HOMAIS
Dinner will soon be ready. I dared to invite myself, my wife being absent, and we will have, if you like, a fourth guest, my young friend Léon Dupins, presently clerk at our notary’s.
LÉON
Madame, Doctor.
CHARLES
Enchanted, sir.
HOMAIS
I will ask you one additional permission: that of wearing my Greek bonnet for fear of a head-cold.
CHARLES
Don’t stay like this, Emma, sit down—rest.
EMMA
Yes, yes.
HOMAIS
Soon after dinner we will accompany you to your new home, and allow you to install yourselves there. Madame must indeed be weary? One is so shockingly jolted in our Hirondelle.
EMMA
It’s true. But discomfort always amuses me. I love to change places.
LÉON
It’s such a vexing thing to live nailed to the same place.
EMMA
Isn’t it?
CHARLES
If you were like me, forced to be on horseback constantly—
LÉON
Why nothing is more agreeable it seems to me, if one can do it.
HOMAIS
All the same, the practice of medicine is not very hard in our country, for the condition of our roads permits the use of a carriage, and generally, the farmers pay well enough—being well healed.
EMMA
Do you at least have some walks in the vicinity?
LÉON
Oh, very few. There’s a place called the Pasture on the height at the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sunday, I go there and stay there with a book, to watch the sunset.
HOMAIS
Aside from the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis, and bilious diseases, we have a few fevers during the mowing season, but, in sum, nothing special to note if it’s not much out of temper.
EMMA
I find nothing as admirable as sunsets, especially on the sea-shore.
LÉON
Ah, I adore the sea!
EMMA
Yes, the mind sails most liberally on this limitless stretch whose contemplation elevates the soul.
HOMAIS
You will find many prejudices to combat, Mr. Bovary. They still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to priests rather than coming naturally to a doctor or pharmacist.
LÉON
It’s the same passing through the mountains. I have a cousin who traveled in Switzerland, who told me one cannot imagine the poetry of lakes, the charm of waterfalls, the gigantic effect of pine trees thrown across rivers or of huts suspended over precipices.
EMMA
Such spectacles must give ideas of infinity.
LÉON
Surely! And now I understand that musician who was in the habit of playing the piano before glaciers!
HOMAIS
To tell the truth, the climate isn’t bad, and we number in the commune several nonagenarians. I myself have made some observations on the thermometer. In winter it goes down to four degrees, and in the hot sun reaches twenty-nine, thirty centigrade, more or less—which gives fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit in English measurement.
CHARLES
Yes, yes, yes,
EMMA
You compose or play music?
LÉON
No, but I love it very much.
HOMAIS
Don’t listen to him, Madame Bovary, he’s pure modesty. He sings the guardian angel, believing it, but like an actor. We receive every other Sunday. Intimate little soirées. If you would honor us by being one of us, Mr. Léon would be forced to no longer hide his talent.
EMMA
Why, gladly, thanks. And what music do you prefer?
LÉON
German music—that which sets you dreaming.
EMMA
Do you know the Italians?
LÉON
Not yet, but I will see them next year when I live in Paris to finish my law degree.
EMMA
Paris!
HOMAIS
Still, Doctor, I must direct your attention the considerable presence of animals on the prairie adjoining the river. From which, exhalations of ammonia, that is to say, agote, hydrogen-oxygen—
EMMA
Paris!
HOMAIS
No, agote and hydrogen only—
MADAME LEFRANÇOIS
Come to dinner, ladies and gentlemen. And here’s the charivari which resumes most beautifully. Excuse it. They are carriage drivers. They’ve been stuffing themselves since this morning at the expense of the Doctor.
CHARLES
What, at my expense?
MADAME LEFRANÇOIS
Listen to me then, if it’s possible, my God.
VOICES
Life has some allures, give joy for them. Must it be spent, sadly, in regrets? Never! Never! Pleasure is French. Hey, youp, youp, youp, La, la, la, la.
C U R T A I N
ACT I, SCENE 2
The main street in Yonville. A street lamp lights the shop window of Homais’ pharmacy.
Hippolyte accompanies Félicité, carrying a lantern.
FÉLICITÉ
Go ahead to prepare the beds—that’s easy to say. But I don’t even know where to put my hand on the blankets in this flea-bag (motions)
HIPPOLYTE
Don’t get upset. I will help you to find them. Is she bad, your boss?
FÉLICITÉ
It’s not that she’s bad, but with her one never knows on what foot to dance. One day, she’ll spend hours talking in my kitchen as if she was with friends, the next day she’ll scream she’s going to throw me out because I didn’t speak to her respectfully, or that I brought her a glass of water without putting it on a napkin.
HIPPOLYTE
It seems to mean that this must be an affected woman.
FÉLICITÉ
For example, she isn’t alert. She leaves the keys on the buffet and never counts the sugar or the candles.
HIPPOLYTE
You must arrange for them to employ me to dig up the garden and groom the horse. The Lion of Gold allows me time each morning, and I don’t ask a lot—for the mere end of seeing a pretty girl like you every day.
FÉLICITÉ
Wow! That’s ’cause I’m from Montreuil where they make them all pretty.