Читать книгу Madame Bovary: A Play in Three Acts - Gustave Flaubert - Страница 7

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.

HIPPOLYTE

You must take me to that land.

(He leaves. Charles and Homais go by.)

HOMAIS

The town hall was built on a design by an architect from Paris.

CHARLES

It’s imposing for the locality.

HOMAIS

And here’s the street lamp. I had elaborated a vast plan for lighting daily, by agglomeration, but my colleagues on the municipal council, still dominated by obfuscation, wouldn’t grant me the credits for a single street lamp, despite the arguments I advanced for two hours by the clock. Still, they don’t light it when there’s a clear moon.

CHARLES

Yes, yes, yes—

HOMAIS

My office.

CHARLES

Beautiful set-up.

HOMAIS

Your house is almost opposite. Down there where the serv ant enters. You see your patients don’t have a long journey to execute your orders.

CHARLES

It has a nice approach from what I can make out.

HOMAIS

It presents the most suitable—principally for a doctor. It has a gate which allows one to enter and leave without being seen.

(They pass. Léon and Emma enter.)

EMMA

Imagine—this is only the fourth time I’m going to sleep in a strange place. The day of my entry in the convent, that of my arrival in Tostes, and last Autumn at the château of Vaubyessard where we were invited to a ball. Each time it seems to me that a new phase of my life is opening up.

LÉON

I understand. One willingly understands that things cannot be found alike in different places.

EMMA

Yes, especially when one hasn’t been happy.

(They leave in silence.)

C U R T A I N