharnaum was the refuge
where, egoistically concentrating himself, Homais delighted in the
exercise of his predilections, so that Justin's thoughtlessness seemed
to him a monstrous piece of irreverence, and, redder than the currants,
he repeated--
"Yes, from the Capharnaum! The key that locks up the acids and caustic
alkalies! To go and get a spare pan! a pan with a lid! and that I
shall perhaps never use! Everything is of importance in the delicate
operations of our art! But, devil take it! one must make distinctions,
and not employ for almost domestic purposes that which is meant for
pharmaceutical! It is as if one were to carve a fowl with a scalpel; as
if a magistrate--"
"Now be calm," said Madame Homais.
And Athalie, pulling at his coat, cried "Papa! papa!"
"No, let me alone," went on the druggist "let me alone, hang it! My
word! One might as well set up for a grocer. That's it! go it! respect
nothing! break, smash, let loose the leeches, burn the mallow-paste,
pickle the gherkins in the window jars, tear up the bandages!"
"I thought you had--" said Emma.
"Presently! Do you know to what you exposed yourself? Didn't you see
anything in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer,
articulate something."
"I--don't--know," stammered the young fellow.
"Ah! you don't know! Well, then, I do know! You saw a bottle of blue
glass, sealed with yellow wax, that contains a white powder, on which I
have even written 'Dangerous!' And do you know what is in it? Arsenic!
And you go and touch it! You take a pan that was next to it!"
"Next to it!" cried Madame Homais, clasping her hands. "Arsenic! You
might have poisoned us all."
And the children began howling as if they already had frightful pains in
their entrails.
"Or poison a patient!" continued the druggist. "Do you want to see me
in the prisoner's dock with criminals, in a court of justice? To see
me dragged to the scaffold? Don't you know what care I take in managing
things, although I am so thoroughly used to it? Often I am horrified
myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes
us, and the absurd legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles'
sword over our heads."
Emma no longer dreamed of asking what they wanted her for, and the
druggist went on in breathless phrases--
"That is your return for all the kindness we have shown you! That is how
you recompense me for the really paternal care that I lavish on you! For
without me where would you be? What would you be doing? Who provides
you with food, education, clothes, and all the means of figuring one day
with honour in the ranks of society? But you must pull hard at the oar
if you're to do that, and get, as, people say, callosities upon your
hands. Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.*"
* The worker lives by working, do what he will.
He was so exasperated he quoted Latin. He would have quoted Chinese
or Greenlandish had he known those two languages, for he was in one
of those crises in which the whole soul shows indistinctly what it
contains, like the ocean, which, in the storm, opens itself from the
seaweeds on its shores down to the sands of its abysses.
And he went on--
"I am beginning to repent terribly of having taken you up! I should
certainly have done better to have left you to rot in your poverty and
the dirt in which you were born. Oh, you'll never be fit for anything
but to herd animals with horns! You have no aptitude for science! You
hardly know how to stick on a label! And there you are, dwelling with me
snug as a parson, living in clover, taking your ease!"
But Emma, turning to Madame Homais, "I was told to come here--"
"Oh, dear me!" interrupted the good woman, with a sad air, "how am I to
tell you? It is a misfortune!"
She could not finish, the druggist was thundering--"Empty it! Clean it!
Take it back! Be quick!"
And seizing Justin by the collar of his blouse, he shook a book out of
his pocket. The lad stooped, but Homais was the quicker, and, having
picked up the volume, contemplated it with staring eyes and open mouth.
"CONJUGAL--LOVE!" he said, slowly separating the two words. "Ah! very
good! very good! very pretty! And illustrations! Oh, this is too much!"
Madame Homais came forward.
"No, do not touch it!"
The children wanted to look at the pictures.
"Leave the room," he said imperiously; and they went out.
First he walked up and down with the open volume in his hand, rolling
his eyes, choking, tumid, apoplectic. Then he came straight to his
pupil, and, planting himself in front of him with crossed arms--
"Have you every vice, then, little wretch? Take care! you are on a
downward path. Did not you reflect that this infamous book might fall
in the hands of my children, kindle a spark in their minds, tarnish the
purity of Athalie, corrupt Napoleon. He is already formed like a man.
Are you quite sure, anyhow, that they have not read it? Can you certify
to me--"
"But really, sir," said Emma, "you wished to tell me--"
"Ah, yes! madame. Your father-in-law is dead."
In fact, Monsieur Bovary senior had expired the evening before suddenly
from an attack of apoplexy as he got up from table, and by way of
greater precaution, on account of Emma's sensibility, Charles had begged
Homais to break the horrible news to her gradually. Homais had thought
over his speech; he had rounded, polished it, made it rhythmical; it was
a masterpiece of prudence and transitions, of subtle turns and delicacy;
but anger had got the better of rhetoric.
Emma, giving up all chance of hearing any details, left the pharmacy;
for Monsieur Homais had taken up the thread of his vituperations.
However, he was growing calmer, and was now grumbling in a paternal tone
whilst he fanned himself with his skull-cap.
"It is not that I entirely disapprove of the work. Its author was a
doctor! There are certain scientific points in it that it is not ill a
man should know, and I would even venture to say that a man must know.
But later--later! At any rate, not till you are man yourself and your
temperament is formed."
When Emma knocked at the door. Charles, who was waiting for her, came
forward with open arms and said to her with tears in his voice--
"Ah! my dear!"
And he bent over her gently to kiss her. But at the contact of his lips
the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her hand over her
face shuddering.
But she made answer, "Yes, I know, I know!"
He showed her the letter in which his mother told the event without any
sentimental hypocrisy. She only regretted her husband had not received
the consolations of religion, as he had died at Daudeville, in the
street, at the door of a cafe after a patriotic dinner with some
ex-officers.
Emma gave him back the letter; then at dinner, for appearance's sake,
she affected a certain repugnance. But as he urged her to try, she
resolutely began eating, while Charles opposite her sat motionless in a
dejected attitude.
Now and then he raised his head and gave her a long look full of
distress. Once he sighed, "I should have liked to see him again!"
She was silent. At last, understanding that she must say something, "How
old was your father?" she asked.
"Fifty-eight."
"Ah!"
And that was all.
A quarter of an hour after he added, "My poor mother! what will become
of her now?"
She made a gesture that signified she did not know. Seeing her so
taciturn, Charles imagined her much affected, and forced himself to say
nothing, not to reawaken this sorrow which moved him. And, shaking off
his own--
"Did you enjoy yourself yesterday?" he asked.
"Yes."
When the cloth was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma; and as
she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little
all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher--in
a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an
interminable evening! Something stupefying like the fumes of opium
seized her.
They heard in the passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the boards.
It was Hippolyte bringing back Emma's luggage. In order to put it down
he described painfully a quarter of a circle with his stump.
"He doesn't even remember any more about it," she thought, looking at
the poor devil, whose coarse red hair was wet with perspiration.
Bovary was searching at the bottom of his purse for a centime, and
without appearing to understand all there was of humiliation for him
in the mere presence of this man, who stood there like a personified
reproach to his incurable incapacity.
"Hallo! you've a pretty bouquet," he said, noticing Leon's violets on
the chimney.
"Yes," she replied indifferently; "it's a bouquet I bought just now from
a beggar."
Charles picked up the flowers, and freshening his eyes, red with tears,
against them, smelt them delicately.
She took them quickly from his hand and put them in a glass of water.
The next day Madame Bovary senior arrived. She and her son wept much.
Emma, on the pretext of giving orders, disappeared. The following day
they had a talk over the mourning. They went and sat down with their
workboxes by the waterside under the arbour.
Charles was thinking of his father, and was surprised to feel so much
affection for this man, whom till then he had thought he cared little
about. Madame Bovary senior was thinking of her husband. The worst
days of the past seemed enviable to her. All was forgotten beneath the
instinctive regret of such a long habit, and from time to time whilst
she sewed, a big tear rolled along her nose and hung suspended there a
moment. Emma was thinking that it was scarcely forty-eight hours since
they had been together, far from the world, all in a frenzy of joy, and
not having eyes enough to gaze upon each other. She tried to recall the
slightest details of that past day. But the presence of her husband and
mother-in-law worried her. She would have liked to hear nothing, to see
nothing, so as not to disturb the meditation on her love, that, do what
she would, became lost in external sensations.
She was unpicking the lining of a dress, and the strips were scattered
around her. Madame Bovary senior was plying her scissor without looking
up, and Charles, in his list slippers and his old brown surtout that he
used as a dressing-gown, sat with both hands in his pockets, and did not
speak either; near them Berthe, in a little white pinafore, was raking
sand in the walks with her spade. Suddenly she saw Monsieur Lheureux,
the linendraper, come in through the gate.
He came to offer his services "under the sad circumstances." Emma
answered that she thought she could do without. The shopkeeper was not
to be beaten.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I should like to have a private talk
with you." Then in a low voice, "It's about that affair--you know."
Charles crimsoned to his ears. "Oh, yes! certainly." And in his
confusion, turning to his wife, "Couldn't you, my darling?"
She seemed to understand him, for she rose; and Charles said to his
mother, "It is nothing particular. No doubt, some household trifle." He
did not want her to know the story of the bill, fearing her reproaches.
As soon as they were alone, Monsieur Lheureux in sufficiently clear
terms began to congratulate Emma on the inheritance, then to talk of
indifferent matters, of the espaliers, of the harvest, and of his own
health, which was always so-so, always having ups and downs. In fact, he
had to work devilish hard, although he didn't make enough, in spite of
all people said, to find butter for his bread.
Emma let him talk on. She had bored herself so prodigiously the last two
days.
"And so you're quite well again?" he went on. "Ma foi! I saw your
husband in a sad state. He's a good fellow, though we did have a little
misunderstanding."
She asked what misunderstanding, for Charles had said nothing of the
dispute about the goods supplied to her.
"Why, you know well enough," cried Lheureux. "It was about your little
fancies--the travelling trunks."
He had drawn his hat over his eyes, and, with his hands behind his
back, smiling and whistling, he looked straight at her in an unbearable
manner. Did he suspect anything?
She was lost in all kinds of apprehensions. At last, however, he went
on--
"We made it up, all the same, and I've come again to propose another
arrangement."
This was to renew the bill Bovary had signed. The doctor, of course,
would do as he pleased; he was not to trouble himself, especially just
now, when he would have a lot of worry. "And he would do better to give
it over to someone else--to you, for example. With a power of attorney
it could be easily managed, and then we (you and I) would have our
little business transactions together."
She did not understand. He was silent. Then, passing to his trade,
Lheureux declared that madame must require something. He would send her
a black barege, twelve yards, just enough to make a gown.
"The one you've on is good enough for the house, but you want another
for calls. I saw that the very moment that I came in. I've the eye of an
American!"
He did not send the stuff; he brought it. Then he came again to measure
it; he came again on other pretexts, always trying to make himself
agreeable, useful, "enfeoffing himself," as Homais would have said, and
always dropping some hint to Emma about the power of attorney. He never
mentioned the bill; she did not think of it. Charles, at the beginning
of her convalescence, had certainly said something about it to her,
but so many emotions had passed through her head that she no longer
remembered it. Besides, she took care not to talk of any money
questions. Madame Bovary seemed surprised at this, and attributed the
change in her ways to the religious sentiments she had contracted during
her illness.
But as soon as she was gone, Emma greatly astounded Bovary by her
practical good sense. It would be necessary to make inquiries, to look
into mortgages, and see if there were any occasion for a sale by auction
or a liquidation. She quoted technical terms casually, pronounced the
grand words of order, the future, foresight, and constantly exaggerated
the difficulties of settling his father's affairs so much, that at last
one day she showed him the rough draft of a power of attorney to manage
and administer his business, arrange all loans, sign and endorse all
bills, pay all sums, etc. She had profited by Lheureux's lessons.
Charles naively asked her where this paper came from.
"Monsieur Guillaumin"; and with the utmost coolness she added, "I don't
trust him overmuch. Notaries have such a bad reputation. Perhaps we
ought to consult--we only know--no one."
"Unless Leon--" replied Charles, who was reflecting. But it was
difficult to explain matters by letter. Then she offered to make the
journey, but he thanked her. She insisted. It was quite a contest of
mutual consideration. At last she cried with affected waywardness--
"No, I will go!"
"How good you are!" he said, kissing her forehead.
The next morning she set out in the "Hirondelle" to go to Rouen to
consult Monsieur Leon, and she stayed there three days.
They were three full, exquisite days--a true honeymoon. They were at
the Hotel-de-Boulogne, on the harbour; and they lived there, with drawn
blinds and closed doors, with flowers on the floor, and iced syrups were
brought them early in the morning.
Towards evening they took a covered boat and went to dine on one of the
islands. It was the time when one hears by the side of the dockyard the
caulking-mallets sounding against the hull of vessels. The smoke of
the tar rose up between the trees; there were large fatty drops on the
water, undulating in the purple colour of the sun, like floating plaques
of Florentine bronze.
They rowed down in the midst of moored boats, whose long oblique cables
grazed lightly against the bottom of the boat. The din of the town
gradually grew distant; the rolling of carriages, the tumult of voices,
the yelping of dogs on the decks of vessels. She took off her bonnet,
and they landed on their island.
They sat down in the low-ceilinged room of a tavern, at whose door hung
black nets. They ate fried smelts, cream and cherries. They lay down
upon the grass; they kissed behind the poplars; and they would fain,
like two Robinsons, have lived for ever in this little place, which
seemed to them in their beatitude the most magnificent on earth. It was
not the first time that they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; that
they had heard the water flowing and the wind blowing in the leaves;
but, no doubt, they had never admired all this, as if Nature had
not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful since the
gratification of their desires.
At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores of the islands.
They sat at the bottom, both hidden by the shade, in silence. The square
oars rang in the iron thwarts, and, in the stillness, seemed to mark
time, like the beating of a metronome, while at the stern the rudder
that trailed behind never ceased its gentle splash against the water.
Once the moon rose; they did not fail to make fine phrases, finding the
orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even began to sing--
"One night, do you remember, we were sailing," etc.
Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves, and the winds
carried off the trills that Leon heard pass like the flapping of wings
about him.
She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of the shallop,
through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in. Her black
dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her seem more slender,
taller. Her head was raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards
heaven. At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then she
reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight.
Leon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of scarlet
silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last said--
"Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other day. A lot
of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne,
cornets--everything in style! There was one especially, a tall handsome
man with small moustaches, who was that funny! And they all kept saying,
'Now tell us something, Adolphe--Dolpe,' I think."
She shivered.
"You are in pain?" asked Leon, coming closer to her.
"Oh, it's nothing! No doubt, it is only the night air."
"And who doesn't want for women, either," softly added the sailor,
thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment.
Then, spitting on his hands, he took the oars again.
Yet they had to part. The adieux were sad. He was to send his letters to
Mere Rollet, and she gave him such precise instructions about a double
envelope that he admired greatly her amorous astuteness.
"So you can assure me it is all right?" she said with her last kiss.
"Yes, certainly."
"But why," he thought afterwards as he came back through the streets
alone, "is she so very anxious to get this power of attorney?"
Leon soon put on an air of superiority before his comrades, avoided
their company, and completely neglected his work.
He waited for her letters; he re-read them; he wrote to her. He called
her to mind with all the strength of his desires and of his memories.
Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to see her again grew,
so that at last on Saturday morning he escaped from his office.
When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley below the
church-spire with its tin flag swinging in the wind, he felt that
delight mingled with triumphant vanity and egoistic tenderness that
millionaires must experience when they come back to their native
village.
He went rambling round her house. A light was burning in the kitchen. He
watched for her shadow behind the curtains, but nothing appeared.
Mere Lefrancois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations. She
thought he "had grown and was thinner," while Artemise, on the contrary,
thought him stouter and darker.
He dined in the little room as of yore, but alone, without the
tax-gatherer; for Binet, tired of waiting for the "Hirondelle," had
definitely put forward his meal one hour, and now he dined punctually at
five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old concern "was late."
Leon, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the doctor's door.
Madame was in her room, and did not come down for a quarter of an hour.
The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never stirred out that
evening, nor all the next day.
He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind the garden in the
lane; in the lane, as she had the other one! It was a stormy night, and
they talked under an umbrella by lightning flashes.
Their separation was becoming intolerable. "I would rather die!" said
Emma. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. "Adieu! adieu! When shall I
see you again?"
They came back again to embrace once more, and it was then that
she promised him to find soon, by no matter what means, a regular
opportunity for seeing one another in freedom at least once a week. Emma
never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides, she was full of
hope. Some money was coming to her.
On the strength of it she bought a pair of yellow curtains with large
stripes for her room, whose cheapness Monsieur Lheureux had commended;
she dreamed of getting a carpet, and Lheureux, declaring that it wasn't
"drinking the sea," politely undertook to supply her with one. She could
no longer do without his services. Twenty times a day she sent for him,
and he at once put by his business without a murmur. People could not
understand either why Mere Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and
even paid her private visits.
It was about this time, that is to say, the beginning of winter, that
she seemed seized with great musical fervour.
One evening when Charles was listening to her, she began the same piece
four times over, each time with much vexation, while he, not noticing
any difference, cried--
"Bravo! very goodl You are wrong to stop. Go on!"
"Oh, no; it is execrable! My fingers are quite rusty."
The next day he begged her to play him something again.
"Very well; to please you!"
And Charles confessed she had gone off a little. She played wrong notes
and blundered; then, stopping short--
"Ah! it is no use. I ought to take some lessons; but--" She bit her lips
and added, "Twenty francs a lesson, that's too dear!"
"Yes, so it is--rather," said Charles, giggling stupidly. "But it seems
to me that one might be able to do it for less; for there are artists of
no reputation, and who are often better than the celebrities."
"Find them!" said Emma.
The next day when he came home he looked at her shyly, and at last could
no longer keep back the words.
"How obstinate you are sometimes! I went to Barfucheres to-day. Well,
Madame Liegard assured me that her three young ladies who are at
La Misericorde have lessons at fifty sous apiece, and that from an
excellent mistress!"
She shrugged her shoulders and did not open her piano again. But when
she passed by it (if Bovary were there), she sighed--
"Ah! my poor piano!"
And when anyone came to see her, she did not fail to inform them she
had given up music, and could not begin again now for important reasons.
Then people commiserated her--
"What a pity! she had so much talent!"
They even spoke to Bovary about it. They put him to shame, and
especially the chemist.
"You are wrong. One should never let any of the faculties of nature lie
fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend, that by inducing madame to
study; you are economising on the subsequent musical education of
your child. For my own part, I think that mothers ought themselves to
instruct their children. That is an idea of Rousseau's, still rather
new perhaps, but that will end by triumphing, I am certain of it, like
mothers nursing their own children and vaccination."
So Charles returned once more to this question of the piano. Emma
replied bitterly that it would be better to sell it. This poor piano,
that had given her vanity so much satisfaction--to see it go was to
Bovary like the indefinable suicide of a part of herself.
"If you liked," he said, "a lesson from time to time, that wouldn't
after all be very ruinous."
"But lessons," she replied, "are only of use when followed up."
