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ACT I, SCENE 3

Homais’ salon.

Sunday soirée. Léon is singing, Emma accompanies him. Homais and Charles are seated at a game table.

LÉON

Alas, cover up the over-proud soul,

I was able to believe in this love.

But your lying promise, Malvina,

Didn’t last a day.

Toward his dwelling, joyous troupe

Direct your noisy echoes.

Name Fingal to the forgetful one,

Repeat to her my sad songs.

(Charles applauds)

HOMAIS

Hush! He’s not finished.

LÉON

During long months of silence

At the depth of a vale, I waited for her.

I broke my bow and my lance,

I took my lute, I left.

Here’s the cavernous gorge

Where your noisy echo died.

Flee, flee, joyous troupe

And leave me alone with my sad songs.

(Emma strikes a final chord and Homais applauds.)

HOMAIS

Didn’t I tell you that he brings out the best of the romance like a tambourine or a Lablache?

LÉON

I wish that Mr. Homais were right, so as to be worthy of the accompanist.

CHARLES

Doesn’t she play well? Imagine that she goes for months without opening her piano.

EMMA

When one cannot become an artist—

CHARLES

And her fingers run so quickly the whole length of the keyboard.

(Madame Homais enters, followed by Justin)

MADAME HOMAIS

Here’s the mixture. Perhaps you’d prefer something else, but Homais wants to convert everybody to his mixtures. Put it down there, Justin.

HOMAIS

It’s a decoction of tea, Tea Asiaticus. I introduced the custom into my home after the year of cholera. On the condition of not abusing it, you must see in it an exciting lightness, an agreeable taste, and with which I joined the happy influence of intellectual faculties. Allow me, to advise you, Madame, to sugar it with less parsimony. Pure sugar cane, Saccharum. I obtain it in the form of unrefined sugar and refine it myself in my laboratory.

EMMA

Thanks, thanks.

HOMAIS

Perhaps, Doctor, you’ll observe to me that Holland and England where this beverage has spread to the point of being an almost daily custom among a large number of the inhabitants is present at the time the two countries when there is the greatest quarrel.

CHARLES

Really, Holland and England?

HOMAIS

But I’ll reply to you that we can embellish this inconvenience by the addition of a sufficient quantity of milk, preferably not skim.—Allow me, Madame.

MADAME HOMAIS (to Justin who contemplates Emma.)

Well, are you going to remain standing there planted like a milestone? It’s almost ten o’clock. Go to bed. And look to see if the children are not uncovered while they slept.

HOMAIS

One can add either rum from the Antilles or elixir de Garus, but that cannot be done without damaging the aroma.

(Justin leaves)

MADAME HOMAIS

He’s a student in pharmacy, a distant cousin of Homais that we’ve taken in here from charity. Mr. Homais is good. Justin serves us, at the same time as a servant. He takes special care of the children.

EMMA

You have four, I believe?

LÉON

Napoléon, Franklin, Irma, and Athalia. Beautiful names, aren’t they?

HOMAIS

I was looking for names evoking a great man, an illustrious deed, or a generous conception. Napoléon represents glory, and Franklin, liberty. Irma, was chosen, I admit, from a concession to fashion, but Athalia is a homage to the most immortal masterpiece of the French stage.

LÉON

Eh, Mr. Homais, a play in which God is the main character! So you are not quite so much an enemy of the priests?

HOMAIS

My young friend, my philosophic convictions don’t interfere with my artistic admiration, and the thinker in me doesn’t suffocate the man of feeling.

MADAME HOMAIS

In any case, Athalia is a demon. Ah, Madame, what Christian-torment these children are! With them one is at the mercy of a thoughtless action, thus I beware myself, you can believe me. In our home the knives are never sharpened, the floors are never waxed, all the windows have grills, and until they’re at least four, I make our little ones wear cushioning pads around their heads.

HOMAIS

I can do nothing but approve of that, Madame Homais. A simple concussion can have formidable results for the intellectual organs. You intend then to make them from the Caribes or the Botocudos?—Another cup, dear Madame?

EMMA

Thanks.

HOMAIS

And you, Mr. Léon?

LÉON

I thank you all the same.

(The bell, suspended from a pendulum rings ten times.)

HOMAIS

Ten o’clock. What would you say now, Doctor, to a game of dominoes in three hundreds?

CHARLES

That would revive me. When I was a medical student in Rouen, I developed a passion for dominoes. How many courses didn’t it make me fail. It was my sole fantasy.

HOMAIS

It’s necessary that youth pass.

MADAME HOMAIS

You’re getting settled in as you like?

EMMA

Many things that I wanted to keep for memory were abandoned or lost in transport.

CHARLES

It’s correct to say that two moves are as bad as a fire. And what expenses moving necessitates.

MADAME HOMAIS

If I can be useful to you, dispose of me quite freely. I need to tell you when I get provisions. Here, like everywhere, you find the same thing at the best price at different places. For example, your supply of butter—

EMMA

I will send Félicité to you for all that—if you really would. She’ll understand better than I will.

MADAME HOMAIS

Ah, as for the garden.

EMMA

I don’t concern myself with gardens.

CHARLES

That’s very regrettable, since it involves exercise. But my wife prefers to read in her room.

MADAME HOMAIS

All day long?

HOMAIS

If Madame will do me the honor of using it, I have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Delille, Pigault-Lebrun—the Echo of Feuilletons.

