第 45 页

opened out amorously. A warm wind blew in her face; the

melting snow fell drop by drop from the buds to the grass.

She entered, as she used to, through the small park-

gate. She reached the avenue bordered by a double row of

dense lime-trees. They were swaying their long

whispering branches to and fro. The dogs in their kennels

all barked, and the noise of their voices resounded, but

brought out no one.

She went up the large straight staircase with wooden

balusters that led to the corridor paved with dusty flags,

into which several doors in a row opened, as in a

monastery or an inn. His was at the top, right at the end,

on the left. When she placed her fingers on the lock her

strength suddenly deserted her. She was afraid, almost

wished he would not be there, though this was her only

hope, her last chance of salvation. She collected her

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thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening herself by

the feeling of present necessity, went in.

He was in front of the fire, both his feet on the

mantelpiece, smoking a pipe.

‘What! it is you!’ he said, getting up hurriedly.

‘Yes, it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your

advice.’

And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to

open her lips.

‘You have not changed; you are charming as ever!’

‘Oh,’ she replied bitterly, ‘they are poor charms since

you disdained them.’

Then he began a long explanation of his conduct,

excusing himself in vague terms, in default of being able to

invent better.

She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the

sight of him, so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps

believed; in the pretext he gave for their rupture; this was

a secret on which depended the honour, the very life of a

third person.

‘No matter!’ she said, looking at him sadly. ‘I have

suffered much.’

He replied philosophically—

‘Such is life!’

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‘Has life,’ Emma went on, ‘been good to you at least,

since our separation?’

‘Oh, neither good nor bad.’

‘Perhaps it would have been better never to have

parted.’

‘Yes, perhaps.’

‘You think so?’ she said, drawing nearer, and she

sighed. ‘Oh, Rodolphe! if you but knew! I loved you so!’

It was then that she took his hand, and they remained

some time, their fingers intertwined, like that first day at

the Show. With a gesture of pride he struggled against this

emotion. But sinking upon his breast she said to him—

‘How did you think I could live without you? One

cannot lose the habit of happiness. I was desolate. I

thought I should die. I will tell you about all that and you

will see. And you—you fled from me!’

For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in

consequence of that natural cowardice that characterises

the stronger sex. Emma went on, with dainty little nods,

more coaxing than an amorous kitten—

‘You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them,

dear! I excuse them. You probably seduced them as you

seduced me. You are indeed a man; you have everything

to make one love you. But we’ll begin again, won’t we?

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We will love one another. See! I am laughing; I am happy!

Oh, speak!’

And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which

trembled a tear, like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.

He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of

his hand was caressing her smooth hair, where in the

twilight was mirrored like a golden arrow one last ray of

the sun. She bent down her brow; at last he kissed her on

the eyelids quite gently with the tips of his lips.

‘Why, you have been crying! What for?’

She burst into tears. Rodolphe thought this was an

outburst of her love. As she did not speak, he took this

silence for a last remnant of resistance, and then he cried

out—

‘Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me.

I was imbecile and cruel. I love you. I will love you

always. What is it. Tell me!’ He was kneeling by her.

‘Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me

three thousand francs.’

‘But—but—’ said he, getting up slowly, while his face

assumed a grave expression.

‘You know,’ she went on quickly, ‘that my husband

had placed his whole fortune at a notary’s. He ran away.

So we borrowed; the patients don’t pay us. Moreover, the

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settling of the estate is not yet done; we shall have the

money later on. But to-day, for want of three thousand

francs, we are to be sold up. It is to be at once, this very

moment, and, counting upon your friendship, I have

come to you.’

‘Ah!’ thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, ‘that was

what she came for.’ At last he said with a calm air—

‘Dear madame, I have not got them.’

He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no

doubt, have given them, although it is generally

disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand for money

being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest

and most destructive.

First she looked at him for some moments.

‘You have not got them!’ she repeated several times.

‘You have not got them! I ought to have spared myself

this last shame. You never loved me. You are no better

than the others.’

She was betraying, ruining herself.

Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was ‘hard up’

himself.

‘Ah! I pity you,’ said Emma. ‘Yes—very much.’

And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that

shone against its panoply, ‘But when one is so poor one

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doesn’t have silver on the butt of one’s gun. One doesn’t

buy a clock inlaid with tortoise shell,’ she went on,

pointing to a buhl timepiece, ‘nor silver-gilt whistles for

one’s whips,’ and she touched them, ‘nor charms for one’s

watch. Oh, he wants for nothing! even to a liqueur-stand

in his room! For you love yourself; you live well. You

have a chateau, farms, woods; you go hunting; you travel

to Paris. Why, if it were but that,’ she cried, taking up two

studs from the mantelpiece, ‘but the least of these trifles,

one can get money for them. Oh, I do not want them,

keep them!’

And she threw the two links away from her, their gold

chain breaking as it struck against the wall.

‘But I! I would have given you everything. I would

have sold all, worked for you with my hands, I would

have begged on the highroads for a smile, for a look, to

hear you say ‘Thanks!’ And you sit there quietly in your

arm-chair, as if you had not made me suffer enough

already! But for you, and you know it, I might have lived

happily. What made you do it? Was it a bet? Yet you

loved me—you said so. And but a moment since—Ah! it

would have been better to have driven me away. My

hands are hot with your kisses, and there is the spot on the

carpet where at my knees you swore an eternity of love!

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You made me believe you; for two years you held me in

the most magnificent, the sweetest dream! Eh! Our plans

for the journey, do you remember? Oh, your letter! your

letter! it tore my heart! And then when I come back to

him—to him, rich, happy, free—to implore the help the

first stranger would give, a suppliant, and bringing back to

him all my tenderness, he repulses me because it would

cost him three thousand francs!’