And thus it was she set about obtaining her husband's permission to go
to town once a week to see her lover. At the end of a month she was even
considered to have made considerable progress.
| 7,283 | Chapters 2-4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapters-24 | On her return to Yonville, Emma learned that Bovary's father had died. Charles was very upset, particularly because he had not seen the man in a long time. Emma felt no sorrow but made the usual sympathetic gestures, which her husband misunderstood and appreciated very much. After a while, Mrs. Bovary came to stay with them. Emma was polite and attentive but was annoyed because the necessity for being kind to the mourners distracted her from thoughts of Leon. At about this time Lheureux made another appearance and presented Emma with her unpaid bills. He also managed to sell her some more high-priced merchandise. When Emma expressed a worry about managing to pay, he suggested that she get a power of attorney from Bovary. That way, he said, she would not have to bother her husband with "petty" financial matters and could find a convenient method to settle her debts. Emma convinced Bovary of the wisdom of this scheme without too much trouble, since he had no idea of the true amount of their debts. Emma even induced him to use the services of Leon, instead of the local attorney, for drawing up the papers, and Bovary trustingly arranged to send her alone to Rouen to take care of this business. Emma spent the next three days in Rouen with Leon. He rented an expensive hotel room for the occasion, and this short period was like a honeymoon for them. They went to some of the best restaurants and places of entertainment and spent most of their time in lovemaking and romantic pursuits. Leon became completely involved in his affair with Emma; he neglected his work and saw little of his friends. The arrival of her letters became a major event in his life, and he even paid a few visits to Yonville, either in secret or on various false pretexts, to see her. Emma, meanwhile, was getting even more deeply enmeshed in financial obligations to Lheureux. In order to see Leon more often, she began to show a renewed interest in the piano, and soon got Bovary to arrange for her to take a weekly lesson with a teacher in Rouen. | Before Emma can continue with her affair with Leon, she is interrupted by the death of her father-in-law. Then she must think of some plan whereby she can get back to Rouen and Leon. Monsieur Lheureux gives her the pretext. Knowing how easily he can convince Emma to buy things from him, he tells her to get Charles' power of attorney. His plan is to eventually foreclose on everything and thereby make a large profit. But his suggestions offer to Emma a pretext for going to Rouen to consult with Leon. So she convinces Charles that she should handle everything. The very short Chapter 3 covers the three days Emma spent with Leon in Rouen. The three days were described as "a real honeymoon." But the readers should remember that this is the third one. The episode is described in romantic terms of bliss and joy. For these few days, the image of beauty and innocence was restored to Emma, but the scene ends on an uglier note. Amid her renewed joys, she is reminded of her sordid affair with Rodolphe by hearing the boatman relate how Rodolphe had taken the same ride last week with some other lady. The short fourth chapter shows Emma and Leon continuing in their plans to make their meetings definite and to meet at least once a week. This of course means that Emma will have to go deeper in debt. | 475 | 237 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/31.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_21_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 7 | chapter 7 | null | {"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-7", "summary": "In the morning the sheriff's officers arrived and made a complete inventory of the household furnishings and goods, but Emma managed to maintain a stoic attitude all the time they were there. They left a guard on the premises, but she kept him hidden in the attic where Bovary would not see him. That evening Bovary seemed worried, and Emma fearfully imagined that he knew, but he said nothing. She was particularly resentful that she bore all the responsibility in this matter and that Bovary was innocent. As the night passed, she occupied herself in making plans to raise the money. The next morning Emma went to Rouen and called on several bankers, but they all refused to make a loan to her. She asked Leon for help, but he protested that he could never raise such a large sum and became angry when she suggested that he steal the money from his employer. Finally, in order to quiet her, Leon promised that he would see his friends, and if he could raise the sum she required, he would bring it to Yonville. On Monday, Emma was horrified to discover that a public notice of the sheriff's confiscation and auction had been posted in the market place. She went to see Guillaumin, the town lawyer. He offered to help her, but made it clear that he expected favors from her in return. Emma was insulted by his forwardness, shouted that she was not for sale, and left in a fury. Bovary was not home and still did not know what had taken place. Meanwhile, the entire town watched expectantly to see what would happen next. Emma felt weak and afraid; she kept hoping that Leon would gallop up with the money but really had no confidence in this possibility. She was bitter and frightened. Suddenly an idea came to her -- Rodolphe -- and she set out for his estate. She planned to take advantage of his supposed love for her and get the money from him. It never occurred to her that what she was planning to do was actually prostitution -- exactly what she had so angrily refused when Guillaumin had made the same suggestion.", "analysis": "This chapter presents Emma's frantic efforts to obtain money from almost any source. She first goes to her latest lover, Leon; but since Leon is rather anxious to break with Emma, he proves to be of little help. In fact, he hurriedly gets rid of Emma by promising to do something the next day. Her failure is again represented by the appearance of the blind man. This time Homais gives the man a lecture and Emma throws him a half crown piece, the \"sum of her wealth.\" Now she is totally destitute. At the suggestion of her maid, Emma goes to see the lawyer, Monsieur Guillaumin, who supposedly was infatuated with Emma. He offers to give her the money, but she is expected to sleep with him. Emma is horrified and leaves in disgust. There is here a nobility in Emma's make-up. For all of her love affairs, she has never prostituted herself and totally rejects the idea. All of her love affairs have been an attempt to fulfill her dreams."} |
She was stoical the next day when Maitre Hareng, the bailiff, with two
assistants, presented himself at her house to draw up the inventory for
the distraint.
They began with Bovary's consulting-room, and did not write down
the phrenological head, which was considered an "instrument of his
profession"; but in the kitchen they counted the plates; the saucepans,
the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all the nick-nacks on
the whatnot. They examined her dresses, the linen, the dressing-room;
and her whole existence to its most intimate details, was, like a corpse
on whom a post-mortem is made, outspread before the eyes of these three
men.
Maitre Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a white
choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to time--"Allow
me, madame. You allow me?" Often he uttered exclamations. "Charming!
very pretty." Then he began writing again, dipping his pen into the horn
inkstand in his left hand.
When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She kept a
desk there in which Rodolphe's letters were locked. It had to be opened.
"Ah! a correspondence," said Maitre Hareng, with a discreet smile. "But
allow me, for I must make sure the box contains nothing else." And he
tipped up the papers lightly, as if to shake out napoleons. Then she
grew angered to see this coarse hand, with fingers red and pulpy like
slugs, touching these pages against which her heart had beaten.
They went at last. Felicite came back. Emma had sent her out to watch
for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly installed the
man in possession under the roof, where he swore he would remain.
During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched him with
a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in every line of his
face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the chimney-piece ornamented
with Chinese screens, over the large curtains, the armchairs, all
those things, in a word, that had, softened the bitterness of her life,
remorse seized her or rather an immense regret, that, far from crushing,
irritated her passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on
the fire-dogs.
Once the man, no doubt bored in his hiding-place, made a slight noise.
"Is anyone walking upstairs?" said Charles.
"No," she replied; "it is a window that has been left open, and is
rattling in the wind."
The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the brokers whose
names she knew. They were at their country-places or on journeys. She
was not discouraged; and those whom she did manage to see she asked for
money, declaring she must have some, and that she would pay it back.
Some laughed in her face; all refused.
At two o'clock she hurried to Leon, and knocked at the door. No one
answered. At length he appeared.
"What brings you here?"
"Do I disturb you?"
"No; but--" And he admitted that his landlord didn't like his having
"women" there.
"I must speak to you," she went on.
Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.
"No, no! Down there, in our home!"
And they went to their room at the Hotel de Boulogne.
On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She
said to him--
"Leon, you will do me a service?"
And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added--
"Listen, I want eight thousand francs."
"But you are mad!"
"Not yet."
And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she explained
her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it; her mother-in-law
detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but he, Leon, he would set
about finding this indispensable sum.
"How on earth can I?"
"What a coward you are!" she cried.
Then he said stupidly, "You are exaggerating the difficulty. Perhaps,
with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be stopped."
All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible that
they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Leon, could be
security instead of her.
"Go, try, try! I will love you so!"
He went out, and came back at the end of an hour, saying, with solemn
face--
"I have been to three people with no success."
Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney corners,
motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as she stamped her
feet. He heard her murmuring--
"If I were in your place _I_ should soon get some."
"But where?"
"At your office." And she looked at him.
An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their lids
drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look, so that the
young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute will of this woman
who was urging him to a crime. Then he was afraid, and to avoid any
explanation he smote his forehead, crying--
"Morel is to come back to-night; he will not refuse me, I hope" (this
was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant); "and I will
bring it you to-morrow," he added.
Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had expected.
Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing--
"However, if you don't see me by three o'clock do not wait for me, my
darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!"
He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no strength
left for any sentiment.
Four o'clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville, mechanically
obeying the force of old habits.
The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and sharp,
when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen folk, in
Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She reached the
Place du Parvis. People were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed
out through the three doors like a stream through the three arches of
a bridge, and in the middle one, more motionless than a rock, stood the
beadle.
Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had
entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out before her, less
profound than her love; and she walked on weeping beneath her veil,
giddy, staggering, almost fainting.
"Take care!" cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard that was
thrown open.
She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between the
shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who was it?
She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.
Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was empty. She
was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean against a wall to keep
herself from falling.
Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know. All
within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost, sinking
at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on
reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she saw the good Homais, who was watching
a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the
"Hirondelle." In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchief six
cheminots for his wife.
Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped loaves,
that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige of Gothic food
that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the Crusades, and with which
the robust Normans gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the
table, in the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of hippocras
and huge boars' heads, the heads of Saracens to be devoured. The
druggist's wife crunched them up as they had done--heroically, despite
her wretched teeth. And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never
failed to bring her home some that he bought at the great baker's in the
Rue Massacre.
"Charmed to see you," he said, offering Emma a hand to help her into the
"Hirondelle." Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords of the netting,
and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive and Napoleonic.
But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill he
exclaimed--
"I can't understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable
industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to work.
Progress, my word! creeps at a snail's pace. We are floundering about in
mere barbarism."
The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door, as if it
were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.
"This," said the chemist, "is a scrofulous affection."
And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first
time, murmured something about "cornea," "opaque cornea," "sclerotic,"
"facies," then asked him in a paternal tone--
"My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of
getting drunk at the public, you'd do better to die yourself."
He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The blind
man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost idiotic. At last
Monsieur Homais opened his purse--
"Now there's a sou; give me back two lairds, and don't forget my advice:
you'll be the better for it."
Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the druggist
said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic pomade of his own
composition, and he gave his address--"Monsieur Homais, near the market,
pretty well known."
"Now," said Hivert, "for all this trouble you'll give us your
performance."
The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown back,
whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue, and rubbed
his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of hollow yell like a
famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw him over her shoulder
a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune. It seemed to her very fine
thus to throw it away.
The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant out
through the window, crying--
"No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose the
diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries."
The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes
gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable fatigue
overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied, discouraged, almost
asleep.
"Come what may come!" she said to herself. "And then, who knows? Why, at
any moment could not some extraordinary event occur? Lheureux even might
die!"
At nine o'clock in the morning she was awakened by the sound of voices
in the Place. There was a crowd round the market reading a large bill
fixed to one of the posts, and she saw Justin, who was climbing on to
a stone and tearing down the bill. But at this moment the rural guard
seized him by the collar. Monsieur Homais came out of his shop, and Mere
Lefrangois, in the midst of the crowd, seemed to be perorating.
"Madame! madame!" cried Felicite, running in, "it's abominable!"
And the poor girl, deeply moved, handed her a yellow paper that she had
just torn off the door. Emma read with a glance that all her furniture
was for sale.
Then they looked at one another silently. The servant and mistress had
no secret one from the other. At last Felicite sighed--
"If I were you, madame, I should go to Monsieur Guillaumin."
"Do you think--"
And this question meant to say--
"You who know the house through the servant, has the master spoken
sometimes of me?"
"Yes, you'd do well to go there."
She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with jet beads, and
that she might not be seen (there was still a crowd on the Place), she
took the path by the river, outside the village.
She reached the notary's gate quite breathless. The sky was sombre, and
a little snow was falling. At the sound of the bell, Theodore in a
red waistcoat appeared on the steps; he came to open the door almost
familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and showed her into the dining-room.
A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that filled up the
niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the oak-stained
paper hung Steuben's "Esmeralda" and Schopin's "Potiphar." The
ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes, the crystal door-knobs,
the parquet and the furniture, all shone with a scrupulous, English
cleanliness; the windows were ornamented at each corner with stained
glass.
"Now this," thought Emma, "is the dining-room I ought to have."
The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown to his breast
with his left arm, while with the other hand he raised and quickly put
on again his brown velvet cap, pretentiously cocked on the right side,
whence looked out the ends of three fair curls drawn from the back of
the head, following the line of his bald skull.
After he had offered her a seat he sat down to breakfast, apologising
profusely for his rudeness.
"I have come," she said, "to beg you, sir--"
"What, madame? I am listening."
And she began explaining her position to him. Monsieur Guillaumin knew
it, being secretly associated with the linendraper, from whom he always
got capital for the loans on mortgages that he was asked to make.
So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story of the bills,
small at first, bearing different names as endorsers, made out at long
dates, and constantly renewed up to the day, when, gathering together
all the protested bills, the shopkeeper had bidden his friend Vincart
take in his own name all the necessary proceedings, not wishing to pass
for a tiger with his fellow-citizens.
She mingled her story with recriminations against Lheureux, to which the
notary replied from time to time with some insignificant word. Eating
his cutlet and drinking his tea, he buried his chin in his sky-blue
cravat, into which were thrust two diamond pins, held together by a
small gold chain; and he smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous
fashion. But noticing that her feet were damp, he said--
"Do get closer to the stove; put your feet up against the porcelain."
She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary replied in a gallant tone--
"Beautiful things spoil nothing."
Then she tried to move him, and, growing moved herself, she began
telling him about the poorness of her home, her worries, her wants.
He could understand that; an elegant woman! and, without leaving off
eating, he had turned completely round towards her, so that his knee
brushed against her boot, whose sole curled round as it smoked against
the stove.
But when she asked for a thousand sous, he closed his lips, and declared
he was very sorry he had not had the management of her fortune before,
for there were hundreds of ways very convenient, even for a lady, of
turning her money to account. They might, either in the turf-peats
of Grumesnil or building-ground at Havre, almost without risk, have
ventured on some excellent speculations; and he let her consume herself
with rage at the thought of the fabulous sums that she would certainly
have made.
"How was it," he went on, "that you didn't come to me?"
"I hardly know," she said.
"Why, hey? Did I frighten you so much? It is I, on the contrary, who
ought to complain. We hardly know one another; yet I am very devoted to
you. You do not doubt that, I hope?"
He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a greedy kiss, then
held it on his knee; and he played delicately with her fingers whilst
he murmured a thousand blandishments. His insipid voice murmured like a
running brook; a light shone in his eyes through the glimmering of his
spectacles, and his hand was advancing up Emma's sleeve to press her
arm. She felt against her cheek his panting breath. This man oppressed
her horribly.
She sprang up and said to him--
"Sir, I am waiting."
"For what?" said the notary, who suddenly became very pale.
"This money."
"But--" Then, yielding to the outburst of too powerful a desire, "Well,
yes!"
He dragged himself towards her on his knees, regardless of his
dressing-gown.
"For pity's sake, stay. I love you!"
He seized her by her waist. Madame Bovary's face flushed purple. She
recoiled with a terrible look, crying--
"You are taking a shameless advantage of my distress, sir! I am to be
pitied--not to be sold."
And she went out.
The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his fine
embroidered slippers. They were a love gift, and the sight of them at
last consoled him. Besides, he reflected that such an adventure might
have carried him too far.
"What a wretch! what a scoundrel! what an infamy!" she said to herself,
as she fled with nervous steps beneath the aspens of the path. The
disappointment of her failure increased the indignation of her outraged
modesty; it seemed to her that Providence pursued her implacably, and,
strengthening herself in her pride, she had never felt so much esteem
for herself nor so much contempt for others. A spirit of warfare
transformed her. She would have liked to strike all men, to spit in
their faces, to crush them, and she walked rapidly straight on, pale,
quivering, maddened, searching the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes,
and as it were rejoicing in the hate that was choking her.
When she saw her house a numbness came over her. She could not go on;
and yet she must. Besides, whither could she flee?
Felicite was waiting for her at the door. "Well?"
"No!" said Emma.
And for a quarter of an hour the two of them went over the various
persons in Yonville who might perhaps be inclined to help her. But each
time that Felicite named someone Emma replied--
"Impossible! they will not!"
"And the master'll soon be in."
"I know that well enough. Leave me alone."
She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now; and
when Charles came in she would have to say to him--
"Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours. In
your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and it is I,
poor man, who have ruined you."
Then there would be a great sob; next he would weep abundantly, and at
last, the surprise past, he would forgive her.
"Yes," she murmured, grinding her teeth, "he will forgive me, he who
would give a million if I would forgive him for having known me! Never!
never!"
This thought of Bovary's superiority to her exasperated her. Then,
whether she confessed or did not confess, presently, immediately,
to-morrow, he would know the catastrophe all the same; so she must wait
for this horrible scene, and bear the weight of his magnanimity. The
desire to return to Lheureux's seized her--what would be the use? To
write to her father--it was too late; and perhaps, she began to repent
now that she had not yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of
a horse in the alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter
than the plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the
square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to Lestiboudois in
front of the church, saw her go in to the tax-collector's.
She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up to
the attic, and, hidden by some linen spread across props, stationed
themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of Binet's room.
He was alone in his garret, busy imitating in wood one of those
indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres hollowed
out one within the other, the whole as straight as an obelisk, and of no
use whatever; and he was beginning on the last piece--he was nearing his
goal. In the twilight of the workshop the white dust was flying from his
tools like a shower of sparks under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the
two wheels were turning, droning; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his
nostrils distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete
happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace occupations,
which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and satisfy by a
realisation of that beyond which such minds have not a dream.
"Ah! there she is!" exclaimed Madame Tuvache.
But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was saying.
At last these ladies thought they made out the word "francs," and Madame
Tuvache whispered in a low voice--
"She is begging him to give her time for paying her taxes."
"Apparently!" replied the other.
They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the
candlesticks, the banister rails against the walls, while Binet stroked
his beard with satisfaction.
"Do you think she wants to order something of him?" said Madame Tuvache.
"Why, he doesn't sell anything," objected her neighbour.
The tax-collector seemed to be listening with wide-open eyes, as if he
did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant manner. She came
nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no longer spoke.
"Is she making him advances?" said Madame Tuvache. Binet was scarlet to
his very ears. She took hold of his hands.
"Oh, it's too much!"
And no doubt she was suggesting something abominable to him; for the
tax-collector--yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at Lutzen,
had been through the French campaign, and had even been recommended for
the cross--suddenly, as at the sight of a serpent, recoiled as far as he
could from her, crying--
"Madame! what do you mean?"
"Women like that ought to be whipped," said Madame Tuvache.
"But where is she?" continued Madame Caron, for she had disappeared
whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going up the Grande Rue,
and turning to the right as if making for the cemetery, they were lost
in conjectures.
"Nurse Rollet," she said on reaching the nurse's, "I am choking; unlace
me!" She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her with a
petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she did not
answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began spinning flax.
"Oh, leave off!" she murmured, fancying she heard Binet's lathe.
"What's bothering her?" said the nurse to herself. "Why has she come
here?"
She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that drove her from
her home.
Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw things but
vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic persistence. She looked
at the scales on the walls, two brands smoking end to end, and a long
spider crawling over her head in a rent in the beam. At last she began
to collect her thoughts. She remembered--one day--Leon--Oh! how long
ago that was--the sun was shining on the river, and the clematis were
perfuming the air. Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon
began to recall the day before.
"What time is it?" she asked.
Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to that side
of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly, saying--
"Nearly three."
"Ah! thanks, thanks!"
For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would,
perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told the
nurse to run to her house to fetch him.
"Be quick!"
"But, my dear lady, I'm going, I'm going!"
