Chapter Chapter 29 · Part 3 Chapter Five

. Part 3 Chapter Five

She went on Thursdays. She got up and dressed silently, in order not to

awaken Charles, who would have made remarks about her getting ready too

early. Next she walked up and down, went to the windows, and looked out

at the Place. The early dawn was broadening between the pillars of the

market, and the chemist’s shop, with the shutters still up, showed in

the pale light of the dawn the large letters of his signboard.

When the clock pointed to a quarter past seven, she went off to the

“Lion d’Or,” whose door Artémise opened yawning. The girl then made

up the coals covered by the cinders, and Emma remained alone in the

kitchen. Now and again she went out. Hivert was leisurely harnessing his

horses, listening, moreover, to Mere Lefrancois, who, passing her head

and nightcap through a grating, was charging him with commissions and

giving him explanations that would have confused anyone else. Emma kept

beating the soles of her boots against the pavement of the yard.

At last, when he had eaten his soup, put on his cloak, lighted his pipe,

and grasped his whip, he calmly installed himself on his seat.

The “Hirondelle” started at a slow trot, and for about a mile stopped

here and there to pick up passengers who waited for it, standing at the

border of the road, in front of their yard gates.

Those who had secured seats the evening before kept it waiting; some

even were still in bed in their houses. Hivert called, shouted, swore;

then he got down from his seat and went and knocked loudly at the doors.

The wind blew through the cracked windows.

The four seats, however, filled up. The carriage rolled off; rows of

apple-trees followed one upon another, and the road between its two long

ditches, full of yellow water, rose, constantly narrowing towards the

horizon.

Emma knew it from end to end; she knew that after a meadow there was

a sign-post, next an elm, a barn, or the hut of a lime-kiln tender.

Sometimes even, in the hope of getting some surprise, she shut her eyes,

but she never lost the clear perception of the distance to be traversed.

At last the brick houses began to follow one another more closely, the

earth resounded beneath the wheels, the “Hirondelle” glided between the

gardens, where through an opening one saw statues, a periwinkle plant,

clipped yews, and a swing. Then on a sudden the town appeared. Sloping

down like an amphitheatre, and drowned in the fog, it widened out

beyond the bridges confusedly. Then the open country spread away with

a monotonous movement till it touched in the distance the vague line of

the pale sky. Seen thus from above, the whole landscape looked immovable

as a picture; the anchored ships were massed in one corner, the river

curved round the foot of the green hills, and the isles, oblique in

shape, lay on the water, like large, motionless, black fishes. The

factory chimneys belched forth immense brown fumes that were blown away

at the top. One heard the rumbling of the foundries, together with the

clear chimes of the churches that stood out in the mist. The leafless

trees on the boulevards made violet thickets in the midst of the

houses, and the roofs, all shining with the rain, threw back unequal

reflections, according to the height of the quarters in which they were.

Sometimes a gust of wind drove the clouds towards the Saint Catherine

hills, like aerial waves that broke silently against a cliff.

A giddiness seemed to her to detach itself from this mass of existence,

and her heart swelled as if the hundred and twenty thousand souls that

palpitated there had all at once sent into it the vapour of the passions

she fancied theirs. Her love grew in the presence of this vastness, and

expanded with tumult to the vague murmurings that rose towards her. She

poured it out upon the square, on the walks, on the streets, and the

old Norman city outspread before her eyes as an enormous capital, as a

Babylon into which she was entering. She leant with both hands against

the window, drinking in the breeze; the three horses galloped, the

stones grated in the mud, the diligence rocked, and Hivert, from afar,

hailed the carts on the road, while the bourgeois who had spent the

night at the Guillaume woods came quietly down the hill in their little

family carriages.

They stopped at the barrier; Emma undid her overshoes, put on other

gloves, rearranged her shawl, and some twenty paces farther she got down

from the “Hirondelle.”

The town was then awakening. Shop-boys in caps were cleaning up the

shop-fronts, and women with baskets against their hips, at intervals

uttered sonorous cries at the corners of streets. She walked with

downcast eyes, close to the walls, and smiling with pleasure under her

lowered black veil.

