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.