She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first.
Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And she already
saw herself at Lheureux's spreading out her three bank-notes on his
bureau. Then she would have to invent some story to explain matters to
Bovary. What should it be?
The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no clock
in the cot, Emma feared she was perhaps exaggerating the length of time.
She began walking round the garden, step by step; she went into the path
by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping that the woman would have
come back by another road. At last, weary of waiting, assailed by fears
that she thrust from her, no longer conscious whether she had been here
a century or a moment, she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and
stopped her ears. The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken
Mere Rollet said to her--
"There is no one at your house!"
"What?"
"Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you; they're
looking for you."
Emma answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about
her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back
instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and
uttered a cry; for the thought of Rodolphe, like a flash of lightning in
a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so good, so delicate, so
generous! And besides, should he hesitate to do her this service, she
would know well enough how to constrain him to it by re-waking, in a
single moment, their lost love. So she set out towards La Huchette, not
seeing that she was hastening to offer herself to that which but a while
ago had so angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.
| 6,623 | Chapter 7 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-7 | In the morning the sheriff's officers arrived and made a complete inventory of the household furnishings and goods, but Emma managed to maintain a stoic attitude all the time they were there. They left a guard on the premises, but she kept him hidden in the attic where Bovary would not see him. That evening Bovary seemed worried, and Emma fearfully imagined that he knew, but he said nothing. She was particularly resentful that she bore all the responsibility in this matter and that Bovary was innocent. As the night passed, she occupied herself in making plans to raise the money. The next morning Emma went to Rouen and called on several bankers, but they all refused to make a loan to her. She asked Leon for help, but he protested that he could never raise such a large sum and became angry when she suggested that he steal the money from his employer. Finally, in order to quiet her, Leon promised that he would see his friends, and if he could raise the sum she required, he would bring it to Yonville. On Monday, Emma was horrified to discover that a public notice of the sheriff's confiscation and auction had been posted in the market place. She went to see Guillaumin, the town lawyer. He offered to help her, but made it clear that he expected favors from her in return. Emma was insulted by his forwardness, shouted that she was not for sale, and left in a fury. Bovary was not home and still did not know what had taken place. Meanwhile, the entire town watched expectantly to see what would happen next. Emma felt weak and afraid; she kept hoping that Leon would gallop up with the money but really had no confidence in this possibility. She was bitter and frightened. Suddenly an idea came to her -- Rodolphe -- and she set out for his estate. She planned to take advantage of his supposed love for her and get the money from him. It never occurred to her that what she was planning to do was actually prostitution -- exactly what she had so angrily refused when Guillaumin had made the same suggestion. | This chapter presents Emma's frantic efforts to obtain money from almost any source. She first goes to her latest lover, Leon; but since Leon is rather anxious to break with Emma, he proves to be of little help. In fact, he hurriedly gets rid of Emma by promising to do something the next day. Her failure is again represented by the appearance of the blind man. This time Homais gives the man a lecture and Emma throws him a half crown piece, the "sum of her wealth." Now she is totally destitute. At the suggestion of her maid, Emma goes to see the lawyer, Monsieur Guillaumin, who supposedly was infatuated with Emma. He offers to give her the money, but she is expected to sleep with him. Emma is horrified and leaves in disgust. There is here a nobility in Emma's make-up. For all of her love affairs, she has never prostituted herself and totally rejects the idea. All of her love affairs have been an attempt to fulfill her dreams. | 478 | 171 |
2,413 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/32.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_22_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 8 | chapter 8 | null | {"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-8", "summary": "Rodolphe was surprised to see Emma. They talked about the past for a while, and she was able, as planned, to arouse his old interest in her. She told him about her debts and asked him to lend her several thousand francs. Rodolphe began to understand the reason for her strange visit and calmly told her that he had no money available. Emma knew he was lying. She lost her temper and left. Now Emma realized that the situation was hopeless. She walked through the fields without seeing and had dazed memories of incidents in her life. Then she became lucid again and decided what she had to do. She ran to Homais' shop and induced the servant, Justin, to let her into the attic. There she opened a jar of arsenic and ate a large quantity of it, while the frightened boy watched. She went home again, for the first time in a long while feeling at peace. Meanwhile, Bovary had learned about the sheriff's confiscation. He searched frantically for Emma, but no one knew her whereabouts. When he returned home, he found her resting in bed. She gave him a letter which he was not to read until the next day. In a short time Emma was torn by spasms of nausea and became violently ill. Despite his concern, she would tell Bovary nothing, so he opened her letter and discovered to his horror that she had poisoned herself. He called for help and soon the news spread through the town. Homais came to his assistance, and they sent for doctors from Rouen and a neighboring town. Bovary was too upset to do anything and sat at Emma's bedside crying. She wept also and for once was tender to him. The other doctors and the priest arrived, but nothing could be done. After a few more hours, Emma died in great pain.", "analysis": "When Emma arrives at Rodolphe's house to ask for money, the reader should remember that they haven't seen each other for over three years. Thus when he first sees Emma, all of his old desires for her are reawakened and Emma is aware that she has some effect on him. Thus in his refusal to give her money, Emma feels that this is again a betrayal of her love. Flaubert intimates that Emma's desire to kill herself comes not from her desperate financial condition and not from the weak Leon's refusal, but from a larger sense of betrayal by Rodolphe. To Emma, who has devoted her life to a search for perfect love, this second betrayal by Rodolphe makes life not worth living. Her reactions and her state of mind immediately after leaving Rodolphe are practically the same as when he first betrayed her. And as she was sick for forty-three days the first time, she decides now to take her life. Thus Emma's suicide is motivated by her sense of betrayal by the one man whom she might have loved. Flaubert perhaps is suggesting that Emma was capable of a profound love. If she was not, then at least, she possessed a dream of love which was worth living for and when this dream was betrayed, there was nothing left but suicide. It is a bit of Flaubert's irony that Justin is directly responsible for Emma's death. This is ironic because he is the one character in the book who has demonstrated a constant, undeviating love for Emma. His love for Emma exists on a plane which Emma herself never felt and never achieved; thus it is ironic that the person who most loved and adored her was also the one responsible for her death. That is, had he not loved her so much, he would never have been intimidated enough so as to give her the keys to the secret room where the arsenic was kept. Emma's death reflects the pathetic misuse of her life. As she has spent her life longing for the unattainable and had failed miserably, so in death she longed for a simple but beautiful death. But instead, her death is one of horrible suffering and ugliness, and the ugliness of her death is emphasized by the appearance of the blind man, the symbol of her degradation in life. Emma's last act is that of taking extreme unction, and this act captures the essence of the novel. Here she returns to the religious fold, but her return is in terms of sensuousness. The kiss that she gives to the crucifix is not one given to God but it is more of an erotic, sensual kiss. And when the priest anoints her, Flaubert subtly reminds the reader that this woman is a sensualist: the priest anoints the eyes \"that had coveted all worldly pomp\" then the nostrils and mouth \"that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness\"; then the hands that \"had delighted in sensual touches,\" and finally the feet which were \"so swift . . . when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that would now walk no more.\" Thus the final picture of Emma is that of the sensualist looking in death for the supreme sensual desire. Many critics have suggested that with the appearance of Dr. Lariviere we have our only admirable character in the novel. Perhaps this characterization is influenced by Flaubert's own father. He does contrast to the other characters, in view of the fact that he is coldly analytical, but yet his presence indicates that he cares for humanity. He does express real sympathy for his patients; and his sense of intelligence, his professional dignity, and his integrity set off all the other characters as being petty and stupid."} |
She asked herself as she walked along, "What am I going to say? How
shall I begin?" And as she went on she recognised the thickets,
the trees, the sea-rushes on the hill, the chateau yonder. All the
sensations of her first tenderness came back to her, and her poor aching
heart opened out amorously. A warm wind blew in her face; the melting
snow fell drop by drop from the buds to the grass.
She entered, as she used to, through the small park-gate. She reached
the avenue bordered by a double row of dense lime-trees. They were
swaying their long whispering branches to and fro. The dogs in their
kennels all barked, and the noise of their voices resounded, but brought
out no one.
She went up the large straight staircase with wooden balusters that led
to the corridor paved with dusty flags, into which several doors in a
row opened, as in a monastery or an inn. His was at the top, right
at the end, on the left. When she placed her fingers on the lock her
strength suddenly deserted her. She was afraid, almost wished he
would not be there, though this was her only hope, her last chance of
salvation. She collected her thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening
herself by the feeling of present necessity, went in.
He was in front of the fire, both his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a
pipe.
"What! it is you!" he said, getting up hurriedly.
"Yes, it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your advice."
And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to open her
lips.
"You have not changed; you are charming as ever!"
"Oh," she replied bitterly, "they are poor charms since you disdained
them."
Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excusing himself in
vague terms, in default of being able to invent better.
She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight of him,
so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed; in the pretext
he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on which depended the
honour, the very life of a third person.
"No matter!" she said, looking at him sadly. "I have suffered much."
He replied philosophically--
"Such is life!"
"Has life," Emma went on, "been good to you at least, since our
separation?"
"Oh, neither good nor bad."
"Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted."
"Yes, perhaps."
"You think so?" she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. "Oh, Rodolphe!
if you but knew! I loved you so!"
It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time, their
fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With a gesture of
pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking upon his breast she
said to him--
"How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the habit
of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I will tell you
about all that and you will see. And you--you fled from me!"
For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in consequence
of that natural cowardice that characterises the stronger sex. Emma went
on, with dainty little nods, more coaxing than an amorous kitten--
"You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them, dear! I excuse
them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are indeed a man;
you have everything to make one love you. But we'll begin again, won't
we? We will love one another. See! I am laughing; I am happy! Oh,
speak!"
And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a tear,
like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.
He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of his hand was
caressing her smooth hair, where in the twilight was mirrored like a
golden arrow one last ray of the sun. She bent down her brow; at last he
kissed her on the eyelids quite gently with the tips of his lips.
"Why, you have been crying! What for?"
She burst into tears. Rodolphe thought this was an outburst of her
love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last remnant of
resistance, and then he cried out--
"Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was imbecile and
cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is it. Tell me!" He was
kneeling by her.
"Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand francs."
"But--but--" said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a grave
expression.
"You know," she went on quickly, "that my husband had placed his whole
fortune at a notary's. He ran away. So we borrowed; the patients don't
pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is not yet done; we shall
have the money later on. But to-day, for want of three thousand francs,
we are to be sold up. It is to be at once, this very moment, and,
counting upon your friendship, I have come to you."
"Ah!" thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, "that was what she came for."
At last he said with a calm air--
"Dear madame, I have not got them."
He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have given them,
although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand
for money being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest and
most destructive.
First she looked at him for some moments.
"You have not got them!" she repeated several times. "You have not got
them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You never loved me.
You are no better than the others."
She was betraying, ruining herself.
Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was "hard up" himself.
"Ah! I pity you," said Emma. "Yes--very much."
And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that shone against its
panoply, "But when one is so poor one doesn't have silver on the butt of
one's gun. One doesn't buy a clock inlaid with tortoise shell," she went
on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, "nor silver-gilt whistles for one's
whips," and she touched them, "nor charms for one's watch. Oh, he wants
for nothing! even to a liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself;
you live well. You have a chateau, farms, woods; you go hunting; you
travel to Paris. Why, if it were but that," she cried, taking up two
studs from the mantelpiece, "but the least of these trifles, one can get
money for them. Oh, I do not want them, keep them!"
And she threw the two links away from her, their gold chain breaking as
it struck against the wall.
"But I! I would have given you everything. I would have sold all, worked
for you with my hands, I would have begged on the highroads for a smile,
for a look, to hear you say 'Thanks!' And you sit there quietly in your
arm-chair, as if you had not made me suffer enough already! But for you,
and you know it, I might have lived happily. What made you do it? Was
it a bet? Yet you loved me--you said so. And but a moment since--Ah!
it would have been better to have driven me away. My hands are hot with
your kisses, and there is the spot on the carpet where at my knees you
swore an eternity of love! You made me believe you; for two years you
held me in the most magnificent, the sweetest dream! Eh! Our plans for
the journey, do you remember? Oh, your letter! your letter! it tore my
heart! And then when I come back to him--to him, rich, happy, free--to
implore the help the first stranger would give, a suppliant, and
bringing back to him all my tenderness, he repulses me because it would
cost him three thousand francs!"
"I haven't got them," replied Rodolphe, with that perfect calm with
which resigned rage covers itself as with a shield.
She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was crushing her, and she
passed back through the long alley, stumbling against the heaps of dead
leaves scattered by the wind. At last she reached the ha-ha hedge in
front of the gate; she broke her nails against the lock in her haste to
open it. Then a hundred steps farther on, breathless, almost falling,
she stopped. And now turning round, she once more saw the impassive
chateau, with the park, the gardens, the three courts, and all the
windows of the facade.
She remained lost in stupor, and having no more consciousness of herself
than through the beating of her arteries, that she seemed to hear
bursting forth like a deafening music filling all the fields. The earth
beneath her feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows seemed
to her immense brown waves breaking into foam. Everything in her
head, of memories, ideas, went off at once like a thousand pieces of
fireworks. She saw her father, Lheureux's closet, their room at home,
another landscape. Madness was coming upon her; she grew afraid, and
managed to recover herself, in a confused way, it is true, for she did
not in the least remember the cause of the terrible condition she was
in, that is to say, the question of money. She suffered only in her
love, and felt her soul passing from her in this memory; as wounded men,
dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding wounds.
Night was falling, crows were flying about.
Suddenly it seemed to her that fiery spheres were exploding in the air
like fulminating balls when they strike, and were whirling, whirling,
to melt at last upon the snow between the branches of the trees. In the
midst of each of them appeared the face of Rodolphe. They multiplied and
drew near her, penetrating, her. It all disappeared; she recognised the
lights of the houses that shone through the fog.
Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her. She was panting as
if her heart would burst. Then in an 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 to-morrow; 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.
"Ah! 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 Mid-Lent,
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
skull-cap long before the doctor had come in.
He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat, to that
generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners, who, loving
their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with enthusiasm and
wisdom. Everyone in his hospital trembled when he was angry; and his
students so revered him that they tried, as soon as they were themselves
in practice, to imitate him as much as possible. So that in all the
towns about they were found wearing his long wadded merino overcoat
and black frock-coat, whose buttoned cuffs slightly covered his brawny
hands--very beautiful hands, and that never knew gloves, as though to be
more ready to plunge into suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles,
and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous,
fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he
would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect
had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating
than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every
lie athwart all assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along,
full of that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness
of great talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a labourious and
irreproachable life.
He frowned as soon as he had passed the door when he saw the cadaverous
face of Emma stretched out on her back with her mouth open. Then, while
apparently listening to Canivet, he rubbed his fingers up and down
beneath his nostrils, and repeated--
"Good! good!"
But he made a slow gesture with his shoulders. Bovary watched him; they
looked at one another; and this man, accustomed as he was to the sight
of pain, could not keep back a tear that fell on his shirt-frill.
He tried to take Canivet into the next room. Charles followed him.
"She is very ill, isn't she? If we put on sinapisms? Anything! Oh, think
of something, you who have saved so many!"
Charles caught him in both his arms, and gazed at him wildly,
imploringly, half-fainting against his breast.
"Come, my poor fellow, courage! There is nothing more to be done."
And Doctor Lariviere turned away.
"You are going?"
"I will come back."
He went out only to give an order to the coachman, with Monsieur
Canivet, who did not care either to have Emma die under his hands.
The chemist rejoined them on the Place. He could not by temperament keep
away from celebrities, so he begged Monsieur Lariviere to do him the
signal honour of accepting some breakfast.
He sent quickly to the "Lion d'Or" for some pigeons; to the butcher's
for all the cutlets that were to be had; to Tuvache for cream; and
to Lestiboudois for eggs; and the druggist himself aided in the
preparations, while Madame Homais was saying as she pulled together the
strings of her jacket--
"You must excuse us, sir, for in this poor place, when one hasn't been
told the night before--"
"Wine glasses!" whispered Homais.
"If only we were in town, we could fall back upon stuffed trotters."
"Be quiet! Sit down, doctor!"
He thought fit, after the first few mouthfuls, to give some details as
to the catastrophe.
"We first had a feeling of siccity in the pharynx, then intolerable
pains at the epigastrium, super purgation, coma."
"But how did she poison herself?"
"I don't know, doctor, and I don't even know where she can have procured
the arsenious acid."
Justin, who was just bringing in a pile of plates, began to tremble.
"What's the matter?" said the chemist.
At this question the young man dropped the whole lot on the ground with
a crash.
"Imbecile!" cried Homais, "awkward lout! block-head! confounded ass!"
But suddenly controlling himself--
"I wished, doctor, to make an analysis, and primo I delicately
introduced a tube--"
"You would have done better," said the physician, "to introduce your
fingers into her throat."
His colleague was silent, having just before privately received a severe
lecture about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so arrogant and so
verbose at the time of the clubfoot, was to-day very modest. He smiled
without ceasing in an approving manner.
Homais dilated in Amphytrionic pride, and the affecting thought of
Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic
reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him.
He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell cantharides, upas, the
manchineel, vipers.
"I have even read that various persons have found themselves
under toxicological symptoms, and, as it were, thunderstricken by
black-pudding that had been subjected to a too vehement fumigation.
At least, this was stated in a very fine report drawn up by one of our
pharmaceutical chiefs, one of our masters, the illustrious Cadet de
Gassicourt!"
Madame Homais reappeared, carrying one of those shaky machines that
are heated with spirits of wine; for Homais liked to make his coffee
at table, having, moreover, torrefied it, pulverised it, and mixed it
himself.
"Saccharum, doctor?" said he, offering the sugar.
Then he had all his children brought down, anxious to have the
physician's opinion on their constitutions.
At last Monsieur Lariviere was about to leave, when Madame Homais asked
for a consultation about her husband. He was making his blood too thick
by going to sleep every evening after dinner.
"Oh, it isn't his blood that's too thick," said the physician.
And, smiling a little at his unnoticed joke, the doctor opened the
door. But the chemist's shop was full of people; he had the greatest
difficulty in getting rid of Monsieur Tuvache, who feared his spouse
would get inflammation of the lungs, because she was in the habit of
spitting on the ashes; then of Monsieur Binet, who sometimes experienced
sudden attacks of great hunger; and of Madame Caron, who suffered
from tinglings; of Lheureux, who had vertigo; of Lestiboudois, who had
rheumatism; and of Madame Lefrancois, who had heartburn. At last the
three horses started; and it was the general opinion that he had not
shown himself at all obliging.
Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur
Bournisien, who was going across the market with the holy oil.
Homais, as was due to his principles, compared priests to ravens
attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was
personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the
shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other.
Nevertheless, not shrinking from what he called his mission, he returned
to Bovary's in company with Canivet whom Monsieur Lariviere, before
leaving, had strongly urged to make this visit; and he would, but for
his wife's objections, have taken his two sons with him, in order
to accustom them to great occasions; that this might be a lesson, an
example, a solemn picture, that should remain in their heads later on.
The room when they went in was full of mournful solemnity. On the
work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or six
small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix between
two lighted candles.
Emma, her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately wide
open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets with that hideous
and soft movement of the dying, that seems as if they wanted already to
cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a statue and with eyes red as
fire, Charles, not weeping, stood opposite her at the foot of the bed,
while the priest, bending one knee, was muttering words in a low voice.
She turned her face slowly, and seemed filled with joy on seeing
suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst of
a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her first
mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude that were
beginning.
The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward her
neck as one who is athirst, and glueing her lips to the body of the
Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest
kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and
the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give
extreme unction. First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly
pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze
and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had
curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands that
had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles of the
feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy her desires, and
that would now walk no more.
The cure wiped his fingers, threw the bit of cotton dipped in oil into
the fire, and came and sat down by the dying woman, to tell her that
she must now blend her sufferings with those of Jesus Christ and abandon
herself to the divine mercy.
Finishing his exhortations, he tried to place in her hand a blessed
candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was soon to be
surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her fingers, and the taper,
but for Monsieur Bournisien would have fallen to the ground.
However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an expression of
serenity as if the sacrament had cured her.
The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to Bovary
that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when he thought it
meet for their salvation; and Charles remembered the day when, so near
death, she had received the communion. Perhaps there was no need to
despair, he thought.
In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a dream;
then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass, and remained
some time bending over it, until the big tears fell from her eyes. Then
she turned away her head with a sigh and fell back upon the pillows.
Her chest soon began panting rapidly; the whole of her tongue protruded
from her mouth; her eyes, as they rolled, grew paler, like the two
globes of a lamp that is going out, so that one might have thought
her already dead but for the fearful labouring of her ribs, shaken
by violent breathing, as if the soul were struggling to free itself.
Felicite knelt down before the crucifix, and the druggist himself
slightly bent his knees, while Monsieur Canivet looked out vaguely at
the Place. Bournisien had again begun to pray, his face bowed against
the edge of the bed, his long black cassock trailing behind him in the
room. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched
towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering at
every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin. As the
death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his prayers
mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes all seemed lost
in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled like a passing
bell.
Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs and the
clattering of a stick; and a voice rose--a raucous voice--that sang--
"Maids in the warmth of a summer day Dream of love and of love always"
Emma raised herself like a galvanised corpse, her hair undone, her eyes
fixed, staring.
"Where the sickle blades have been, Nannette, gathering ears of corn,
Passes bending down, my queen, To the earth where they were born."
"The blind man!" she cried. And Emma began to laugh, an atrocious,
frantic, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the hideous face of the poor
wretch that stood out against the eternal night like a menace.
"The wind is strong this summer day, Her petticoat has flown away."
She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew near. She
was dead.
| 8,731 | Chapter 8 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-8 | Rodolphe was surprised to see Emma. They talked about the past for a while, and she was able, as planned, to arouse his old interest in her. She told him about her debts and asked him to lend her several thousand francs. Rodolphe began to understand the reason for her strange visit and calmly told her that he had no money available. Emma knew he was lying. She lost her temper and left. Now Emma realized that the situation was hopeless. She walked through the fields without seeing and had dazed memories of incidents in her life. Then she became lucid again and decided what she had to do. She ran to Homais' shop and induced the servant, Justin, to let her into the attic. There she opened a jar of arsenic and ate a large quantity of it, while the frightened boy watched. She went home again, for the first time in a long while feeling at peace. Meanwhile, Bovary had learned about the sheriff's confiscation. He searched frantically for Emma, but no one knew her whereabouts. When he returned home, he found her resting in bed. She gave him a letter which he was not to read until the next day. In a short time Emma was torn by spasms of nausea and became violently ill. Despite his concern, she would tell Bovary nothing, so he opened her letter and discovered to his horror that she had poisoned herself. He called for help and soon the news spread through the town. Homais came to his assistance, and they sent for doctors from Rouen and a neighboring town. Bovary was too upset to do anything and sat at Emma's bedside crying. She wept also and for once was tender to him. The other doctors and the priest arrived, but nothing could be done. After a few more hours, Emma died in great pain. | When Emma arrives at Rodolphe's house to ask for money, the reader should remember that they haven't seen each other for over three years. Thus when he first sees Emma, all of his old desires for her are reawakened and Emma is aware that she has some effect on him. Thus in his refusal to give her money, Emma feels that this is again a betrayal of her love. Flaubert intimates that Emma's desire to kill herself comes not from her desperate financial condition and not from the weak Leon's refusal, but from a larger sense of betrayal by Rodolphe. To Emma, who has devoted her life to a search for perfect love, this second betrayal by Rodolphe makes life not worth living. Her reactions and her state of mind immediately after leaving Rodolphe are practically the same as when he first betrayed her. And as she was sick for forty-three days the first time, she decides now to take her life. Thus Emma's suicide is motivated by her sense of betrayal by the one man whom she might have loved. Flaubert perhaps is suggesting that Emma was capable of a profound love. If she was not, then at least, she possessed a dream of love which was worth living for and when this dream was betrayed, there was nothing left but suicide. It is a bit of Flaubert's irony that Justin is directly responsible for Emma's death. This is ironic because he is the one character in the book who has demonstrated a constant, undeviating love for Emma. His love for Emma exists on a plane which Emma herself never felt and never achieved; thus it is ironic that the person who most loved and adored her was also the one responsible for her death. That is, had he not loved her so much, he would never have been intimidated enough so as to give her the keys to the secret room where the arsenic was kept. Emma's death reflects the pathetic misuse of her life. As she has spent her life longing for the unattainable and had failed miserably, so in death she longed for a simple but beautiful death. But instead, her death is one of horrible suffering and ugliness, and the ugliness of her death is emphasized by the appearance of the blind man, the symbol of her degradation in life. Emma's last act is that of taking extreme unction, and this act captures the essence of the novel. Here she returns to the religious fold, but her return is in terms of sensuousness. The kiss that she gives to the crucifix is not one given to God but it is more of an erotic, sensual kiss. And when the priest anoints her, Flaubert subtly reminds the reader that this woman is a sensualist: the priest anoints the eyes "that had coveted all worldly pomp" then the nostrils and mouth "that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness"; then the hands that "had delighted in sensual touches," and finally the feet which were "so swift . . . when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that would now walk no more." Thus the final picture of Emma is that of the sensualist looking in death for the supreme sensual desire. Many critics have suggested that with the appearance of Dr. Lariviere we have our only admirable character in the novel. Perhaps this characterization is influenced by Flaubert's own father. He does contrast to the other characters, in view of the fact that he is coldly analytical, but yet his presence indicates that he cares for humanity. He does express real sympathy for his patients; and his sense of intelligence, his professional dignity, and his integrity set off all the other characters as being petty and stupid. | 437 | 638 |
2,413 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_3_chapters_9_to_11.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_23_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 3.chapters 9-11 | chapters 9-11 | null | {"name": "Chapters 9-11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapters-911", "summary": "It took Charles a long time to recover from the initial shock of Emma's death. His mother arrived and helped to put affairs in order and thought that now Emma was gone she would be reinstated in Charles' affection. Emma's father also showed up for the funeral, but was too emotional to be of help. The priest and Homais sat up all night with the body and performed certain rites which they thought appropriate. The priest had a difficult time convincing Charles that the burial should take place soon. Charles gave directions for Emma to be buried in her wedding dress and quarreled with his mother about the expense of some parts of the funeral. As soon as the funeral is over, old Roualt goes home without even seeing little Berthe. Later that night the sexton sees Justin by Emma's grave and thinks that he now knows who has been stealing his potatoes. In the days which followed, Bovary was contacted by all Emma's creditors. Her debts included not merely those of Lheureux, but many bills to business concerns, tradesmen, and other people. Their total constituted a vast amount. Bovary tried to collect the fees due him in an effort to pay but learned that Emma had already done so. In the meantime, Leon became engaged to a young woman of good family. Bovary sent a letter of congratulations to Leon's mother, in which he remarked, innocently, that the news would have pleased his late wife. One night Bovary came across the letter from Rodolphe that Emma had lost in the attic a long time before. He read it, but assumed that there had been a platonic affection between them and was not concerned. He idealized Emma's memory and was pleased to learn that another had also admired her. In an attempt to pay his debts, Bovary had to sell nearly all the furniture, but even this amount was not sufficient. For sentimental reasons, though, he refrained from taking anything from her bedroom and kept it just the way it was before her death. Mrs. Bovary had come to live with him, but they had a quarrel over the possession of one of Emma's shawls and she left his house. The servant left also, taking most of Emma's wardrobe with her. Bovary began to live in seclusion. He avoided his old friends and neglected his practice. Homais, who had once been so close, and who was now a power in the community, shunned him, claiming that there was too big a gap in their social positions. Bovary often sat in Emma's room, examining her possessions and recalling their life together. One day he opened her desk and discovered the letters from Rodolphe and Leon. He read them with an air of disbelief and was very distressed when he realized their meaning and was forced to acknowledge that Emma had been unfaithful. After this he was always gloomy and seemed a broken man. He rarely left his house and kept away from people. Once he had to go to Rouen to sell his horse in order to raise more money. He met Rodolphe there and the two men had a drink together in a cafe. Rodolphe felt guilty and tried to make small talk. Finally Bovary told him that he knew the truth, but that he no longer held any grudge against him. The fault, Bovary said, was with Destiny. The next day Bovary died quietly while sitting in his garden. His house and remaining property were sold on behalf of his creditors, and there was just enough left over to send Berthe to stay with her grandmother. Mrs. Bovary died later that year and Roualt was seriously ill; Berthe was then sent to an aunt's house. This woman was very poor, and the little girl ended up working in a cotton mill.", "analysis": "The final chapters are concerned with showing the effect of Emma's death on various people. The greatest effect is on Charles, who mourns her death for a long time before he discovers the letters from Rodolphe and Leon. Then he slowly deteriorates in despair and poverty and inertia. Obliquely, Emma's death probably has the greatest effect on little Berthe, since at the age of seven she is sent into the cotton mill to earn her own living. In contrast, the people whom Emma most loved, Rodolphe and Leon, are not at all affected by her death. Justine who loved her with the purest love, is accused of stealing potatoes because he returned to cry at her grave. The last chapter is filled with many ironies. That Charles would want to bury Emma in her wedding dress is ironic in view of Emma's infidelities. The actions of the chemist and the priest are developed to show how their every act is not for someone else's benefit but for their own advancement. Homais' receipt of the cross of the Legion of Honor suggests the pettiness of the society against which Emma revolted. In the final analysis, as seen against the society in which Emma lived, Emma becomes a rather sympathetic character. She was a woman who had a full conviction of her dreams and was willing to risk everything for them. She had a glimpse of a life and of emotions that exist outside this narrow provincial world, but her tragedy lies finally in the fact that she could find no object in this world worthy of her dreams."} |
There is always after the death of anyone a kind of stupefaction;
so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign
ourselves to believe in it. But still, when he saw that she did not
move, Charles threw himself upon her, crying--
"Farewell! farewell!"
Homais and Canivet dragged him from the room.
"Restrain yourself!"
"Yes." said he, struggling, "I'll be quiet. I'll not do anything. But
leave me alone. I want to see her. She is my wife!"
And he wept.
"Cry," said the chemist; "let nature take her course; that will solace
you."
Weaker than a child, Charles let himself be led downstairs into the
sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went home. On the Place he
was accosted by the blind man, who, having dragged himself as far as
Yonville, in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic pomade, was asking
every passer-by where the druggist lived.
"There now! as if I hadn't got other fish to fry. Well, so much the
worse; you must come later on."
And he entered the shop hurriedly.
He had to write two letters, to prepare a soothing potion for Bovary, to
invent some lie that would conceal the poisoning, and work it up into an
article for the "Fanal," without counting the people who were waiting to
get the news from him; and when the Yonvillers had all heard his story
of the arsenic that she had mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla
cream. Homais once more returned to Bovary's.
He found him alone (Monsieur Canivet had left), sitting in an arm-chair
near the window, staring with an idiotic look at the flags of the floor.
"Now," said the chemist, "you ought yourself to fix the hour for the
ceremony."
"Why? What ceremony?" Then, in a stammering, frightened voice, "Oh, no!
not that. No! I want to see her here."
Homais, to keep himself in countenance, took up a water-bottle on the
whatnot to water the geraniums.
"Ah! thanks," said Charles; "you are good."
But he did not finish, choking beneath the crowd of memories that this
action of the druggist recalled to him.
Then to distract him, Homais thought fit to talk a little horticulture:
plants wanted humidity. Charles bowed his head in sign of approbation.
"Besides, the fine days will soon be here again."
"Ah!" said Bovary.
The druggist, at his wit's end, began softly to draw aside the small
window-curtain.
"Hallo! there's Monsieur Tuvache passing."
Charles repeated like a machine---
"Monsieur Tuvache passing!"
Homais did not dare to speak to him again about the funeral
arrangements; it was the priest who succeeded in reconciling him to
them.
He shut himself up in his consulting-room, took a pen, and after sobbing
for some time, wrote--
"I wish her to be buried in her wedding-dress, with white shoes, and a
wreath. Her hair is to be spread out over her shoulders. Three coffins,
one of oak, one of mahogany, one of lead. Let no one say anything to me.
I shall have strength. Over all there is to be placed a large piece of
green velvet. This is my wish; see that it is done."
The two men were much surprised at Bovary's romantic ideas. The chemist
at once went to him and said--
"This velvet seems to me a superfetation. Besides, the expense--"
"What's that to you?" cried Charles. "Leave me! You did not love her.
Go!"
The priest took him by the arm for a turn in the garden. He discoursed
on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great, was very good: one
must submit to his decrees without a murmur; nay, must even thank him.
Charles burst out into blasphemies: "I hate your God!"
"The spirit of rebellion is still upon you," sighed the ecclesiastic.
Bovary was far away. He was walking with great strides along by the
wall, near the espalier, and he ground his teeth; he raised to heaven
looks of malediction, but not so much as a leaf stirred.
A fine rain was falling: Charles, whose chest was bare, at last began to
shiver; he went in and sat down in the kitchen.
At six o'clock a noise like a clatter of old iron was heard on the
Place; it was the "Hirondelle" coming in, and he remained with his
forehead against the windowpane, watching all the passengers get
out, one after the other. Felicite put down a mattress for him in the
drawing-room. He threw himself upon it and fell asleep.
Although a philosopher, Monsieur Homais respected the dead. So bearing
no grudge to poor Charles, he came back again in the evening to sit up
with the body; bringing with him three volumes and a pocket-book for
taking notes.
Monsieur Bournisien was there, and two large candles were burning at the
head of the bed, that had been taken out of the alcove. The druggist, on
whom the silence weighed, was not long before he began formulating some
regrets about this "unfortunate young woman." and the priest replied
that there was nothing to do now but pray for her.
"Yet," Homais went on, "one of two things; either she died in a state of
grace (as the Church has it), and then she has no need of our prayers;
or else she departed impertinent (that is, I believe, the ecclesiastical
expression), and then--"
Bournisien interrupted him, replying testily that it was none the less
necessary to pray.
"But," objected the chemist, "since God knows all our needs, what can be
the good of prayer?"
"What!" cried the ecclesiastic, "prayer! Why, aren't you a Christian?"
"Excuse me," said Homais; "I admire Christianity. To begin with, it
enfranchised the slaves, introduced into the world a morality--"
"That isn't the question. All the texts-"
"Oh! oh! As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the texts
have been falsified by the Jesuits."
Charles came in, and advancing towards the bed, slowly drew the
curtains.
Emma's head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her
mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her
face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind
of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to
disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if
spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her
knees, and then rose at the tips of her toes, and it seemed to Charles
that infinite masses, an enormous load, were weighing upon her.
The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of the
river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace. Monsieur
Bournisien from time to time blew his nose noisily, and Homais' pen was
scratching over the paper.
"Come, my good friend," he said, "withdraw; this spectacle is tearing
you to pieces."
Charles once gone, the chemist and the cure recommenced their
discussions.
"Read Voltaire," said the one, "read D'Holbach, read the
'Encyclopaedia'!"
"Read the 'Letters of some Portuguese Jews,'" said the other; "read 'The
Meaning of Christianity,' by Nicolas, formerly a magistrate."
They grew warm, they grew red, they both talked at once without
listening to each other. Bournisien was scandalized at such audacity;
Homais marvelled at such stupidity; and they were on the point of
insulting one another when Charles suddenly reappeared. A fascination
drew him. He was continually coming upstairs.
He stood opposite her, the better to see her, and he lost himself in a
contemplation so deep that it was no longer painful.
He recalled stories of catalepsy, the marvels of magnetism, and he
said to himself that by willing it with all his force he might perhaps
succeed in reviving her. Once he even bent towards he, and cried in a
low voice, "Emma! Emma!" His strong breathing made the flames of the
candles tremble against the wall.
At daybreak Madame Bovary senior arrived. Charles as he embraced her
burst into another flood of tears. She tried, as the chemist had done,
to make some remarks to him on the expenses of the funeral. He became so
angry that she was silent, and he even commissioned her to go to town at
once and buy what was necessary.
Charles remained alone the whole afternoon; they had taken Berthe
to Madame Homais'; Felicite was in the room upstairs with Madame
Lefrancois.
In the evening he had some visitors. He rose, pressed their hands,
unable to speak. Then they sat down near one another, and formed a large
semicircle in front of the fire. With lowered faces, and swinging one
leg crossed over the other knee, they uttered deep sighs at intervals;
each one was inordinately bored, and yet none would be the first to go.
Homais, when he returned at nine o'clock (for the last two days only
Homais seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a stock of
camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried a large jar
full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata. Just then the servant,
Madame Lefrancois, and Madame Bovary senior were busy about Emma,
finishing dressing her, and they were drawing down the long stiff veil
that covered her to her satin shoes.
Felicite was sobbing--"Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!"
"Look at her," said the landlady, sighing; "how pretty she still is!
Now, couldn't you swear she was going to get up in a minute?"
Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise the head
a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she were vomiting,
from her mouth.
"Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!" cried Madame Lefrancois. "Now,
just come and help," she said to the chemist. "Perhaps you're afraid?"
"I afraid?" replied he, shrugging his shoulders. "I dare say! I've seen
all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying pharmacy. We
used to make punch in the dissecting room! Nothingness does not terrify
a philosopher; and, as I often say, I even intend to leave my body to
the hospitals, in order, later on, to serve science."
The cure on his arrival inquired how Monsieur Bovary was, and, on
the reply of the druggist, went on--"The blow, you see, is still too
recent."
Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other people,
to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed a discussion
on the celibacy of priests.
"For," said the chemist, "it is unnatural that a man should do without
women! There have been crimes--"
"But, good heaven!" cried the ecclesiastic, "how do you expect an
individual who is married to keep the secrets of the confessional, for
example?"
Homais fell foul of the confessional. Bournisien defended it; he
enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He cited
various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become honest. Military
men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had felt the scales fall
from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a minister--
His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the
over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this awoke the
chemist.
"Come, take a pinch of snuff," he said to him. "Take it; it'll relieve
you."
A continual barking was heard in the distance. "Do you hear that dog
howling?" said the chemist.
"They smell the dead," replied the priest. "It's like bees; they leave
their hives on the decease of any person."
Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again dropped
asleep. Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on moving his lips
gently for some time, then insensibly his chin sank down, he let fall
his big black boot, and began to snore.
They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs, puffed-up
faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement uniting at last in
the same human weakness, and they moved no more than the corpse by their
side, that seemed to be sleeping.
Charles coming in did not wake them. It was the last time; he came to
bid her farewell.
The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish vapour
blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming in. There were
few stars, and the night was warm. The wax of the candles fell in great
drops upon the sheets of the bed. Charles watched them burn, tiring his
eyes against the glare of their yellow flame.
The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight. Emma was
lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond her own
self, she blended confusedly with everything around her--the silence,
the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground.
Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench against the
thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the threshold of their
house, in the yard at Bertaux. He again heard the laughter of the happy
boys beneath the apple-trees: the room was filled with the perfume
of her hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a noise like
electricity. The dress was still the same.
For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her attitudes,
her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit of despair followed
another, and even others, inexhaustible as the waves of an overflowing
sea.
A terrible curiosity seized him. Slowly, with the tips of his fingers,
palpitating, he lifted her veil. But he uttered a cry of horror that
awoke the other two.
They dragged him down into the sitting-room. Then Felicite came up to
say that he wanted some of her hair.
"Cut some off," replied the druggist.
And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors in
hand. He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in several
places. At last, stiffening himself against emotion, Homais gave two
or three great cuts at random that left white patches amongst that
beautiful black hair.
The chemist and the cure plunged anew into their occupations, not
without sleeping from time to time, of which they accused each other
reciprocally at each fresh awakening. Then Monsieur Bournisien sprinkled
the room with holy water and Homais threw a little chlorine water on the
floor.
Felicite had taken care to put on the chest of drawers, for each
of them, a bottle of brandy, some cheese, and a large roll. And the
druggist, who could not hold out any longer, about four in the morning
sighed--
"My word! I should like to take some sustenance."
The priest did not need any persuading; he went out to go and say mass,
came back, and then they ate and hobnobbed, giggling a little without
knowing why, stimulated by that vague gaiety that comes upon us after
times of sadness, and at the last glass the priest said to the druggist,
as he clapped him on the shoulder--
"We shall end by understanding one another."
In the passage downstairs they met the undertaker's men, who were coming
in. Then Charles for two hours had to suffer the torture of hearing the
hammer resound against the wood. Next day they lowered her into her
oak coffin, that was fitted into the other two; but as the bier was
too large, they had to fill up the gaps with the wool of a mattress. At
last, when the three lids had been planed down, nailed, soldered, it was
placed outside in front of the door; the house was thrown open, and the
people of Yonville began to flock round.
Old Rouault arrived, and fainted on the Place when he saw the black
cloth!
He had only received the chemist's letter thirty-six hours after the
event; and, from consideration for his feelings, Homais had so worded it
that it was impossible to make out what it was all about.
First, the old fellow had fallen as if struck by apoplexy. Next, he
understood that she was not dead, but she might be. At last, he had put
on his blouse, taken his hat, fastened his spurs to his boots, and set
out at full speed; and the whole of the way old Rouault, panting, was
torn by anguish. Once even he was obliged to dismount. He was dizzy; he
heard voices round about him; he felt himself going mad.
Day broke. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree. He shuddered,
horrified at this omen. Then he promised the Holy Virgin three chasubles
for the church, and that he would go barefooted from the cemetery at
Bertaux to the chapel of Vassonville.
He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open the
door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats, emptied a
bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again mounted his nag, whose
feet struck fire as it dashed along.
He said to himself that no doubt they would save her; the doctors would
discover some remedy surely. He remembered all the miraculous cures
he had been told about. Then she appeared to him dead. She was there;
before his eyes, lying on her back in the middle of the road. He reined
up, and the hallucination disappeared.
At Quincampoix, to give himself heart, he drank three cups of coffee
one after the other. He fancied they had made a mistake in the name in
writing. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt it there, but did
not dare to open it.
At last he began to think it was all a joke; someone's spite, the jest
of some wag; and besides, if she were dead, one would have known it. But
no! There was nothing extraordinary about the country; the sky was blue,
the trees swayed; a flock of sheep passed. He saw the village; he was
seen coming bending forward upon his horse, belabouring it with great
blows, the girths dripping with blood.
When he had recovered consciousness, he fell, weeping, into Bovary's
arms: "My girl! Emma! my child! tell me--"
The other replied, sobbing, "I don't know! I don't know! It's a curse!"
The druggist separated them. "These horrible details are useless. I will
tell this gentleman all about it. Here are the people coming. Dignity!
Come now! Philosophy!"
The poor fellow tried to show himself brave, and repeated several times.
"Yes! courage!"
"Oh," cried the old man, "so I will have, by God! I'll go along o' her
to the end!"
The bell began tolling. All was ready; they had to start. And seated in
a stall of the choir, side by side, they saw pass and repass in front of
them continually the three chanting choristers.
The serpent-player was blowing with all his might. Monsieur Bournisien,
in full vestments, was singing in a shrill voice. He bowed before the
tabernacle, raising his hands, stretched out his arms. Lestiboudois
went about the church with his whalebone stick. The bier stood near the
lectern, between four rows of candles. Charles felt inclined to get up
and put them out.
Yet he tried to stir himself to a feeling of devotion, to throw himself
into the hope of a future life in which he should see her again. He
imagined to himself she had gone on a long journey, far away, for a long
time. But when he thought of her lying there, and that all was over,
that they would lay her in the earth, he was seized with a fierce,
gloomy, despairful rage. At times he thought he felt nothing more, and
he enjoyed this lull in his pain, whilst at the same time he reproached
himself for being a wretch.
The sharp noise of an iron-ferruled stick was heard on the stones,
striking them at irregular intervals. It came from the end of the
church, and stopped short at the lower aisles. A man in a coarse brown
jacket knelt down painfully. It was Hippolyte, the stable-boy at the
"Lion d'Or." He had put on his new leg.
One of the choristers went round the nave making a collection, and the
coppers chinked one after the other on the silver plate.
"Oh, make haste! I am in pain!" cried Bovary, angrily throwing him a
five-franc piece. The churchman thanked him with a deep bow.
They sang, they knelt, they stood up; it was endless! He remembered that
once, in the early times, they had been to mass together, and they had
sat down on the other side, on the right, by the wall. The bell began
again. There was a great moving of chairs; the bearers slipped their
three staves under the coffin, and everyone left the church.
Then Justin appeared at the door of the shop. He suddenly went in again,
pale, staggering.
People were at the windows to see the procession pass. Charles at the
head walked erect. He affected a brave air, and saluted with a nod those
who, coming out from the lanes or from their doors, stood amidst the
crowd.
The six men, three on either side, walked slowly, panting a little.
The priests, the choristers, and the two choirboys recited the De
profundis*, and their voices echoed over the fields, rising and falling
with their undulations. Sometimes they disappeared in the windings of
the path; but the great silver cross rose always before the trees.
*Psalm CXXX.
The women followed in black cloaks with turned-down hoods; each of them
carried in her hands a large lighted candle, and Charles felt himself
growing weaker at this continual repetition of prayers and torches,
beneath this oppressive odour of wax and of cassocks. A fresh breeze was
blowing; the rye and colza were sprouting, little dewdrops trembled at
the roadsides and on the hawthorn hedges. All sorts of joyous sounds
filled the air; the jolting of a cart rolling afar off in the ruts, the
crowing of a cock, repeated again and again, or the gambling of a foal
running away under the apple-trees: The pure sky was fretted with rosy
clouds; a bluish haze rested upon the cots covered with iris. Charles as
he passed recognised each courtyard. He remembered mornings like this,
when, after visiting some patient, he came out from one and returned to
her.
The black cloth bestrewn with white beads blew up from time to time,
laying bare the coffin. The tired bearers walked more slowly, and it
advanced with constant jerks, like a boat that pitches with every wave.
They reached the cemetery. The men went right down to a place in the
grass where a grave was dug. They ranged themselves all round; and while
the priest spoke, the red soil thrown up at the sides kept noiselessly
slipping down at the corners.
Then when the four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon them.
He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At last a thud was
heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up. Then Bournisien took
the spade handed to him by Lestiboudois; with his left hand all the
time sprinkling water, with the right he vigorously threw in a large
spadeful; and the wood of the coffin, struck by the pebbles, gave forth
that dread sound that seems to us the reverberation of eternity.
The ecclesiastic passed the holy water sprinkler to his neighbour. This
was Homais. He swung it gravely, then handed it to Charles, who sank to
his knees in the earth and threw in handfuls of it, crying, "Adieu!" He
sent her kisses; he dragged himself towards the grave, to engulf himself
with her. They led him away, and he soon grew calmer, feeling perhaps,
like the others, a vague satisfaction that it was all over.
Old Rouault on his way back began quietly smoking a pipe, which Homais
in his innermost conscience thought not quite the thing. He also noticed
that Monsieur Binet had not been present, and that Tuvache had "made
off" after mass, and that Theodore, the notary's servant wore a blue
coat, "as if one could not have got a black coat, since that is the
custom, by Jove!" And to share his observations with others he went from
group to group. They were deploring Emma's death, especially Lheureux,
who had not failed to come to the funeral.
"Poor little woman! What a trouble for her husband!"
The druggist continued, "Do you know that but for me he would have
committed some fatal attempt upon himself?"
"Such a good woman! To think that I saw her only last Saturday in my
shop."
"I haven't had leisure," said Homais, "to prepare a few words that I
would have cast upon her tomb."
Charles on getting home undressed, and old Rouault put on his blue
blouse. It was a new one, and as he had often during the journey wiped
his eyes on the sleeves, the dye had stained his face, and the traces of
tears made lines in the layer of dust that covered it.
Madame Bovary senior was with them. All three were silent. At last the
old fellow sighed--
"Do you remember, my friend, that I went to Tostes once when you had
just lost your first deceased? I consoled you at that time. I thought of
something to say then, but now--" Then, with a loud groan that shook his
whole chest, "Ah! this is the end for me, do you see! I saw my wife go,
then my son, and now to-day it's my daughter."
He wanted to go back at once to Bertaux, saying that he could not sleep
in this house. He even refused to see his granddaughter.
"No, no! It would grieve me too much. Only you'll kiss her many times
for me. Good-bye! you're a good fellow! And then I shall never forget
that," he said, slapping his thigh. "Never fear, you shall always have
your turkey."
But when he reached the top of the hill he turned back, as he had turned
once before on the road of Saint-Victor when he had parted from her. The
windows of the village were all on fire beneath the slanting rays of the
sun sinking behind the field. He put his hand over his eyes, and saw
in the horizon an enclosure of walls, where trees here and there formed
black clusters between white stones; then he went on his way at a gentle
trot, for his nag had gone lame.
Despite their fatigue, Charles and his mother stayed very long that
evening talking together. They spoke of the days of the past and of the
future. She would come to live at Yonville; she would keep house for
him; they would never part again. She was ingenious and caressing,
rejoicing in her heart at gaining once more an affection that had
wandered from her for so many years. Midnight struck. The village as
usual was silent, and Charles, awake, thought always of her.
Rodolphe, who, to distract himself, had been rambling about the wood all
day, was sleeping quietly in his chateau, and Leon, down yonder, always
slept.
There was another who at that hour was not asleep.
On the grave between the pine-trees a child was on his knees weeping,
and his heart, rent by sobs, was beating in the shadow beneath the load
of an immense regret, sweeter than the moon and fathomless as the night.
The gate suddenly grated. It was Lestiboudois; he came to fetch his
spade, that he had forgotten. He recognised Justin climbing over the
wall, and at last knew who was the culprit who stole his potatoes.
The next day Charles had the child brought back. She asked for her
mamma. They told her she was away; that she would bring her back some
playthings. Berthe spoke of her again several times, then at last
thought no more of her. The child's gaiety broke Bovary's heart, and he
had to bear besides the intolerable consolations of the chemist.
Money troubles soon began again, Monsieur Lheureux urging on anew his
friend Vincart, and Charles pledged himself for exorbitant sums; for he
would never consent to let the smallest of the things that had belonged
to HER be sold. His mother was exasperated with him; he grew even more
angry than she did. He had altogether changed. She left the house.
Then everyone began "taking advantage" of him. Mademoiselle Lempereur
presented a bill for six months' teaching, although Emma had never taken
a lesson (despite the receipted bill she had shown Bovary); it was an
arrangement between the two women. The man at the circulating library
demanded three years' subscriptions; Mere Rollet claimed the postage due
for some twenty letters, and when Charles asked for an explanation, she
had the delicacy to reply--
"Oh, I don't know. It was for her business affairs."
With every debt he paid Charles thought he had come to the end of them.
But others followed ceaselessly. He sent in accounts for professional
attendance. He was shown the letters his wife had written. Then he had
to apologise.
Felicite now wore Madame Bovary's gowns; not all, for he had kept some
of them, and he went to look at them in her dressing-room, locking
himself up there; she was about her height, and often Charles, seeing
her from behind, was seized with an illusion, and cried out--
"Oh, stay, stay!"
But at Whitsuntide she ran away from Yonville, carried off by Theodore,
stealing all that was left of the wardrobe.
It was about this time that the widow Dupuis had the honour to inform
him of the "marriage of Monsieur Leon Dupuis her son, notary at Yvetot,
to Mademoiselle Leocadie Leboeuf of Bondeville." Charles, among the
other congratulations he sent him, wrote this sentence--
"How glad my poor wife would have been!"
One day when, wandering aimlessly about the house, he had gone up to the
attic, he felt a pellet of fine paper under his slipper. He opened it
and read: "Courage, Emma, courage. I would not bring misery into your
life." It was Rodolphe's letter, fallen to the ground between the boxes,
where it had remained, and that the wind from the dormer window had just
blown towards the door. And Charles stood, motionless and staring, in
the very same place where, long ago, Emma, in despair, and paler even
than he, had thought of dying. At last he discovered a small R at the
bottom of the second page. What did this mean? He remembered Rodolphe's
attentions, his sudden, disappearance, his constrained air when they
had met two or three times since. But the respectful tone of the letter
deceived him.
"Perhaps they loved one another platonically," he said to himself.
Besides, Charles was not of those who go to the bottom of things; he
shrank from the proofs, and his vague jealousy was lost in the immensity
of his woe.
Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly must have
coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him for this; he
was seized with a lasting, furious desire for her, that inflamed his
despair, and that was boundless, because it was now unrealisable.
To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her
predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took to
wearing white cravats. He put cosmetics on his moustache, and, like her,
signed notes of hand. She corrupted him from beyond the grave.
He was obliged to sell his silver piece by piece; next he sold the
drawing-room furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the bedroom,
her own room, remained as before. After his dinner Charles went up
there. He pushed the round table in front of the fire, and drew up her
armchair. He sat down opposite it. A candle burnt in one of the gilt
candlesticks. Berthe by his side was painting prints.
He suffered, poor man, at seeing her so badly dressed, with laceless
boots, and the arm-holes of her pinafore torn down to the hips; for the
charwoman took no care of her. But she was so sweet, so pretty, and her
little head bent forward so gracefully, letting the dear fair hair fall
over her rosy cheeks, that an infinite joy came upon him, a happiness
mingled with bitterness, like those ill-made wines that taste of
resin. He mended her toys, made her puppets from cardboard, or sewed up
half-torn dolls. Then, if his eyes fell upon the workbox, a ribbon lying
about, or even a pin left in a crack of the table, he began to dream,
and looked so sad that she became as sad as he.
No one now came to see them, for Justin had run away to Rouen, where he
was a grocer's assistant, and the druggist's children saw less and less
of the child, Monsieur Homais not caring, seeing the difference of their
social position, to continue the intimacy.
The blind man, whom he had not been able to cure with the pomade, had
gone back to the hill of Bois-Guillaume, where he told the travellers of
the vain attempt of the druggist, to such an extent, that Homais when
he went to town hid himself behind the curtains of the "Hirondelle" to
avoid meeting him. He detested him, and wishing, in the interests of his
own reputation, to get rid of him at all costs, he directed against
him a secret battery, that betrayed the depth of his intellect and the
baseness of his vanity. Thus, for six consecutive months, one could read
in the "Fanal de Rouen" editorials such as these--
"All who bend their steps towards the fertile plains of Picardy have, no
doubt, remarked, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a wretch suffering from
a horrible facial wound. He importunes, persecutes one, and levies a
regular tax on all travellers. Are we still living in the monstrous
times of the Middle Ages, when vagabonds were permitted to display in
our public places leprosy and scrofulas they had brought back from the
Crusades?"
Or--
"In spite of the laws against vagabondage, the approaches to our great
towns continue to be infected by bands of beggars. Some are seen going
about alone, and these are not, perhaps, the least dangerous. What are
our ediles about?"
Then Homais invented anecdotes--
"Yesterday, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a skittish horse--" And then
followed the story of an accident caused by the presence of the blind
man.
He managed so well that the fellow was locked up. But he was released.
He began again, and Homais began again. It was a struggle. Homais won
it, for his foe was condemned to life-long confinement in an asylum.
This success emboldened him, and henceforth there was no longer a dog
run over, a barn burnt down, a woman beaten in the parish, of which
he did not immediately inform the public, guided always by the love of
progress and the hate of priests. He instituted comparisons between the
elementary and clerical schools to the detriment of the latter; called
to mind the massacre of St. Bartholomew a propos of a grant of one
hundred francs to the church, and denounced abuses, aired new views.
That was his phrase. Homais was digging and delving; he was becoming
dangerous.
However, he was stifling in the narrow limits of journalism, and soon a
book, a work was necessary to him. Then he composed "General Statistics
of the Canton of Yonville, followed by Climatological Remarks." The
statistics drove him to philosophy. He busied himself with great
questions: the social problem, moralisation of the poorer classes,
pisciculture, caoutchouc, railways, etc. He even began to blush at being
a bourgeois. He affected the artistic style, he smoked. He bought two
chic Pompadour statuettes to adorn his drawing-room.
He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept well abreast
of new discoveries. He followed the great movement of chocolates; he
was the first to introduce "cocoa" and "revalenta" into the
Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusiastic about the hydro-electric
Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when at night he took off
his flannel vest, Madame Homais stood quite dazzled before the golden
spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for
this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi.
He had fine ideas about Emma's tomb. First he proposed a broken column
with some drapery, next a pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta, a sort of
rotunda, or else a "mass of ruins." And in all his plans Homais always
stuck to the weeping willow, which he looked upon as the indispensable
symbol of sorrow.
Charles and he made a journey to Rouen together to look at some tombs
at a funeral furnisher's, accompanied by an artist, one Vaufrylard, a
friend of Bridoux's, who made puns all the time. At last, after having
examined some hundred designs, having ordered an estimate and made
another journey to Rouen, Charles decided in favour of a mausoleum,
which on the two principal sides was to have a "spirit bearing an
extinguished torch."
As to the inscription, Homais could think of nothing so fine as Sta
viator*, and he got no further; he racked his brain, he constantly
repeated Sta viator. At last he hit upon Amabilen conjugem calcas**,
which was adopted.
* Rest traveler.
** Tread upon a loving wife.
A strange thing was that Bovary, while continually thinking of Emma, was
forgetting her. He grew desperate as he felt this image fading from his
memory in spite of all efforts to retain it. Yet every night he dreamt
of her; it was always the same dream. He drew near her, but when he was
about to clasp her she fell into decay in his arms.
For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Monsieur
Bournisien even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up.
Moreover, the old fellow was growing intolerant, fanatic, said Homais.
He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every
other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who
died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows.
In spite of the economy with which Bovary lived, he was far from being
able to pay off his old debts. Lheureux refused to renew any more
bills. A distraint became imminent. Then he appealed to his mother, who
consented to let him take a mortgage on her property, but with a great
many recriminations against Emma; and in return for her sacrifice she
asked for a shawl that had escaped the depredations of Felicite. Charles
refused to give it her; they quarrelled.
She made the first overtures of reconciliation by offering to have the
little girl, who could help her in the house, to live with her. Charles
consented to this, but when the time for parting came, all his courage
failed him. Then there was a final, complete rupture.
As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the love of his
child. She made him anxious, however, for she coughed sometimes, and had
red spots on her cheeks.
Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the family of the
chemist, with whom everything was prospering. Napoleon helped him in the
laboratory, Athalie embroidered him a skullcap, Irma cut out rounds of
paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited Pythagoras' table in
a breath. He was the happiest of fathers, the most fortunate of men.
Not so! A secret ambition devoured him. Homais hankered after the cross
of the Legion of Honour. He had plenty of claims to it.
"First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished myself by a
boundless devotion; second, by having published, at my expense,
various works of public utility, such as" (and he recalled his pamphlet
entitled, "Cider, its manufacture and effects," besides observation
on the lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy; his volume of
statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis); "without counting
that I am a member of several learned societies" (he was member of a
single one).
"In short!" he cried, making a pirouette, "if it were only for
distinguishing myself at fires!"
Then Homais inclined towards the Government. He secretly did the
prefect great service during the elections. He sold himself--in a word,
prostituted himself. He even addressed a petition to the sovereign
in which he implored him to "do him justice"; he called him "our good
king," and compared him to Henri IV.
And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to see if his
nomination were in it. It was never there. At last, unable to bear it
any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden designed to represent the
Star of the Cross of Honour with two little strips of grass running from
the top to imitate the ribband. He walked round it with folded arms,
meditating on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men.
From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on his
investigations slowly, Charles had not yet opened the secret drawer of
a rosewood desk which Emma had generally used. One day, however, he
sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All Leon's
letters were there. There could be no doubt this time. He devoured them
to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the furniture, all the
drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He
found a box and broke it open with a kick. Rodolphe's portrait flew full
in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters.
People wondered at his despondency. He never went out, saw no one,
refused even to visit his patients. Then they said "he shut himself up
to drink."
Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on to the garden hedge,
and saw with amazement this long-bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man,
who wept aloud as he walked up and down.
In the evening in summer he took his little girl with him and led her to
the cemetery. They came back at nightfall, when the only light left in
the Place was that in Binet's window.
The voluptuousness of his grief was, however, incomplete, for he had no
one near him to share it, and he paid visits to Madame Lefrancois to be
able to speak of her.
But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having troubles
like himself. For Lheureux had at last established the "Favorites du
Commerce," and Hivert, who enjoyed a great reputation for doing errands,
insisted on a rise of wages, and was threatening to go over "to the
opposition shop."
One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to sell his horse--his
last resource--he met Rodolphe.
They both turned pale when they caught sight of one another. Rodolphe,
who had only sent his card, first stammered some apologies, then grew
bolder, and even pushed his assurance (it was in the month of August and
very hot) to the length of inviting him to have a bottle of beer at the
public-house.
Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar as he talked, and
Charles was lost in reverie at this face that she had loved. He seemed
to see again something of her in it. It was a marvel to him. He would
have liked to have been this man.
The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling out
with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip in. Charles
was not listening to him; Rodolphe noticed it, and he followed the
succession of memories that crossed his face. This gradually grew
redder; the nostrils throbbed fast, the lips quivered. There was at
last a moment when Charles, full of a sombre fury, fixed his eyes on
Rodolphe, who, in something of fear, stopped talking. But soon the same
look of weary lassitude came back to his face.
"I don't blame you," he said.
Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his hands, went on in a
broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow--
"No, I don't blame you now."
He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made--
"It is the fault of fatality!"
Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the remark very offhand
from a man in his position, comic even, and a little mean.
The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays
of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their
shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were
blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was
suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled
his aching heart.
At seven o'clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the afternoon,
went to fetch him to dinner.
His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth
open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair.
"Come along, papa," she said.
And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to the
ground. He was dead.
Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist's request, Monsieur Canivet came
thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing.
When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five centimes
remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary's going to
her grandmother. The good woman died the same year; old Rouault was
paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her. She is poor, and
sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living.
Since Bovary's death three doctors have followed one another at Yonville
without any success, so severely did Homais attack them. He has an
enormous practice; the authorities treat him with consideration, and
public opinion protects him.
He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.
| 11,673 | Chapters 9-11 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapters-911 | It took Charles a long time to recover from the initial shock of Emma's death. His mother arrived and helped to put affairs in order and thought that now Emma was gone she would be reinstated in Charles' affection. Emma's father also showed up for the funeral, but was too emotional to be of help. The priest and Homais sat up all night with the body and performed certain rites which they thought appropriate. The priest had a difficult time convincing Charles that the burial should take place soon. Charles gave directions for Emma to be buried in her wedding dress and quarreled with his mother about the expense of some parts of the funeral. As soon as the funeral is over, old Roualt goes home without even seeing little Berthe. Later that night the sexton sees Justin by Emma's grave and thinks that he now knows who has been stealing his potatoes. In the days which followed, Bovary was contacted by all Emma's creditors. Her debts included not merely those of Lheureux, but many bills to business concerns, tradesmen, and other people. Their total constituted a vast amount. Bovary tried to collect the fees due him in an effort to pay but learned that Emma had already done so. In the meantime, Leon became engaged to a young woman of good family. Bovary sent a letter of congratulations to Leon's mother, in which he remarked, innocently, that the news would have pleased his late wife. One night Bovary came across the letter from Rodolphe that Emma had lost in the attic a long time before. He read it, but assumed that there had been a platonic affection between them and was not concerned. He idealized Emma's memory and was pleased to learn that another had also admired her. In an attempt to pay his debts, Bovary had to sell nearly all the furniture, but even this amount was not sufficient. For sentimental reasons, though, he refrained from taking anything from her bedroom and kept it just the way it was before her death. Mrs. Bovary had come to live with him, but they had a quarrel over the possession of one of Emma's shawls and she left his house. The servant left also, taking most of Emma's wardrobe with her. Bovary began to live in seclusion. He avoided his old friends and neglected his practice. Homais, who had once been so close, and who was now a power in the community, shunned him, claiming that there was too big a gap in their social positions. Bovary often sat in Emma's room, examining her possessions and recalling their life together. One day he opened her desk and discovered the letters from Rodolphe and Leon. He read them with an air of disbelief and was very distressed when he realized their meaning and was forced to acknowledge that Emma had been unfaithful. After this he was always gloomy and seemed a broken man. He rarely left his house and kept away from people. Once he had to go to Rouen to sell his horse in order to raise more money. He met Rodolphe there and the two men had a drink together in a cafe. Rodolphe felt guilty and tried to make small talk. Finally Bovary told him that he knew the truth, but that he no longer held any grudge against him. The fault, Bovary said, was with Destiny. The next day Bovary died quietly while sitting in his garden. His house and remaining property were sold on behalf of his creditors, and there was just enough left over to send Berthe to stay with her grandmother. Mrs. Bovary died later that year and Roualt was seriously ill; Berthe was then sent to an aunt's house. This woman was very poor, and the little girl ended up working in a cotton mill. | The final chapters are concerned with showing the effect of Emma's death on various people. The greatest effect is on Charles, who mourns her death for a long time before he discovers the letters from Rodolphe and Leon. Then he slowly deteriorates in despair and poverty and inertia. Obliquely, Emma's death probably has the greatest effect on little Berthe, since at the age of seven she is sent into the cotton mill to earn her own living. In contrast, the people whom Emma most loved, Rodolphe and Leon, are not at all affected by her death. Justine who loved her with the purest love, is accused of stealing potatoes because he returned to cry at her grave. The last chapter is filled with many ironies. That Charles would want to bury Emma in her wedding dress is ironic in view of Emma's infidelities. The actions of the chemist and the priest are developed to show how their every act is not for someone else's benefit but for their own advancement. Homais' receipt of the cross of the Legion of Honor suggests the pettiness of the society against which Emma revolted. In the final analysis, as seen against the society in which Emma lived, Emma becomes a rather sympathetic character. She was a woman who had a full conviction of her dreams and was willing to risk everything for them. She had a glimpse of a life and of emotions that exist outside this narrow provincial world, but her tragedy lies finally in the fact that she could find no object in this world worthy of her dreams. | 857 | 268 |
2,413 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/01.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_0_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 1 | chapter 1 | null | {"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary09.asp", "summary": "The novel opens with a description of the school days of Charles Bovary. The fifteen year-old boy stands out in class, for he is clumsy and does not fit in with his boisterous classmates. A detailed account is given of the mismatched and unfashionable clothes he wears. His classmates are quick to notice his provincial origins and begin to tease him. The teacher comes to his defense, and the class settles down to work. Charles appears to be a serious student; he applies himself diligently to all the lessons, perhaps in order to make up for the lack of study in his early years, but he is never really successful. Charles' father had served as an assistant surgeon in the army. He had been forced to resign in 1812 after being implicated in a scandal. Being physically attractive, he had used his charms to persuade a merchant's daughter to marry him. She had brought Bovary a large dowry, and in the years immediately following his marriage, he had lived off his wife's money. When his father-in- law died, leaving practically nothing, he plunged into business but failed. He also attempted to settle down to life in the country and finally chose a village on the borders of Caux and Picardy. His wife, who had once lavished her affection on him, began to feel embittered towards him. She was practical minded and took charge of the accounts. Charles' birth was a welcome distraction for both parents. The mother was over-indulgent and protective, while the father tried to fit the child into his \"manly ideal of boyhood. \" The child, being mild-mannered, had preferred his mother's company. At the age of twelve, the cure took him under his wings, and Charles' studies began. Eventually, Charles was sent to school in Rouen, where he led a balanced student life. In accordance with his parents' wishes, Charles goes on to study medicine. Having been an average student all his life, he is unable to cope with the demanding curriculum. On his first try, he fails the examination at medical school. On the second attempt, he manages to pass and sets up a practice in Tostes, France. His mother marries him off to a forty-five year old widow, who has a fairly good annual income. Charles' fanciful notions regarding marriage are reduced to nothing, for \"his wife was master. \" She checks all his activities and constantly demands his attention. It is against this backdrop that Charles' medical practice grows.", "analysis": "Notes Flaubert first introduces Charles Bovary through the use of the first-person plural, \"we.\" The reader observes Charles through the eyes of his classmates, and it is not a pleasant picture. He is the clumsy, provincial boy who is easy to tease and taunt. For whatever reason, Flaubert discontinues this kind of first-person narrative mid-way through the chapter and takes up a third-person omniscient voice to sketch Charles' family background. Charles' father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartholome Bovary, is presented as a social misfit. He uses his charms to marry a wife with a generous dowry, but cannot apply himself to any occupation for long. His wife, who feels cheated by her husband, dotes on Charles, their only son. In fact, she \"kept him tied to her apron strings\" in a domineering manner. Charles' close affinity to his mother foreshadows the course his life will take; he will be dominated by his wife as well. Charles' classmates observe some key characteristics of boy that will continue to haunt him as a man. Although he is a somewhat diligent student, he has no natural aptitude for learning. In medical school, he flunks the examination on his first try. He continues to struggle with financial matters throughout his life. Charles also reveals he has no backbone, for he tolerates the taunts of his fellow classmates. This character trait will also greatly influence his life. He readily accepts the marriage arranged by his mother to Heloise Dubuc, but it is a very unhappy one. She successfully controls every aspect of his being, revealing his spineless character. Charles' attitude during his first marriage prepares the reader for his second marriage to Emma, in which Charles also exhibits no control."} |
We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new
fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a
large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if
just surprised at his work.
The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the
class-master, he said to him in a low voice--
"Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be
in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into
one of the upper classes, as becomes his age."
The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he
could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller
than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village
chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was
not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black
buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the
opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in
blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by
braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots.
We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as
attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean
on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was
obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us.
When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on
the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to
toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a
lot of dust: it was "the thing."
But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt
it, the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on his knees even after
prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in
which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin
cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose
dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval,
stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in
succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band;
after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with
complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord,
small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new;
its peak shone.
"Rise," said the master.
He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to
pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked
it up once more.
"Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag.
There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the
poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap
in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on his head. He sat down
again and placed it on his knee.
"Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name."
The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name.
"Again!"
The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of
the class.
"Louder!" cried the master; "louder!"
The "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately
large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling someone
in the word "Charbovari."
A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they
yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died
away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and
now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence rose
here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.
However, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established
in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of
"Charles Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read,
at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form
at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated.
"What are you looking for?" asked the master.
"My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round
him.
"Five hundred lines for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice
stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst. "Silence!" continued the
master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he
had just taken from his cap. "As to you, 'new boy,' you will conjugate
'ridiculus sum'** twenty times."
Then, in a gentler tone, "Come, you'll find your cap again; it hasn't
been stolen."
*A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat.
**I am ridiculous.
Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained
for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some
paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he
wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered.
In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk,
arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him
working conscientiously, looking up every word in the dictionary, and
taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he
showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his
rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure
of his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from
motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible.
His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired
assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription
scandals, and forced at this time to leave the service, had taken
advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand
francs that offered in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen
in love with his good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his
spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache,
his fingers always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours,
he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a commercial
traveller.
Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune,
dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in
at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law
died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in for the
business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he
thought he would make money.
But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses
instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of
selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased
his hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding
out that he would do better to give up all speculation.
For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of
the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half
private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his
luck, jealous of everyone, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five,
sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace.
His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a
thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once,
expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the
fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered,
grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at
first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and
until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary,
stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent,
burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death.
She was constantly going about looking after business matters. She
called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due,
got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the
workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing,
eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself
to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting
into the cinders.
When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home,
the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him
with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the
philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the
young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain
virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing
him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong
constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink
off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But,
peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His
mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him
tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety
and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the
child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of
high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as
an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old
piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this
Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth
while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to
buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man
always gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child
knocked about the village.
He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens
that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the
geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in
the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and
at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he
might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward
by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on
hand, fresh of colour.
When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began
lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and
irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare
moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and
a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil
after the Angelus*. They went up to his room and settled down; the
flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child
fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his
stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions,
when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum
to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles
playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of
an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his
verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance
passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the
"young man" had a very good memory.
*A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound
of a bell. Here, the evening prayer.
Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps.
Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a
struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take
his first communion.
Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to
school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the end of October,
at the time of the St. Romain fair.
It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him.
He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in
school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory,
and ate well in the refectory. He had in loco parentis* a wholesale
ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took him out once a month on Sundays
after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at
the boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock before
supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with
red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or
read an old volume of "Anarchasis" that was knocking about the study.
When he went for walks he talked to the servant, who, like himself, came
from the country.
*In place of a parent.
By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once
even he got a certificate in natural history. But at the end of his
third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study
medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself.
His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she
knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made arrangements for his
board, got him furniture, table and two chairs, sent home for an old
cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with
the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child.
Then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to
be good now that he was going to be left to himself.
The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him; lectures
on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on
pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics,
without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose
etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to
sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.
He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did
not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all
the courses, never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily task
like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not
knowing what work he is doing.
To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a
piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he lunched when he came back
from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall.
After this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the
hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. In the
evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his
room and set to work again in his wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in
front of the hot stove.
On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are
empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock at the doors, he
opened his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter
of Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between the
bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling
on the banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting
from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite,
beyond the roots spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How
pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And he
expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet odours of the country
which did not reach him.
He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look
that made it nearly interesting. Naturally, through indifference, he
abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture; the
next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little,
he gave up work altogether. He got into the habit of going to the
public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every
evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the
small sheep bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his
freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to see
life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put
his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. Then many things
hidden within him came out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to
his boon companions, became enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to
make punch, and, finally, how to make love.
Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely in his
examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the same night
to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning
of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused
him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners,
encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight.
It was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was
old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a man
born of him could be a fool.
So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination,
ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passed pretty
well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a grand dinner.
Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was only one old
doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his
death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was
installed, opposite his place, as his successor.
But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him
taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practice it;
he must have a wife. She found him one--the widow of a bailiff at
Dieppe--who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs.
Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as
the spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her
ends Madame Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in
very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a port-butcher backed up by the
priests.
Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he
would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. But his
wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast
every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients
who did not pay. She opened his letter, watched his comings and goings,
and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his
surgery.
She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She
constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of
footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to
her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles
returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from
beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit
down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he
was neglecting her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be
unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little
more love.
| 4,978 | Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary09.asp | The novel opens with a description of the school days of Charles Bovary. The fifteen year-old boy stands out in class, for he is clumsy and does not fit in with his boisterous classmates. A detailed account is given of the mismatched and unfashionable clothes he wears. His classmates are quick to notice his provincial origins and begin to tease him. The teacher comes to his defense, and the class settles down to work. Charles appears to be a serious student; he applies himself diligently to all the lessons, perhaps in order to make up for the lack of study in his early years, but he is never really successful. Charles' father had served as an assistant surgeon in the army. He had been forced to resign in 1812 after being implicated in a scandal. Being physically attractive, he had used his charms to persuade a merchant's daughter to marry him. She had brought Bovary a large dowry, and in the years immediately following his marriage, he had lived off his wife's money. When his father-in- law died, leaving practically nothing, he plunged into business but failed. He also attempted to settle down to life in the country and finally chose a village on the borders of Caux and Picardy. His wife, who had once lavished her affection on him, began to feel embittered towards him. She was practical minded and took charge of the accounts. Charles' birth was a welcome distraction for both parents. The mother was over-indulgent and protective, while the father tried to fit the child into his "manly ideal of boyhood. " The child, being mild-mannered, had preferred his mother's company. At the age of twelve, the cure took him under his wings, and Charles' studies began. Eventually, Charles was sent to school in Rouen, where he led a balanced student life. In accordance with his parents' wishes, Charles goes on to study medicine. Having been an average student all his life, he is unable to cope with the demanding curriculum. On his first try, he fails the examination at medical school. On the second attempt, he manages to pass and sets up a practice in Tostes, France. His mother marries him off to a forty-five year old widow, who has a fairly good annual income. Charles' fanciful notions regarding marriage are reduced to nothing, for "his wife was master. " She checks all his activities and constantly demands his attention. It is against this backdrop that Charles' medical practice grows. | Notes Flaubert first introduces Charles Bovary through the use of the first-person plural, "we." The reader observes Charles through the eyes of his classmates, and it is not a pleasant picture. He is the clumsy, provincial boy who is easy to tease and taunt. For whatever reason, Flaubert discontinues this kind of first-person narrative mid-way through the chapter and takes up a third-person omniscient voice to sketch Charles' family background. Charles' father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartholome Bovary, is presented as a social misfit. He uses his charms to marry a wife with a generous dowry, but cannot apply himself to any occupation for long. His wife, who feels cheated by her husband, dotes on Charles, their only son. In fact, she "kept him tied to her apron strings" in a domineering manner. Charles' close affinity to his mother foreshadows the course his life will take; he will be dominated by his wife as well. Charles' classmates observe some key characteristics of boy that will continue to haunt him as a man. Although he is a somewhat diligent student, he has no natural aptitude for learning. In medical school, he flunks the examination on his first try. He continues to struggle with financial matters throughout his life. Charles also reveals he has no backbone, for he tolerates the taunts of his fellow classmates. This character trait will also greatly influence his life. He readily accepts the marriage arranged by his mother to Heloise Dubuc, but it is a very unhappy one. She successfully controls every aspect of his being, revealing his spineless character. Charles' attitude during his first marriage prepares the reader for his second marriage to Emma, in which Charles also exhibits no control. | 573 | 284 |
2,413 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/02.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_1_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 2 | chapter 2 | null | {"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary11.asp", "summary": "Late one night, a man comes to Charles with a letter. Apparently, someone in Les Bertaux, about eighteen miles from Tostes, has broken a leg and is in need of immediate medical attention. At his wife's urging, Charles postpones his journey to Les Bertaux by three hours. When Charles does set out, the early morning air lulls his senses. He sees himself \"as two selves, student and husband at once - lying in bed as he had been an hour ago, and going through a ward full of patients as in the old days.\" A small boy guides him through Vassonville to the farmhouse of Monsieur Rouault, the patient. From the boy Charles gathers some information about the Rouault family. The man is a prosperous farmer and a widower who lives with his young, unmarried daughter whose name is Emma. It is she who ushers Charles in and leads him to the patient's room. He is relieved to note that Rouault has suffered a simple fracture, which can easily be set. Rouault is soon on his way to recovery. During this first visit, Charles is fascinated with Emma, and he calls on her father frequently in order to see the daughter. Charles' own wife, Heloise, is upset when she learns that Rouault has a young, well-educated daughter. She nags Charles until he agrees not to go to Les Bertaux any more. His wife and mother constantly team up to scold him for one thing or another. The lawyer in charge of Heloise's investments supposedly disappears with the money. Further investigation, however, reveals that Heloise has little to substantiate her claims of having investments and property. Charles' parents are very upset about this turn of affairs, and they create a scene. Heloise is fatally affected by their feelings, and a week later, she has a stroke and dies, leaving Charles as a very young widower.", "analysis": "Notes Flaubert introduces Emma in this chapter. Before she is seen in person, she is described by the young boy who leads Charles to the Roualt home. Charles then gives his own description of the lovely young girl, and Heloise also reveals her perception of Emma from a distance. Charles, who is not particularly insightful and is seemingly unaware of his own feelings, does not admit that he is attracted to Emma or that his wife is jealous of her. He is aware, however, of the immense contrast between Emma and his wife. The latter is described in unflattering terms as a nag and a bother. Charles seems to regret that he has allowed his mother to convince him to marry this older woman because of her dowry. It, therefore, becomes extremely ironic that Heloise does not really possess a fortune. When his parents become aware of this fact, they are incensed and treat their daughter-in-law cruelly. Heloise is so upset over their behavior that she has a stroke and dies. Her death is a convenient and timely occurrence for Charles, for the path is now clear for him to approach Emma. It is important to notice Flaubert's use of the naturalistic technique in his descriptions. Through this device, he evokes in the readers a 'feel' for the characters and action of the plot. So precise are his descriptive details that the novel becomes a cinematic delight in the mind's eye."} |
One night towards eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of
a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the
garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below.
