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give some advice to Binet.

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The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had,

through an excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar,

and so the damp powder would not light, and the

principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon biting

his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meagre

Roman-candle went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a

shout that mingled with the cry of the women, whose

waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma silently

nestled against Charles’s shoulder; then, raising her chin,

she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the

dark sky. Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the

burning lanterns.

They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few

crops of rain began to fall. She knotted her fichu round

her bare head.

At this moment the councillor’s carriage came out from

the inn.

His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off,

and one could see from the distance, above the hood,

between the two lanterns, the mass of his body, that

swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.

‘Truly,’ said the druggist, ‘one ought to proceed most

rigorously against drunkenness! I should like to see written

up weekly at the door of the town hall on a board ad hoc*

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the names of all those who during the week got

intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics,

one would thus have, as it were, public records that one

could refer to in case of need. But excuse me!’

*Specifically for that.

And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was

going back to see his lathe again.

‘Perhaps you would not do ill,’ Homais said to him, ‘to

send one of your men, or to go yourself—‘

‘Leave me alone!’ answered the tax-collector. ‘It’s all

right!’

‘Do not be uneasy,’ said the druggist, when he returned

to his friends. ‘Monsieur Binet has assured me that all

precautions have been taken. No sparks have fallen; the

pumps are full. Let us go to rest.’

‘Ma foi! I want it,’ said Madame Homais, yawning at

large. ‘But never mind; we’ve had a beautiful day for our

fete.’

Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender

look, ‘Oh, yes! very beautiful!’

And having bowed to one another, they separated.

Two days later, in the ‘Final de Rouen,’ there was a

long article on the show. Homais had composed it with

verve the very next morning.

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‘Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands?

Whither hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea

under the torrents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon

our heads?’

Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants.

Certainly the Government was doing much, but not

enough. ‘Courage!’ he cried to it; ‘a thousand reforms are

indispensable; let us accomplish them!’ Then touching on

the entry of the councillor, he did not forget ‘the martial

air of our militia;’ nor ‘our most merry village maidens;’

nor the ‘bald-headed old men like patriarchs who were

there, and of whom some, the remnants of our phalanxes,

still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums.’

He cited himself among the first of the members of the

jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that

Monsieur Homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to

the agricultural society.

When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he

painted the joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic

strophes. ‘The father embraced the son, the brother the

brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed

his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got

home to his good housewife, he hung it up weeping on

the modest walls of his cot.

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‘About six o’clock a banquet prepared in the meadow

of Monsieur Leigeard brought together the principal

personages of the fete. The greatest cordiality reigned

here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur Lieuvain, the

King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur

Derozerays, Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and

the Fine Arts, those twin sisters; Monsieur Leplichey,

Progress. In the evening some brilliant fireworks on a

sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a

veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a

moment our little locality might have thought itself

transported into the midst of a dream of the ‘Thousand

and One Nights.’ ‘Let us state that no untoward event

disturbed this family meeting.’ And he added ‘Only the

absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests

understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please,

messieurs the followers of Loyola!’

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CHAPTER NINE

Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last

one evening he appeared.

The day after the show he had said to himself—‘We

mustn’t go back too soon; that would be a mistake.’

And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting.

After the hunting he had thought it was too late, and then

he reasoned thus—

‘If from the first day she loved me, she must from

impatience to see me again love me more. Let’s go on

with it!’

And he knew that his calculation had been right when,

on entering the room, he saw Emma turn pale.

She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small

muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight,

and the gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the

sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the meshes of

the coral.

Rodolphe standing, and Emma hardly

answered his first conventional phrases.

‘I,’ he said, ‘have been busy. I have been ill.’

‘Seriously?’ she cried.

remained

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‘Well,’ said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a

footstool, ‘no; it was because I did not want to come

back.’

‘Why?’

‘Can you not guess?’

He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered

her head, blushing. He went on—

‘Emma!’

‘Sir,’ she said, drawing back a little.

‘Ah! you see,’ replied he in a melancholy voice, ‘that I

was right not to come back; for this name, this name that

fills my whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to

use! Madame Bovary! why all the world calls you thus!

Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of another!’

He repeated, ‘of another!’ And he hid his face in his

hands.

‘Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you

drives me to despair. Ah! forgive me! I will leave you!