For fear of being seen, she did not usually take the most direct road.

She plunged into dark alleys, and, all perspiring, reached the bottom

of the Rue Nationale, near the fountain that stands there. It is the

quarter for theatres, public-houses, and whores. Often a cart would

pass near her, bearing some shaking scenery. Waiters in aprons were

sprinkling sand on the flagstones between green shrubs. It all smelt of

absinthe, cigars, and oysters.

She turned down a street; she recognised him by his curling hair that

escaped from beneath his hat.

Léon walked along the pavement. She followed him to the hotel. He went

up, opened the door, entered--What an embrace!

Then, after the kisses, the words gushed forth. They told each other the

sorrows of the week, the presentiments, the anxiety for the letters; but

now everything was forgotten; they gazed into each other’s faces with

voluptuous laughs, and tender names.

The bed was large, of mahogany, in the shape of a boat. The curtains

were in red levantine, that hung from the ceiling and bulged out too

much towards the bell-shaped bedside; and nothing in the world was so

lovely as her brown head and white skin standing out against this purple

colour, when, with a movement of shame, she crossed her bare arms,

hiding her face in her hands.

The warm room, with its discreet carpet, its gay ornaments, and its

calm light, seemed made for the intimacies of passion. The curtain-rods,

ending in arrows, their brass pegs, and the great balls of the fire-dogs

shone suddenly when the sun came in. On the chimney between the

candelabra there were two of those pink shells in which one hears the

murmur of the sea if one holds them to the ear.

How they loved that dear room, so full of gaiety, despite its rather

faded splendour! They always found the furniture in the same place, and

sometimes hairpins, that she had forgotten the Thursday before, under

the pedestal of the clock. They lunched by the fireside on a little

round table, inlaid with rosewood. Emma carved, put bits on his plate

with all sorts of coquettish ways, and she laughed with a sonorous and

libertine laugh when the froth of the champagne ran over from the

glass to the rings on her fingers. They were so completely lost in

the possession of each other that they thought themselves in their

own house, and that they would live there till death, like two spouses

eternally young. They said “our room,” “our carpet,” she even said “my

slippers,” a gift of Léon’s, a whim she had had. They were pink satin,

bordered with swansdown. When she sat on his knees, her leg, then too

short, hung in the air, and the dainty shoe, that had no back to it, was

held only by the toes to her bare foot.

He for the first time enjoyed the inexpressible delicacy of feminine

refinements. He had never met this grace of language, this reserve of

clothing, these poses of the weary dove. He admired the exaltation of

her soul and the lace on her petticoat. Besides, was she not “a lady”

and a married woman--a real mistress, in fine?

By the diversity of her humour, in turn mystical or mirthful, talkative,

taciturn, passionate, careless, she awakened in him a thousand desires,

called up instincts or memories. She was the mistress of all the novels,

the heroine of all the dramas, the vague “she” of all the volumes

of verse. He found again on her shoulder the amber colouring of the

“Odalisque Bathing”; she had the long waist of feudal chatelaines, and

she resembled the “Pale Woman of Barcelona.” But above all she was the

Angel!

Often looking at her, it seemed to him that his soul, escaping towards

her, spread like a wave about the outline of her head, and descended

drawn down into the whiteness of her breast. He knelt on the ground

before her, and with both elbows on her knees looked at her with a

smile, his face upturned.

She bent over him, and murmured, as if choking with intoxication--

“Oh, do not move! do not speak! look at me! Something so sweet comes

from your eyes that helps me so much!”

She called him “child.” “Child, do you love me?”

And she did not listen for his answer in the haste of her lips that

fastened to his mouth.

On the clock there was a bronze cupid, who smirked as he bent his arm

beneath a golden garland. They had laughed at it many a time, but when

they had to part everything seemed serious to them.

Motionless in front of each other, they kept repeating, “Till Thursday,

till Thursday.”