He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came downstairs
shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left
his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He
pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in
a rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested on his elbow on
the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed, held the light.
Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.
This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur
Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken
leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across
country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night;
Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was
decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles would start three
hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and
show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.
Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in his
cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed,
he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped
of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that
are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly
remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures
he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches
of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers
bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as
eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals
seemed like dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that on the
horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.
Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and,
sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein, his recent
sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double
self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and
crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warm smell of poultices
mingled in his brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron
rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed and saw his wife
sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the
grass at the edge of a ditch.
"Are you the doctor?" asked the child.
And on Charles's answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on
in front of him.
The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide's talk
that Monsieur Rouault must be one of the well-to-do farmers.
He had broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a
Twelfth-night feast at a neighbour's. His wife had been dead for two
years. There was with him only his daughter, who helped him to keep
house.
The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the Bertaux.
The little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared;
then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. The
horse slipped on the wet grass; Charles had to stoop to pass under
the branches. The watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their
chains. As he entered the Bertaux, the horse took fright and stumbled.
It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the
open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new
racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from
which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys, five or six
peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of
it. The sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your
hand. Under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with
their whips, shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool
were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The
courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and
the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond.
A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the
threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the
kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servant's breakfast was
boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were
drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle
of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while
along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the
hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the
window, was mirrored fitfully.
Charles went up the first floor to see the patient. He found him in his
bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton nightcap
right away from him. He was a fat little man of fifty, with white skin
and blue eyes, the forepart of his head bald, and he wore earrings. By
his side on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence he poured
himself a little from time to time to keep up his spirits; but as soon
as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and instead of
swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, began to groan
freely.
The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication.
Charles could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling to mind
the devices of his masters at the bedsides of patients, he comforted the
sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon
that are like the oil they put on bistouries. In order to make some
splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. Charles
selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment
of windowpane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and
Mademoiselle Emma tried to sew some pads. As she was a long time before
she found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not answer,
but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her
mouth to suck them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails.
They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of
Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not
white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too
long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in
her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and
her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness.
The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself
to "pick a bit" before he left.
Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks
and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a
huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing
Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped
from a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were
sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from
the neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of
decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the
wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre,
was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, underneath which was written
in Gothic letters "To dear Papa."
First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold,
of the wolves that infested the fields at night.
Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, especially now
that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the room was
chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of her full lips,
that she had a habit of biting when silent.
Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her hair, whose
two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was
parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the
curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined
behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the
country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of
her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two
buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.
When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the
room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the
window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked
down by the wind. She turned round. "Are you looking for anything?" she
asked.
"My whip, if you please," he answered.
He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It
had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle
Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks.
Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out his
arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the
young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked
at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip.
Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised,
he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without
counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident.
Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favourably; and
when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk
alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man
of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured
better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.
As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure
to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have
attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the
money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits
to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of
his life? On these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on
his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black
gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing
the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads
run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old
Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the
small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the
kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in
front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp
sound against the leather of her boots.
She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. When his
horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said
"Good-bye"; there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round,
playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro
on her hips the apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once,
during a thaw the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on
the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold,
and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of
the colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted
up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the
tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on
the stretched silk.
During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame
Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had
even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a
clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a
daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle
Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called
"a good education"; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to
embroider and play the piano. That was the last straw.
"So it is for this," she said to herself, "that his face beams when he
goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of
spoiling it with the rain. Ah! that woman! That woman!"
And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced herself by
allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations
that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to
which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the Bertaux now
that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet?
Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who know how to
talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted
town misses." And she went on--
"The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was
a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes
for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss,
or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess.
Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year,
would have had much ado to pay up his arrears."
For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made
him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more
after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He
obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the
servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive
hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to
love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all
weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her
shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they
were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the
laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings.
Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few
days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and
then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and
observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much.
Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came?
What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it came about that a
notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widow Dubuc's property, one fine
day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. Heloise,
it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six
thousand francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all
this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting
perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the
household. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found
to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed
with the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed
one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation,
Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his
wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such
a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They came to Tostes.
Explanations followed. There were scenes. Heloise in tears, throwing her
arms about her husband, implored him to defend her from his parents.
Charles tried to speak up for her. They grew angry and left the house.
But "the blow had struck home." A week after, as she was hanging up some
washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and
the next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the
window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and fainted. She was
dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Charles went
home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to
their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then,
leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried
in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!
| 4,240 | Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary11.asp | Late one night, a man comes to Charles with a letter. Apparently, someone in Les Bertaux, about eighteen miles from Tostes, has broken a leg and is in need of immediate medical attention. At his wife's urging, Charles postpones his journey to Les Bertaux by three hours. When Charles does set out, the early morning air lulls his senses. He sees himself "as two selves, student and husband at once - lying in bed as he had been an hour ago, and going through a ward full of patients as in the old days." A small boy guides him through Vassonville to the farmhouse of Monsieur Rouault, the patient. From the boy Charles gathers some information about the Rouault family. The man is a prosperous farmer and a widower who lives with his young, unmarried daughter whose name is Emma. It is she who ushers Charles in and leads him to the patient's room. He is relieved to note that Rouault has suffered a simple fracture, which can easily be set. Rouault is soon on his way to recovery. During this first visit, Charles is fascinated with Emma, and he calls on her father frequently in order to see the daughter. Charles' own wife, Heloise, is upset when she learns that Rouault has a young, well-educated daughter. She nags Charles until he agrees not to go to Les Bertaux any more. His wife and mother constantly team up to scold him for one thing or another. The lawyer in charge of Heloise's investments supposedly disappears with the money. Further investigation, however, reveals that Heloise has little to substantiate her claims of having investments and property. Charles' parents are very upset about this turn of affairs, and they create a scene. Heloise is fatally affected by their feelings, and a week later, she has a stroke and dies, leaving Charles as a very young widower. | Notes Flaubert introduces Emma in this chapter. Before she is seen in person, she is described by the young boy who leads Charles to the Roualt home. Charles then gives his own description of the lovely young girl, and Heloise also reveals her perception of Emma from a distance. Charles, who is not particularly insightful and is seemingly unaware of his own feelings, does not admit that he is attracted to Emma or that his wife is jealous of her. He is aware, however, of the immense contrast between Emma and his wife. The latter is described in unflattering terms as a nag and a bother. Charles seems to regret that he has allowed his mother to convince him to marry this older woman because of her dowry. It, therefore, becomes extremely ironic that Heloise does not really possess a fortune. When his parents become aware of this fact, they are incensed and treat their daughter-in-law cruelly. Heloise is so upset over their behavior that she has a stroke and dies. Her death is a convenient and timely occurrence for Charles, for the path is now clear for him to approach Emma. It is important to notice Flaubert's use of the naturalistic technique in his descriptions. Through this device, he evokes in the readers a 'feel' for the characters and action of the plot. So precise are his descriptive details that the novel becomes a cinematic delight in the mind's eye. | 446 | 241 |
2,413 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/03.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_2_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 3 | chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary12.asp", "summary": "After Heloise's death, Rouault pays Charles a condolence visit, during which he settles his account with the doctor. He also tells Charles of the manner in which he had coped when his wife died and assures him that his grief will pass. He then invites Charles to visit Les Bertaux in the spring. Charles is delighted at the invitation, and he soon becomes a regular visitor at the farm. Things are going well for Charles. His practice is flourishing with the sympathy generated by his wife's death, he is delighted to visit with Emma during his trips to Les Bertaux. For the first time, Charles dares to feel \"vaguely hopeful and happy.\" As the meetings between Emma and Charles become more frequent, old Rouault is sharp enough to see Charles' increasing fondness for his daughter. He is worried, however, about providing her with a dowry, since his debts are rising. When Charles asks him for Emma's hand in marriage, he readily consents. The wedding will take place after Charles' period of mourning ends. Emma pictures a romantic midnight wedding with torches.", "analysis": "Notes Rouault appears to be a kind, good-natured man. He calls on Charles to offer his condolences over his wife's death and invites him to spend some time with him at Les Bertaux. His invitation has the dual purpose of taking Charles' mind off of his wife's death and interesting Charles in his own daughter Emma. Since Roualt is suffering from rising debts, he is very concerned about not having a large dowry for his daughter and wants to see her respectably and quickly married. When Rouault sees that Charles is fond of Emma, he does everything possible to encourage their relationship, for he judges the young doctor to be a suitable husband. In this chapter, Flaubert continues to develop Emma. The first hint of her imaginative, romantic nature is depicted as she dreams about a midnight wedding with torches. Probably because of her dreamy, romantic ways, her father does not find Emma helpful enough on the farm and feels she will not be terribly missed when she marries. Charles, on the other hand, is thoroughly infatuated with Emma, believing everything about her, both her actions and her appearance, to be flawless. Emma will later take undue advantage of this devotion of Charles to her."} |
One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his
leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard
of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could.
"I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been
through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be
quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I
talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the
branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it.
And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their
nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on
the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very
idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well,
quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an
autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb;
it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something
always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's
heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way
altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must
pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see
us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says
you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some
rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit."
Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all
as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear
trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again,
came and went, making the farm more full of life.
Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor
because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off,
spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended
to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him
than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He
told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his
wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in;
he thought no more about her.
He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new
delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now
change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was
very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and
coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him.
On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his
business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young
man! what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had
increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked.
He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better
looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.
One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields.
He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the
outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun
sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners
of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table
were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they
drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in
by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and
touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth
Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of
perspiration on her bare shoulders.
After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to
drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have
a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao
from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the
brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked
glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent
back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the
strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her
tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the
bottom of her glass.
She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was
darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did
Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the
flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing
in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the
yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her
hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs.
She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from
giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began
talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They
went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little
prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a
cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even
showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every
month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But the
gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid!
She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town,
although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more
wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her
voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in
modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now
joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her
look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.
Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to
recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life
she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts
other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her.
Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married,
and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But
Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the
humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry after
all! If you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was
parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and
opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing
in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the
Bertaux.
Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised
himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each
time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words
sealed his lips.
Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was
of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking
her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one
never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it,
the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in
which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture
properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him
less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his
pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking
to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider,
underdone legs of mutton, glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in
the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him
all ready laid as on the stage.
*A mixture of coffee and spirits.
When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his
daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days,
he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a
little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he
was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt
would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old
Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property,"
as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the
shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said
to himself, "I'll give her to him."
At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux.
The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to
hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road
full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave
himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past
it--
"Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to
you."
They stopped. Charles was silent.
"Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault,
laughing softly.
"Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles.
"I ask nothing better", the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the
little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get
off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't return because of
all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so
that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter
of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning
over the hedge."
And he went off.
Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited.
Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch.
Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown
back; the hook was still swinging.
The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as
he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in
countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion
of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before
them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out
of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.
The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with
her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself
chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When
Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked
over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed
of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be
entrees.
Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding
with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So
there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which
they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to
some extent on the days following.
| 2,870 | Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary12.asp | After Heloise's death, Rouault pays Charles a condolence visit, during which he settles his account with the doctor. He also tells Charles of the manner in which he had coped when his wife died and assures him that his grief will pass. He then invites Charles to visit Les Bertaux in the spring. Charles is delighted at the invitation, and he soon becomes a regular visitor at the farm. Things are going well for Charles. His practice is flourishing with the sympathy generated by his wife's death, he is delighted to visit with Emma during his trips to Les Bertaux. For the first time, Charles dares to feel "vaguely hopeful and happy." As the meetings between Emma and Charles become more frequent, old Rouault is sharp enough to see Charles' increasing fondness for his daughter. He is worried, however, about providing her with a dowry, since his debts are rising. When Charles asks him for Emma's hand in marriage, he readily consents. The wedding will take place after Charles' period of mourning ends. Emma pictures a romantic midnight wedding with torches. | Notes Rouault appears to be a kind, good-natured man. He calls on Charles to offer his condolences over his wife's death and invites him to spend some time with him at Les Bertaux. His invitation has the dual purpose of taking Charles' mind off of his wife's death and interesting Charles in his own daughter Emma. Since Roualt is suffering from rising debts, he is very concerned about not having a large dowry for his daughter and wants to see her respectably and quickly married. When Rouault sees that Charles is fond of Emma, he does everything possible to encourage their relationship, for he judges the young doctor to be a suitable husband. In this chapter, Flaubert continues to develop Emma. The first hint of her imaginative, romantic nature is depicted as she dreams about a midnight wedding with torches. Probably because of her dreamy, romantic ways, her father does not find Emma helpful enough on the farm and feels she will not be terribly missed when she marries. Charles, on the other hand, is thoroughly infatuated with Emma, believing everything about her, both her actions and her appearance, to be flawless. Emma will later take undue advantage of this devotion of Charles to her. | 249 | 205 |
2,413 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/04.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_3_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 4 | chapter 4 | null | {"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary13.asp", "summary": "In this chapter, the wedding takes place, and \"all relatives on both sides had been invited\" to the celebration. After the ceremony, the bridal couple, along with a band of well-wishers, make their way from the mayor's office to the church on foot. The sumptuous wedding feast is laid in a cart-shed. In the midst of all this joy and merry-making is Charles' mother, who is upset because \"she had not been consulted about the bride's dress, nor about the feast. \" The lively description of the wedding celebration is given in great detail and reflects the social status of the characters. The guests who attend are a mixed lot, ranging from the prosperous to the not- so-well-to-do. It is obvious that for many people this a special occasion calling for special clothing. The men are dressed according to their wealth, wearing dress-coats, frock-coats, waistcoats, or jackets. Many ladies are wearing new dresses, tailored to the prevailing style of the day. For many of the children, it is the first time for them to wear boots or gloves. After the wedding night, Charles appears to be a renewed man, while Emma appears just as innocent and demure as she did before the marriage. When the couple arrives in Tostes two days later, the neighbors gather in their windows to see the doctor's new wife. The maid suggests to Emma that she should look over the house once dinner is ready.", "analysis": "Notes Flaubert's ability to write commendable and powerful descriptions is clearly seen in this chapter. The wedding feast is described with careful detail. While contributing little to plot development, the chapter does much to further develop the characters. The resentful attitude of Charles' mother is in keeping with her desire to control everything, especially her son's life. She cannot stand it that her new daughter-in-law does not depend on her for guidance. Her animosity also foreshadows the mutual distrust with which these two women are to regard each other in future. Emma's continued \"innocence\" after the wedding night, in contrast to Charles' invigorated state, seems to hint that she has not found sexual relations with her husband as satisfying as he has with her. This dissatisfaction foreshadows some of Emma's future need to find sexual relationships outside of her marriage. Flaubert gives a humorous touch to the marriage celebration by describing the ways in which the simple country folk try to imitate their town cousins. But hard work is a way of life for these people, and they cannot easily leave it behind. As a result, the gentlemen arriving for the celebration do not hesitate to unharness the carriages themselves, even though they are dressed in their best finery. Flaubert also presents the traditions of the village community with the wedding itself becoming a communal event. It is important to notice Charles' neighbors who stare out the window at the newlyweds upon their return to Tostes. They seem to be a somewhat nosy group, indicating it will not be easy for Emma to be secretive about her actions or behavior."} |
The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled
cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young
people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in
rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot
and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from
Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany.
All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between
friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to.
From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then
the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the
steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all
sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets,
had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with
the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down
behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads,
dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes
(many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their
sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first
communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or
sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their
hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their
gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the
carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it
themselves. According to their different social positions they wore
tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats,
redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe
on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and
round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse
cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short
cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like
a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at
the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say,
with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small
plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt.
And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had
just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been
close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and
not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or
cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh
air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were
mottled here and there with red dabs.
The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither
on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church.
The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated
across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn,
soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to
talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at
its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all
following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves
plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves
unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from
time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her
gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns,
while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault,
with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands
up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur
Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply
in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing
compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed,
and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their
business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another
on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the
squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When
he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly
rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set
off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark
time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little
birds from afar.
The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six
chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle
a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At
the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round
the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine
beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least
shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of
the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot
had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up
on the place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself
brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin
with, at its base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a
temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and
in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second
stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications
in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and
finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of
jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate
swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.
Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they
went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the
granary, and then returned to table. Some towards the finish went to
sleep and snored. But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then they began
songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with
their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad
jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed
up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they
kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore;
and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were
runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over
yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning
out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins.
Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen.
The children had fallen asleep under the seats.
The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage
pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even
brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water
from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in
time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position
of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the
same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused
old Rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in
a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running
served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been
badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints
hoping he would ruin himself.
Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been
consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the
arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead
of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till
daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This
added greatly to the consideration in which he was held.
Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding.
He answered feebly to the puns, doubles entendres*, compliments, and
chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup
appeared.
*Double meanings.
The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who
might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before,
whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did
not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed
near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed
nothing. He called her "my wife", tutoyed* her, asked for her of
everyone, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the
yards, where he could be seen from far between the trees, putting his
arm around her waist, and walking half-bending over her, ruffling the
chemisette of her bodice with his head.
*Used the familiar form of address.
Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of
his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back
in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here
he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way.
When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the
cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh.
Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of
his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her
from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion,
trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the
country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from
the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that
it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he
saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently
under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from
time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would
have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the
road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling
with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he
felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was
afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
right away home.
Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock.
The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.
The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not
having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should
look over her house.
| 2,831 | Chapter 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary13.asp | In this chapter, the wedding takes place, and "all relatives on both sides had been invited" to the celebration. After the ceremony, the bridal couple, along with a band of well-wishers, make their way from the mayor's office to the church on foot. The sumptuous wedding feast is laid in a cart-shed. In the midst of all this joy and merry-making is Charles' mother, who is upset because "she had not been consulted about the bride's dress, nor about the feast. " The lively description of the wedding celebration is given in great detail and reflects the social status of the characters. The guests who attend are a mixed lot, ranging from the prosperous to the not- so-well-to-do. It is obvious that for many people this a special occasion calling for special clothing. The men are dressed according to their wealth, wearing dress-coats, frock-coats, waistcoats, or jackets. Many ladies are wearing new dresses, tailored to the prevailing style of the day. For many of the children, it is the first time for them to wear boots or gloves. After the wedding night, Charles appears to be a renewed man, while Emma appears just as innocent and demure as she did before the marriage. When the couple arrives in Tostes two days later, the neighbors gather in their windows to see the doctor's new wife. The maid suggests to Emma that she should look over the house once dinner is ready. | Notes Flaubert's ability to write commendable and powerful descriptions is clearly seen in this chapter. The wedding feast is described with careful detail. While contributing little to plot development, the chapter does much to further develop the characters. The resentful attitude of Charles' mother is in keeping with her desire to control everything, especially her son's life. She cannot stand it that her new daughter-in-law does not depend on her for guidance. Her animosity also foreshadows the mutual distrust with which these two women are to regard each other in future. Emma's continued "innocence" after the wedding night, in contrast to Charles' invigorated state, seems to hint that she has not found sexual relations with her husband as satisfying as he has with her. This dissatisfaction foreshadows some of Emma's future need to find sexual relationships outside of her marriage. Flaubert gives a humorous touch to the marriage celebration by describing the ways in which the simple country folk try to imitate their town cousins. But hard work is a way of life for these people, and they cannot easily leave it behind. As a result, the gentlemen arriving for the celebration do not hesitate to unharness the carriages themselves, even though they are dressed in their best finery. Flaubert also presents the traditions of the village community with the wedding itself becoming a communal event. It is important to notice Charles' neighbors who stare out the window at the newlyweds upon their return to Tostes. They seem to be a somewhat nosy group, indicating it will not be easy for Emma to be secretive about her actions or behavior. | 328 | 270 |
2,413 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/05.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_4_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 5 | chapter 5 | null | {"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary14.asp", "summary": "The house is described in great detail: the wallpaper, the curtains and the bookshelves all contribute to the \"feel\" of the place. Emma does not seem to mind that the garden is not very remarkable; it is the bedroom that she examines eagerly. When she notices Heloise's bridal bouquet, she muses morbidly about the possibility of her own death. Emma spends the next few days changing the house to suit her tastes, and Charles indulges her every whim. He buys her a second-hand carriage so that she can drive out on her own. Charles is ecstatic over his new found happiness with Emma. \" A meal together, a walk along the highroad in the evening, a way she had of putting her hand to her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging on the window latch, and a great many things besides, in which Charles had never thought to find pleasure, now made up the even tenor of his happiness.\" He treasures every moment with Emma. While Charles luxuriates in his love for his wife, Emma quickly grows tired of her husband and married life. She had dreamed of \"bliss,\" \"passion,\" and \"ecstasy,\" a far cry from what she has found with Charles.", "analysis": "Notes This chapter masterfully contrasts Charles' joy with marriage to Emma's boredom, and Flaubert successfully captures her gloomy mood. Charles' house, with its bleak furnishings, depresses Emma. She is particularly bothered by the bedroom, where she spies Heloise's bridal bouquet and is forced to think about her own mortality; it is a clear foreshadowing of Emma's own early death. The chapter ends on a note of discord. Emma is slowly beginning to realize the difference between her fanciful expectations of marriage and the unromantic reality that it actually offers. In total contrast to his wife's boredom with marriage, Charles is delighted about everything. He obviously idolizes Emma, and every little thing about her is special to him - the way she puts her hand to hair and leaves her straw hat on the window shelf. He has never felt so happy. As a result, he does everything he can materially to please his wife. He buys her a carriage so she can go out on her own, and he allows her to redecorate the house. The alterations that she makes in their dwelling are more than an attempt to render it more pleasant in appearance; it is an effort on her put to establish her own authority over the place. Charles does not mind. In fact, he is so immersed in his own contentment with married life that he fails to notice the disillusionment that is creeping over Emma. Charles is a naive husband who thinks that a few material indulgences are enough to satisfy a wife. He makes no effort to understand Emma's need for companionship and conversation. He ignores her romanticism and does nothing to satisfy her passions. Although Emma is guilty of many sins during the course of the novel, some of the blame must be placed on Charles. He never considers whether his wife is comfortable or happy; he just assumes that she is since he is. Besides Emma's gloomy thoughts about death early in the chapter, there are other significant things to note in here that will become important later on. Emma's main concern in the house is the bedroom with its romantic and sexual connotations; throughout the book, Emma will have a preoccupation with her own sexuality. Ironically, the thing she most notices in this particular bedroom is the dead bouquet of flowers belonging to a dead wife. Also significant is the fact that Charles buys his wife a carriage, which gives her the freedom that she will need to pursue her own desires. The fact that he allows Emma to have her way about practically everything spoils her to the point that she will later borrow whatever she needs to get what she wants, causing financial disaster for the pair."} |
The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road.
Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black
leather cap, and on the floor, in a corner, were a pair of leggings,
still covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment, that was
both dining and sitting room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at the
top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly
stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung crossways
at the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with
a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks
under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was Charles's
consulting room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table,
three chairs, and an office chair. Volumes of the "Dictionary of Medical
Science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive
sales through which they had gone, occupied almost along the six shelves
of a deal bookcase.
The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls when he saw
patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in
the consulting room and recounting their histories.
Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large
dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and
pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements
past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to
guess.
The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered
apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the
middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with
eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed.
Right at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure in plaster
reading his breviary.
Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in the second,
which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red
drapery. A shell box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary
near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin
ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the other
one's. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it
up to the attic, while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were putting
her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in
a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she
were to die.
During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in
the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wallpaper
put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the
sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain
and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,
picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard
in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.
He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together,
a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her
hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and
many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now
made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by
her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down
on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen
thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on
waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the
shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of
different colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towards the
surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw
himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round
his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window
to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of
geranium, clad in her dressing gown hanging loosely about her. Charles,
in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while
she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of
flower or leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating,
described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before
it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare
standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a
kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And
then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along
the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where
the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning
air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his
mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness,
like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are
digesting.
Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when
he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of
companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his
accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school
with cakes in their muffs? Later on, when he studied medicine, and never
had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have
become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the
widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life
this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend
beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself
with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly,
ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing;
he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.
He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her
fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on
her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm
from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away
half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.
Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that
should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought,
have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in
life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so
beautiful in books.
| 1,675 | Chapter 5 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary14.asp | The house is described in great detail: the wallpaper, the curtains and the bookshelves all contribute to the "feel" of the place. Emma does not seem to mind that the garden is not very remarkable; it is the bedroom that she examines eagerly. When she notices Heloise's bridal bouquet, she muses morbidly about the possibility of her own death. Emma spends the next few days changing the house to suit her tastes, and Charles indulges her every whim. He buys her a second-hand carriage so that she can drive out on her own. Charles is ecstatic over his new found happiness with Emma. " A meal together, a walk along the highroad in the evening, a way she had of putting her hand to her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging on the window latch, and a great many things besides, in which Charles had never thought to find pleasure, now made up the even tenor of his happiness." He treasures every moment with Emma. While Charles luxuriates in his love for his wife, Emma quickly grows tired of her husband and married life. She had dreamed of "bliss," "passion," and "ecstasy," a far cry from what she has found with Charles. | Notes This chapter masterfully contrasts Charles' joy with marriage to Emma's boredom, and Flaubert successfully captures her gloomy mood. Charles' house, with its bleak furnishings, depresses Emma. She is particularly bothered by the bedroom, where she spies Heloise's bridal bouquet and is forced to think about her own mortality; it is a clear foreshadowing of Emma's own early death. The chapter ends on a note of discord. Emma is slowly beginning to realize the difference between her fanciful expectations of marriage and the unromantic reality that it actually offers. In total contrast to his wife's boredom with marriage, Charles is delighted about everything. He obviously idolizes Emma, and every little thing about her is special to him - the way she puts her hand to hair and leaves her straw hat on the window shelf. He has never felt so happy. As a result, he does everything he can materially to please his wife. He buys her a carriage so she can go out on her own, and he allows her to redecorate the house. The alterations that she makes in their dwelling are more than an attempt to render it more pleasant in appearance; it is an effort on her put to establish her own authority over the place. Charles does not mind. In fact, he is so immersed in his own contentment with married life that he fails to notice the disillusionment that is creeping over Emma. Charles is a naive husband who thinks that a few material indulgences are enough to satisfy a wife. He makes no effort to understand Emma's need for companionship and conversation. He ignores her romanticism and does nothing to satisfy her passions. Although Emma is guilty of many sins during the course of the novel, some of the blame must be placed on Charles. He never considers whether his wife is comfortable or happy; he just assumes that she is since he is. Besides Emma's gloomy thoughts about death early in the chapter, there are other significant things to note in here that will become important later on. Emma's main concern in the house is the bedroom with its romantic and sexual connotations; throughout the book, Emma will have a preoccupation with her own sexuality. Ironically, the thing she most notices in this particular bedroom is the dead bouquet of flowers belonging to a dead wife. Also significant is the fact that Charles buys his wife a carriage, which gives her the freedom that she will need to pursue her own desires. The fact that he allows Emma to have her way about practically everything spoils her to the point that she will later borrow whatever she needs to get what she wants, causing financial disaster for the pair. | 280 | 457 |
2,413 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/06.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_5_part_0.txt | Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 6 | chapter 6 | null | {"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary15.asp", "summary": "In this chapter, Emma relives her past. When she was thirteen, her father put her in a convent. At first she \"enjoyed the society of the nuns\" and even liked answering the curate's harder questions in catechism. Gradually, however, she found herself responding more and more to the physical beauty of the place, rather than the spiritual and religious. She was fascinated with \"the perfumes of the attar, the coolness of the holy-water fonts and the radiance of the tapers,\" all romantic images for her. In fact, \"the metaphors of betrothed, spouse, heavenly lover, marriage everlasting, that recur in sermons, awoke in the depths of her soul an unlooked-for delight.\" Emma's already dreamy disposition is further developed when she is exposed to romantic ballads. The songs she learns in her music lessons help her to create a world of make-believe. She is also influenced by the popular novels of her day. Emma would read any gothic or sentimental romance with eagerness, and she had \"a passion for the historical\" and an \"enthusiastic adoration for all illustrious or ill-fated women,\" such as Mary Queen of Scots, Joan of Arc, and Heloise. She also dreamed about sultans and other fanciful characters. When her mother died, Emma was at the convent. She wept for several days, had a lock of her mother's hair mounted on a memorial card, and expressed her wish to be buried in the same grave when she died. However, the pall of gloom soon lifted from Emma, and she found herself totally at peace, \"with no more sadness in her heart than wrinkles on her brow. \" The nuns were surprised at Emma's lack of devotion to religious matters. In truth, she had begun to openly rebel against the mysteries of the faith as she grew more irritated with the strict discipline, a thing repugnant to her nature.\" The sisters were relieved when Mr. Roualt finally took Emma away to manage his affairs at the farm. By the time she meets Charles, Emma is very tired of her life on the farm. She wants a more exciting life, filled with passion. Unfortunately, this is not what Charles offers her in their marriage.", "analysis": "Notes Discontented with her present married life, Emma begins to contemplate her past, hoping it will bring her comfort. As a child, she was naturally sharp and curious. Like many young girls of her time, Emma eagerly read the popular gothic novels and dreamed of living in the romantic past. She spent her adolescent years in a convent, where her romantic temperament became obvious; with true classical romanticism, she imaginatively looked to the remote past for inspiration and grew sentimental. She became fascinated with all the mystical and sensual images of the Catholic Church, such as the incense and the candlelight. She was also excited over the metaphor of Christ as the heavenly lover, for the image stirred the flames of passion in her. Individualism and freedom from restraint are major characteristics of Emma's romantic temperament. They surfaced in the convent when she refused to devote herself to her religious studies; as a result, the nuns were glad when Roualt took the difficult girl away. Her rebellious nature is further revealed by her glorification of \"illustrious or ill-fated women.\" Her role models, all of whom paid a high price for their rebelliousness, are an indication of the path Emma will take. Whether society applauds her or not, she does not care. She will allow herself to be just as headstrong and impetuous as her historical role models. Emma also allows herself to be as sentimental as she chooses. Her mother's death fills her with 'excessive' grief. When this period passes, she finds herself trying to break free from the life of restraint in the convent. This yearning is symbolic of her actual breaking away from the social conventions of the age later in the novel. Emma yearns for excitement in life; the normal routine fails to rouse her spirits. As her memories reveal, she constantly needs mental distractions. It is a compulsive trait that Flaubert unfolds gradually during the course of the novel. This chapter reveals that nothing can hold Emma's interest for long. She applies her energies to one thing, abandons it, and begins something new. Although she was a devoted student at the convent in the beginning, she quickly tired of the routine. In a similar manner, she quickly grows tired of tending her father's farm and being married to Charles. This inability to maintain a long-term interest will be developed throughout the novel. Much of what has been learned about Emma has come through her own thoughts. Even though this is not a novel about the psychological aspect of consciousness, Flaubert will continue to delve into Emma's psyche to see what thoughts lie behind her actions."} |
She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little
bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the
sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for
you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand,
bringing you a bird's nest.
When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place
her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter,
where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the
story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped
here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the
tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court.
Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the
society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel,
which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very
little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she
who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living
thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and
amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she
was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the
altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers.
Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with
their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred
heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the
cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a
whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil.
When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she
might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined,
her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest.
The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal
marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of
unexpected sweetness.
In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in
the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or
the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the
"Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to
the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing
through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the
shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened
her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to
us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well;
she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs.
Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to
those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms,
and the green fields only when broken up by ruins.
She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected
as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her
heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking
for emotions, not landscapes.
At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to
mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an
ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the
refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit
of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped
out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs
of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away.
She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on
the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the
pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed
long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers,
sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions
killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre
forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by
moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions,
gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and
weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of
age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.
Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events,
dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked
to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines
who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the
stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on
his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult
for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy
women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and
Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of
heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St.
Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a
little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always
the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV.
In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but
little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild
compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity
of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria
of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes"
given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden;
it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately
handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at
the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the
most part as counts or viscounts.
She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and
saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the
balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his
arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or
there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who
looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear
eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through
parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at
a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on
sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open
window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their
cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or,
smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a
marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked
shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining
beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres,
Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands,
that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a
lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by
a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam
trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white
excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.
And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head
lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one
by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some
belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.
When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a
funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter
sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be
buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill,
and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at
a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre
hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened
to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of
the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of
the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not
confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel
herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her
brow.
The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with
great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping
from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,
novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to
saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of
the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined
horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This
nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the
church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the
songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against
the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing
antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school,
no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she
had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.
Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the
servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.
When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself
quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to
feel.
But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance
caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe
that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a
great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies
of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived
was the happiness she had dreamed.
| 2,639 | Chapter 6 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary15.asp | In this chapter, Emma relives her past. When she was thirteen, her father put her in a convent. At first she "enjoyed the society of the nuns" and even liked answering the curate's harder questions in catechism. Gradually, however, she found herself responding more and more to the physical beauty of the place, rather than the spiritual and religious. She was fascinated with "the perfumes of the attar, the coolness of the holy-water fonts and the radiance of the tapers," all romantic images for her. In fact, "the metaphors of betrothed, spouse, heavenly lover, marriage everlasting, that recur in sermons, awoke in the depths of her soul an unlooked-for delight." Emma's already dreamy disposition is further developed when she is exposed to romantic ballads. The songs she learns in her music lessons help her to create a world of make-believe. She is also influenced by the popular novels of her day. Emma would read any gothic or sentimental romance with eagerness, and she had "a passion for the historical" and an "enthusiastic adoration for all illustrious or ill-fated women," such as Mary Queen of Scots, Joan of Arc, and Heloise. She also dreamed about sultans and other fanciful characters. When her mother died, Emma was at the convent. She wept for several days, had a lock of her mother's hair mounted on a memorial card, and expressed her wish to be buried in the same grave when she died. However, the pall of gloom soon lifted from Emma, and she found herself totally at peace, "with no more sadness in her heart than wrinkles on her brow. " The nuns were surprised at Emma's lack of devotion to religious matters. In truth, she had begun to openly rebel against the mysteries of the faith as she grew more irritated with the strict discipline, a thing repugnant to her nature." The sisters were relieved when Mr. Roualt finally took Emma away to manage his affairs at the farm. By the time she meets Charles, Emma is very tired of her life on the farm. She wants a more exciting life, filled with passion. Unfortunately, this is not what Charles offers her in their marriage. | Notes Discontented with her present married life, Emma begins to contemplate her past, hoping it will bring her comfort. As a child, she was naturally sharp and curious. Like many young girls of her time, Emma eagerly read the popular gothic novels and dreamed of living in the romantic past. She spent her adolescent years in a convent, where her romantic temperament became obvious; with true classical romanticism, she imaginatively looked to the remote past for inspiration and grew sentimental. She became fascinated with all the mystical and sensual images of the Catholic Church, such as the incense and the candlelight. She was also excited over the metaphor of Christ as the heavenly lover, for the image stirred the flames of passion in her. Individualism and freedom from restraint are major characteristics of Emma's romantic temperament. They surfaced in the convent when she refused to devote herself to her religious studies; as a result, the nuns were glad when Roualt took the difficult girl away. Her rebellious nature is further revealed by her glorification of "illustrious or ill-fated women." Her role models, all of whom paid a high price for their rebelliousness, are an indication of the path Emma will take. Whether society applauds her or not, she does not care. She will allow herself to be just as headstrong and impetuous as her historical role models. Emma also allows herself to be as sentimental as she chooses. Her mother's death fills her with 'excessive' grief. When this period passes, she finds herself trying to break free from the life of restraint in the convent. This yearning is symbolic of her actual breaking away from the social conventions of the age later in the novel. Emma yearns for excitement in life; the normal routine fails to rouse her spirits. As her memories reveal, she constantly needs mental distractions. It is a compulsive trait that Flaubert unfolds gradually during the course of the novel. This chapter reveals that nothing can hold Emma's interest for long. She applies her energies to one thing, abandons it, and begins something new. Although she was a devoted student at the convent in the beginning, she quickly tired of the routine. In a similar manner, she quickly grows tired of tending her father's farm and being married to Charles. This inability to maintain a long-term interest will be developed throughout the novel. Much of what has been learned about Emma has come through her own thoughts. Even though this is not a novel about the psychological aspect of consciousness, Flaubert will continue to delve into Emma's psyche to see what thoughts lie behind her actions. | 533 | 439 |