‘I haven’t got them,’ replied Rodolphe, with that

perfect calm with which resigned rage covers itself as with

a shield.

She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was

crushing her, and she passed back through the long alley,

stumbling against the heaps of dead leaves scattered by the

wind. At last she reached the ha-ha hedge in front of the

gate; she broke her nails against the lock in her haste to

open it. Then a hundred steps farther on, breathless,

almost falling, she stopped. And now turning round, she

once more saw the impassive chateau, with the park, the

gardens, the three courts, and all the windows of the

facade.

She remained lost in stupor, and having no more

consciousness of herself than through the beating of her

arteries, that she seemed to hear bursting forth like a

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deafening music filling all the fields. The earth beneath her

feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows

seemed to her immense brown waves breaking into foam.

Everything in her head, of memories, ideas, went off at

once like a thousand pieces of fireworks. She saw her

father, Lheureux’s closet, their room at home, another

landscape. Madness was coming upon her; she grew afraid,

and managed to recover herself, in a confused way, it is

true, for she did not in the, least remember the cause of

the terrible condition she was in, that is to say, the

question of money. She suffered only in her love, and felt

her soul passing from her in this memory; as wounded

men, dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding wounds.

Night was falling, crows were flying about.

Suddenly it seemed to her that fiery spheres were

exploding in the air like fulminating balls when they

strike, and were whirling, whirling, to melt at last upon

the snow between the branches of the trees. In the midst

of each of them appeared the face of Rodolphe. They

multiplied and drew near her, penetrating, her. It all

disappeared; she recognised the lights of the houses that

shone through the fog.

Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her.

She was panting as if her heart would burst. Then in an

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ecstasy of heroism, that made her almost joyous, she ran

down the hill, crossed the cow-plank, the foot-path, the

alley, the market, and reached the chemist’s shop. She was

about to enter, but at the sound of the bell someone might

come, and slipping in by the gate, holding her breath,

feeling her way along the walls, she went as far as the door

of the kitchen, where a candle stuck on the stove was

burning. Justin in his shirt-sleeves was carrying out a dish.

‘Ah! they are dining; I will wait.’

He returned; she tapped at the window. He went out.

‘The key! the one for upstairs where he keeps the—‘

‘What?’

And he looked at her, astonished at the pallor of her

face, that stood out white against the black background of

the night. She seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful and

majestic as a phantom. Without understanding what she

wanted, he had the presentiment of something terrible.

But she went on quickly in a love voice; in a sweet,

melting voice, ‘I want it; give it to me.’

As the partition wall was thin, they could hear the

clatter of the forks on the plates in the dining-room.

She pretended that she wanted to kill the rats that kept

her from sleeping.

‘I must tell master.’

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‘No, stay!’ Then with an indifferent air, ‘Oh, it’s not

worth while; I’ll tell him presently. Come, light me

upstairs.’

She entered the corridor into which the laboratory

door opened. Against the wall was a key labelled

Capharnaum.

‘Justin!’ called the druggist impatiently.

‘Let us go up.’

And he followed her. The key turned in the lock, and

she went straight to the third shelf, so well did her

memory guide her, seized the blue jar, tore out the cork,

plunged in her hand, and withdrawing it full of a white

powder, she began eating it.

‘Stop!’ he cried, rushing at her.

‘Hush! someone will come.’

He was in despair, was calling out.

‘Say nothing, or all the blame will fall on your master.’

Then she went home, suddenly calmed, and with

something of the serenity of one that had performed a

duty.

When Charles, distracted by the news of the distraint,

returned home, Emma had just gone out. He cried aloud,

wept, fainted, but she did not return. Where could she be?

He sent Felicite to Homais, to Monsieur Tuvache, to

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Lheureux, to the ‘Lion d’Or,’ everywhere, and in the

intervals of his agony he saw his reputation destroyed,

their fortune lost, Berthe’s future ruined. By what?—Not

a word! He waited till six in the evening. At last, unable to

bear it any longer, and fancying she had gone to Rouen,

he set out along the highroad, walked a mile, met no one,

again waited, and returned home. She had come back.

‘What was the matter? Why? Explain to me.’

She sat down at her writing-table and wrote a letter,

which she sealed slowly, adding the date and the hour.

Then she said in a solemn tone:

‘You are to read it to-morrow; till then, I pray you, do

not ask me a single question. No, not one!’

‘But—‘

‘Oh, leave me!’

She lay down full length on her bed. A bitter taste that

she felt in her mouth awakened her. She saw Charles, and

again closed her eyes.

She was studying herself curiously, to see if she were

not suffering. But no! nothing as yet. She heard the ticking

of the clock, the crackling of the fire, and Charles

breathing as he stood upright by her bed.

‘Ahl it is but a little thing, death!’ she thought. ‘I shall

fall asleep and all will be over.’

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She drank a mouthful of water and turned to the wall.

The frightful taste of ink continued.

‘I am thirsty; oh! so thirsty,’ she sighed.

‘What is it?’ said Charles, who was handing her a glass.

‘It is nothing! Open the window; I am choking.’

She was seized with a sickness so sudden that she had

hardly time to draw out her handkerchief from under the

pillow.

‘Take it away,’ she said quickly; ‘throw it away.’

He spoke to her; she did not answer. She lay

motionless, afraid that the slightest movement might make

her vomit. But she felt an icy cold creeping from her feet

to her heart.

‘Ah! it is beginning,’ she murmured.