Farewell! I will go far away, so far that you will never hear

of me again; and yet— to-day—I know not what force

impelled me towards you. For one does not struggle

against Heaven; one cannot resist the smile of angels; one

is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming,

adorable.’

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It was the first time that Emma had heard such words

spoken to herself, and her pride, like one who reposes

bathed in warmth, expanded softly and fully at this

glowing language.

‘But if I did not come,’ he continued, ‘if I could not

see you, at least I have gazed long on all that surrounds

you. At night-every night-I arose; I came hither; I

watched your house, its glimmering in the moon, the trees

in the garden swaying before your window, and the little

lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the

darkness. Ah! you never knew that there, so near you, so

far from you, was a poor wretch!’

She turned towards him with a sob.

‘Oh, you are good!’ she said.

‘No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell

me—one word—only one word!’

And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool

to the ground; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in

the kitchen, and he noticed the door of the room was not

closed.

‘How kind it would be of you,’ he went on, rising, ‘if

you would humour a whim of mine.’ It was to go over

her house; he wanted to know it; and Madame Bovary

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seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles

came in.

‘Good morning, doctor,’ Rodolphe said to him.

The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched

out into obsequious phrases. Of this the other took

advantage to pull himself together a little.

‘Madame was speaking to me,’ he then said, ‘about her

health.’

Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand

anxieties; his wife’s palpitations of the heart were

beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if riding would

not be good.

‘Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There’s an idea!

You ought to follow it up.’

And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur

Rodolphe offered one. She refused his offer; he did not

insist. Then to explain his visit he said that his ploughman,

the man of the blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness.

‘I’ll call around,’ said Bovary.

‘No, no! I’ll send him to you; we’ll come; that will be

more convenient for you.’

‘Ah! very good! I thank you.’

And as soon as they were alone, ‘Why don’t you accept

Monsieur Boulanger’s kind offer?’

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She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses,

and finally declared that perhaps it would look odd.

‘Well, what the deuce do I care for that?’ said Charles,

making a pirouette. ‘Health before everything! You are

wrong.’

‘And how do you think I can ride when I haven’t got a

habit?’

‘You must order one,’ he answered.

The riding-habit decided her.

When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur

Boulanger that his wife was at his command, and that they

counted on his good-nature.

The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles’s

door with two saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his

ears and a deerskin side-saddle.

Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself

that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. In

fact, Emma was charmed with his appearance as he stood

on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy

breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.

Justin escaped from the chemist’s to see her start, and

the chemist also came out. He was giving Monsieur

Boulanger a little good advice.

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‘An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses

perhaps are mettlesome.’

She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming

on the windowpanes to amuse little Berthe. The child

blew her a kiss; her mother answered with a wave of her

whip.

‘A pleasant ride!’ cried Monsieur Homais. ‘Prudence!

above all, prudence!’ And he flourished his newspaper as

he saw them disappear.

As soon as he felt the ground, Emma’s horse set off at a

gallop.

Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they

exchanged a word. Her figure slightly bent, her hand well

up, and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to

the cadence of the movement that rocked her in her

saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse

its head; they started together at a bound, then at the top

suddenly the horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell

about her.

It was early in October. There was fog over the land.

Hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines

of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and

disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the clouds,

beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of

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Yonville, with the gardens at the water’s edge, the yards,

the walls and the church steeple. Emma half closed her

eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village

where she lived appeared so small. From the height on

which they were the whole valley seemed an immense

pale lake sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of

trees here and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall

lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a

beach stirred by the wind.

By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown

light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth,

ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of

their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as

they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.

Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the

wood. She turned away from time to time to avoid his

look, and then she saw only the pine trunks in lines,

whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy.

The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles

creaked.

Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.

‘God protects us!’ said Rodolphe.

‘Do you think so?’ she said.

‘Forward! forward!’ he continued.

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He ‘tchk’d’ with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a

trot.

Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma’s stirrup.

Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they

rode along. At other times, to turn aside the branches, he

passed close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing

against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no

longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower,

and plots of violets alternated with the confused patches of

the trees that were grey, fawn, or golden coloured,

according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the

thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the

hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks.

They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses.

She walked on in front on the moss between the paths.

But her long habit got in her way, although she held it up

by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her, saw

between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of

her white stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part