EMMA

I’ve read all that.

JUSTIN

(entering timidly) Madame—

CHARLES

Your play.

JUSTIN

Athalia

MADAME HOMAIS

Athalia has caught the colic again. Excuse me. Poor sweetie! I need to go to her.

HOMAIS

Two and a half ounces of farina of flax, prepared as a poultice, and watered with three drops of laudanum. (Madame Homais leaves with Justin) Double six.

LÉON

I could give you the address of a reading room in Rouen where I subscribe myself. Hivert carries the volumes back and forth. Here, far from the world, it’s my sole distraction.

CHARLES

Four.

HOMAIS

Spades.

LÉON

What could be nicer than to be next to the fireplace in an evening with a book while the wind beats at the window panes—?

EMMA

Yes.

LÉON

The hours pass. One walks motionless in the country that one thinks to see. One recognizes in the corner of a page vague ideas that one had, and one has forgotten. It’s like a dark image which comes back from a distance.

EMMA

I’ve experienced that.

LÉON

It’s especially the poets that I love. I find verse more tender than prose, and they are better at making one cry.

EMMA

Still, it’s living in the long run. Now, on the contrary, I adore long stories that introduce fear. I detest common heroes, and temperate feelings, as there are in Nature.

LÉON

No question. What’s the use of imagining if what one imagines is not better than life?

EMMA

I remember—I was twelve when I read Paul and Virginia, and I dreamed and dreamed.

A WOMAN’S VOICE

Dreamed.

(While someone breathes and causes flickering of the lamplight, invisible beings answer in a muffled way. Emma doesn’t seem to hear the voices and doesn’t interrupt her conversation with Léon; from a distance one of the real phrases of her conversation interrupts the phantasmagoric murmuring.)

VOICES

The little Bamboo hut.

The Negro Domingo.

The dog, Fido.

The good little brother who’s going to find red fruits for you in the big trees—as tall as clocks, or who runs with naked feet on the sand—to bring you a bird’s nest.

EMMA

And what emotion when I discovered Walter Scott.

VOICES

Dwellings

Guard rooms.

Minstrels.

EMMA

It was a fine time. I believed I lived those adventures, and palpitated under the costumes of characters.

VOICES

We’ve all been the young girl in a white dress who pecked at a dove through the bars of a gothic cage—

Or she who, smiling and head bowed, pulls off the painted petals of a flower.

In the darkest part of the forest, where they kill the postilions of all relays, we fainted in an abandoned pavilion. Janissaries presented us, captive and naked to Sultans who smoked narghile water pipes beneath trellises. Knights risked their lives to clasp us in their arms and we fainted.

EMMA

He has words like magic which soothe the depths of the soul with unexpected sweetness.

VOICES

Lagoons, gondoliers.

Rafts, in the moonlight.

Melancholy ruins.

Songs of dying swains.

Falling leaves.

(The clock strikes twelve. Light returns. Charles and Homais have finished their game of dominoes, and are dozing. Emma and Léon continue to speak in low voices.)

EMMA

Midnight already!

LÉON

Look, they are dozing.

EMMA

Hush!

LÉON

Hush! So then, after this morning, your father placed you in a pension with the Ursulines of Rouen. And then?

EMMA

What to say! I loved the convent. Its tepid, the smell of incense. I was so pure. Can you imagine that when I went to confession I invented little sins so as to remain longer on my knees in the shade?

I had many friends among my companions. We promised to write each other, but we didn’t continue for very long. My life is very different from theirs. What became of them, those whose coats filled the courtyard the day of the Fest of God, or for the distribution of prizes? They are rich, elegant and admired. Doubtless they love and are loved. For them the delicacy of luxury, of the happiness of dreams that are accomplished, the nobility of an idea. I imagine them, when they go to the theater in their box seats, under shining lights. They greet one another with a bow of their heads, with headbands gently bulging. Flowers hang from their necks. Pearls roll on their shoulders, They wave their fans. They smell their bouquets to hide their smiles, they—

(in measure to her words the stage is lit up and the Beauties appear as they are described—then shadow invades Homais’ salon, except for the illuminated face of Emma.)

THE BEAUTIES

Emma!

Emma, you are one of us! You are really worth as much as all those who live happily.

Your waist is less thick, and your manners less plebian than duchesses.

Listen to us, Emma.

We are bringing you the dream, the great romantic dream.

On it we have modeled our lives.

On it, you can model yours.

To live, one must dream one’s life.

Choose among the images of yourself.

Choose to be haughty and wild,

Faithfull without love, and virtuous through pride.

Savor the sensuality of being stronger than your desires.

Aspire to the vertigo of sacrifice and isolation.

Be the unreachable vine, heavy with grapes that none can press.

And if your pride is not powerful enough,

And if the need to love bursts in your breast,

Go strengthen yourself in God,

Go cast your love to God.

In the cold shadow of gothic naves,

Where tones do not echo in the silence,

Rush to the rendezvous with your celestial fiancée!

Passionate!—Be the lamp that consumes itself on vigil in the sanctuary.

Languishing—be the sheep whose good shepherd takes it on his shoulders.

Gorged with disgust for this world, and scorn for its inhabitants,

Raise yourself ever higher.

We are bringing you the liberating dream,

Stretch out your hands, take it!

(Abruptly, the voices are silent.)

FELICITY’S VOICE

Madame!

(Suddenly the room of the Bovary’s appears.)

CURTAIN