Suddenly she seized his head between her hands, kissed him hurriedly on

the forehead, crying, “Adieu!” and rushed down the stairs.

She went to a hairdresser’s in the Rue de la Comedie to have her hair

arranged. Night fell; the gas was lighted in the shop. She heard the

bell at the theatre calling the mummers to the performance, and she saw,

passing opposite, men with white faces and women in faded gowns going in

at the stage-door.

It was hot in the room, small, and too low where the stove was hissing

in the midst of wigs and pomades. The smell of the tongs, together with

the greasy hands that handled her head, soon stunned her, and she dozed

a little in her wrapper. Often, as he did her hair, the man offered her

tickets for a masked ball.

Then she went away. She went up the streets; reached the Croix-Rouge,

put on her overshoes, that she had hidden in the morning under the seat,

and sank into her place among the impatient passengers. Some got out

at the foot of the hill. She remained alone in the carriage. At every

turning all the lights of the town were seen more and more completely,

making a great luminous vapour about the dim houses. Emma knelt on the

cushions and her eyes wandered over the dazzling light. She sobbed;

called on Léon, sent him tender words and kisses lost in the wind.

On the hillside a poor devil wandered about with his stick in the midst

of the diligences. A mass of rags covered his shoulders, and an old

staved-in beaver, turned out like a basin, hid his face; but when he

took it off he discovered in the place of eyelids empty and bloody

orbits. The flesh hung in red shreds, and there flowed from it liquids

that congealed into green scale down to the nose, whose black nostrils

sniffed convulsively. To speak to you he threw back his head with an

idiotic laugh; then his bluish eyeballs, rolling constantly, at the

temples beat against the edge of the open wound. He sang a little song

as he followed the carriages--

“Maids an the warmth of a summer day

Dream of love, and of love always”

And all the rest was about birds and sunshine and green leaves.

Sometimes he appeared suddenly behind Emma, bareheaded, and she drew

back with a cry. Hivert made fun of him. He would advise him to get a

booth at the Saint Romain fair, or else ask him, laughing, how his young

woman was.

Often they had started when, with a sudden movement, his hat entered the

diligence through the small window, while he clung with his other arm

to the footboard, between the wheels splashing mud. His voice, feeble

at first and quavering, grew sharp; it resounded in the night like the

indistinct moan of a vague distress; and through the ringing of the

bells, the murmur of the trees, and the rumbling of the empty vehicle,

it had a far-off sound that disturbed Emma. It went to the bottom of

her soul, like a whirlwind in an abyss, and carried her away into the

distances of a boundless melancholy. But Hivert, noticing a weight

behind, gave the blind man sharp cuts with his whip. The thong lashed

his wounds, and he fell back into the mud with a yell. Then the

passengers in the “Hirondelle” ended by falling asleep, some with open

mouths, others with lowered chins, leaning against their neighbour’s

shoulder, or with their arm passed through the strap, oscillating

regularly with the jolting of the carriage; and the reflection of the

lantern swinging without, on the crupper of the wheeler; penetrating

into the interior through the chocolate calico curtains, threw

sanguineous shadows over all these motionless people. Emma, drunk with

grief, shivered in her clothes, feeling her feet grow colder and colder,

and death in her soul.

Charles at home was waiting for her; the “Hirondelle” was always late

on Thursdays. Madame arrived at last, and scarcely kissed the child. The

dinner was not ready. No matter! She excused the servant. This girl now

seemed allowed to do just as she liked.

Often her husband, noting her pallor, asked if she were unwell.

“No,” said Emma.

“But,” he replied, “you seem so strange this evening.”

“Oh, it’s nothing! nothing!”

There were even days when she had no sooner come in than she went up to

her room; and Justin, happening to be there, moved about noiselessly,

quicker at helping her than the best of maids. He put the matches

ready, the candlestick, a book, arranged her nightgown, turned back the

bedclothes.

“Come!” said she, “that will do. Now you can go.”

For he stood there, his hands hanging down and his eyes wide open, as if

enmeshed in the innumerable threads of a sudden reverie.

