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of her nakedness.

She stopped. ‘I am tired,’ she said.

‘Come, try again,’ he went on. ‘Courage!’

Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped,

and through her veil, that fell sideways from her man’s hat

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over her hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as

if she were floating under azure waves.

‘But where are we going?’

He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly.

Rodolphe looked round him biting his moustache. They

came to a larger space where the coppice had been cut.

They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and

Rodolphe began speaking to her of his love. He did not

begin by frightening her with compliments. He was calm,

serious, melancholy.

Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred

the bits of wood on the ground with the tip of her foot.

But at the words, ‘Are not our destinies now one?’

‘Oh, no! she replied. ‘You know that well. It is

impossible!’ She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist.

She stopped. Then, having gazed at him for a few

moments with an amorous and humid look, she said

hurriedly—

‘Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let

us go back.’

He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She

repeated:

‘Where are the horses? Where are the horses?’

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Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth

set, he advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled

trembling. She stammered:

‘Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!’

‘If it must be,’ he went on, his face changing; and he

again became respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him

her arm. They went back. He said—

‘What was the matter with you? Why? I do not

understand. You were mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you

are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure,

immaculate. But I need you to live! I must have your eyes,

your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my

angel!’

And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly

tried to disengage herself. He supported her thus as they

walked along.

But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.

‘Oh! one moment!’ said Rodolphe. ‘Do not let us go!

Stay!’

He drew her farther on to a small pool where

duckweeds made a greenness on the water. Faded water

lilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the noise of

their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide

themselves.

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‘I am wrong! I am wrong!’ she said. ‘I am mad to listen

to you!’

‘Why? Emma! Emma!’

‘Oh, Rodolphe!’ said the young woman slowly, leaning

on his shoulder.

The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his

coat. She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh,

and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her

face, she gave herself up to him—

The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun

passing between the branches dazzled the eyes. Here and

there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled

luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying about had

scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere;

something sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she

felt her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the

blood coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk.

Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she

heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and

in silence she heard it mingling like music with the last

pulsations of her throbbing nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar

between his lips, was mending with his penknife one of

the two broken bridles.

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They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the

mud they saw again the traces of their horses side by side,

the same thickets, the same stones to the grass; nothing

around them seemed changed; and yet for her something

had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had

moved in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent

forward and took her hand to kiss it.

She was charming on horseback—upright, with her

slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her

face somewhat flushed by the fresh air in the red of the

evening.

On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the

road. People looked at her from the windows.

At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but

she pretended not to hear him when he inquired about

her ride, and she remained sitting there with her elbow at

the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.

‘Emma!’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre’s.

He has an old cob, still very fine, only a little

brokenkneed, and that could be bought; I am sure, for a

hundred crowns.’ He added, ‘And thinking it might please

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you, I have bespoken it—bought it. Have I done right?

Do tell me?’

She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an

hour later—

‘Are you going out to-night?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!’

And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and

shut herself up in her room.

At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the

ditches, Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his

arm, while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled.

But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at

her face. Never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so

profound a depth. Something subtle about her being

transfigured her. She repeated, ‘I have a lover! a lover!’

delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to

her. So at last she was to know those joys of love, that

fever of happiness of which she had despairedl She was

entering upon marvels where all would be passion, ecstasy,

delirium. An azure infinity encompassed her, the heights

of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary

existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade,

through the interspaces of these heights.

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Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she

had read, and the lyric legion of these adulterous women

began to sing in her memory with the voice of sisters that

charmed her. She became herself, as it were, an actual part

of these imaginings, and realised the love-dream of her

youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women

whom she had so envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction

of revenge. Had she not suffered enough? But now she

triumphed, and the love so long pent up burst forth in full

joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse, without

anxiety, without trouble.

The day following passed with a new sweetness. They

made vows to one another She told him of her sorrows.

Rodolphe interrupted her with kisses; and she looking at

him through half-closed eyes, asked him to call her again

by her name—to say that he loved her They were in the

forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some woodenshoe

maker. The walls were of straw, and the roof so low they

had to stoop. They were seated side by side on a bed of

dry leaves.

From that day forth they wrote to one another

regularly every evening. Emma placed her letter at the end

of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall.

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Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there, that she

always found fault with as too short.

One morning, when Charles had gone out before day

break, she was seized with the fancy to see Rodolphe at

once. She would go quickly to La Huchette, stay there an

hour, and be back again at Yonville while everyone was

still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she

soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with

rapid steps, without looking behind her.

Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognised her

lover’s house. Its two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out

black against the pale dawn.

Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that

she thought must be the chateau She entered—it was if

the doors at her approach had opened wide of their own

accord. A large straight staircase led up to the corridor.

Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end

of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She

uttered a cry.

‘You here? You here?’ he repeated. ‘How did you

manage to come? Ah! your dress is damp.’

‘I love you,’ she answered, throwing her arms about his

neck.

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This first piece of daring successful, now every time

Charles went out early Emma dressed quickly and slipped

on tiptoe down the steps that led to the waterside.

But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had

to go by the walls alongside of the river; the bank was

slippery; in order not to fall she caught hold of the tufts of

faded wallflowers. Then she went across ploughed fields,

in which she sank, stumbling; and clogging her thin shoes.

Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in

the meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to

run; she arrived out of breath, with rosy cheeks, and

breathing out from her whole person a fresh perfume of

sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe

still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his

room.

The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy,

whitish light enter softly. Emma felt about, opening and

closing her eyes, while the drops of dew hanging from her

hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around her face.

Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to

his breast.

Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers

of the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked

at herself in his shaving-glass. Often she even put between

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her teeth the big pipe that lay on the table by the bed,

amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water.

It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye.

Then Emma cried. She would have wished never to leave

Rodolphe. Something stronger than herself forced her to

him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come

unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.

‘What is the matter with you?’ she said. ‘Are you ill?

Tell me!’

At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were

becoming imprudent—that she was compromising herself.

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CHAPTER TEN

Gradually Rodolphe’s fears took possession of her. At

first, love had intoxicated her; and she had thought of

nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her

life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it

should be disturbed. When she came back from his house

she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form

that passed in the horizon, and every village window from

which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the

noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and

trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.

One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly

thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed

to be aimed at her. It stuck out sideways from the end of a

small tub half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch.

Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on,

and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box.

He had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled

down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. It was

Captain Binet lying in ambush for wild ducks.

‘You ought to have called out long ago!’ he exclaimed;

‘When one sees a gun, one should always give warning.’

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The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he

had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited

duckhunting except in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite his

respect for the laws, was infringing them, and so he every

moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But this

anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he

congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness. At

sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight,

and at once entered upon a conversation.

‘It isn’t warm; it’s nipping.’

Emma answered nothing. He went on—

‘And you’re out so early?’

‘Yes,’ she said stammering; ‘I am just coming from the

nurse where my child is.’

‘Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just

as you see me, since break of day; but the weather is so

muggy, that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the

gun—‘

‘Good evening, Monsieur Binet,’ she interrupted him,

turning on her heel.

‘Your servant, madame,’ he replied drily; and he went

back into his tub.

Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so

abruptly. No doubt he would form unfavourable

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conjectures. The story about the nurse was the worst

possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the

little Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year.

Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led

only to La Huchette. Binet, then, would guess whence she

came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that

was certain. She remained until evening racking her brain

with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly

before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.

Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by

way of distraction, to take her to the chemist’s, and the

first person she caught sight of in the shop was the

taxcollector again. He was standing in front of the

counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was

saying—

‘Please give me half an ounce of vitriol.’

‘Justin,’ cried the druggist, ‘bring us the sulphuric acid.’

Then to Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais’