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.