The following day was frightful, and those that came after still more

unbearable, because of her impatience to once again seize her happiness;

an ardent lust, inflamed by the images of past experience, and that

burst forth freely on the seventh day beneath Léon’s caresses. His

ardours were hidden beneath outbursts of wonder and gratitude. Emma

tasted this love in a discreet, absorbed fashion, maintained it by all

the artifices of her tenderness, and trembled a little lest it should be

lost later on.

She often said to him, with her sweet, melancholy voice--

“Ah! you too, you will leave me! You will marry! You will be like all

the others.”

He asked, “What others?”

“Why, like all men,” she replied. Then added, repulsing him with a

languid movement--

“You are all evil!”

One day, as they were talking philosophically of earthly disillusions,

to experiment on his jealousy, or yielding, perhaps, to an over-strong

need to pour out her heart, she told him that formerly, before him, she

had loved someone.

“Not like you,” she went on quickly, protesting by the head of her child

that “nothing had passed between them.”

The young man believed her, but none the less questioned her to find out

what he was.

“He was a ship’s captain, my dear.”

Was this not preventing any inquiry, and, at the same time, assuming a

higher ground through this pretended fascination exercised over a man

who must have been of warlike nature and accustomed to receive homage?

The clerk then felt the lowliness of his position; he longed for

epaulettes, crosses, titles. All that would please her--he gathered that

from her spendthrift habits.

Emma nevertheless concealed many of these extravagant fancies, such as

her wish to have a blue tilbury to drive into Rouen, drawn by an

English horse and driven by a groom in top-boots. It was Justin who had

inspired her with this whim, by begging her to take him into her

service as _valet-de-chambre_,[19] and if the privation of it did not

lessen the pleasure of her arrival at each rendezvous, it certainly

augmented the bitterness of the return.

[19] Manservant.

Often, when they talked together of Paris, she ended by murmuring, “Ah!

how happy we should be there!”

“Are we not happy?” gently answered the young man passing his hands over

her hair.

“Yes, that is true,” she said. “I am mad. Kiss me!”

To her husband she was more charming than ever. She made him

pistachio-creams, and played him waltzes after dinner. So he thought

himself the most fortunate of men and Emma was without uneasiness, when,

one evening suddenly he said--

“It is Mademoiselle Lempereur, isn’t it, who gives you lessons?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I saw her just now,” Charles went on, “at Madame Liegeard’s. I

spoke to her about you, and she doesn’t know you.”

This was like a thunderclap. However, she replied quite naturally--

“Ah! no doubt she forgot my name.”

“But perhaps,” said the doctor, “there are several Demoiselles Lempereur

at Rouen who are music-mistresses.”

“Possibly!” Then quickly--“But I have my receipts here. See!”

And she went to the writing-table, ransacked all the drawers, rummaged

the papers, and at last lost her head so completely that Charles

earnestly begged her not to take so much trouble about those wretched

receipts.

“Oh, I will find them,” she said.

And, in fact, on the following Friday, as Charles was putting on one

of his boots in the dark cabinet where his clothes were kept, he felt

a piece of paper between the leather and his sock. He took it out and

read--

“Received, for three months’ lessons and several pieces of music, the

sum of sixty-three francs.--Felicie Lempereur, professor of music.”

“How the devil did it get into my boots?”

“It must,” she replied, “have fallen from the old box of bills that is

on the edge of the shelf.”

From that moment her existence was but one long tissue of lies, in which

she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania,

a pleasure carried to such an extent that if she said she had the day

before walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken

the left.

One morning, when she had gone, as usual, rather lightly clothed, it

suddenly began to snow, and as Charles was watching the weather from the

window, he caught sight of Monsieur Bournisien in the chaise of Monsieur

Tuvache, who was driving him to Rouen. Then he went down to give the

priest a thick shawl that he was to hand over to Emma as soon as he

reached the “Croix-Rouge.” When he got to the inn, Monsieur Bournisien

asked for the wife of the Yonville doctor. The landlady replied that

she very rarely came to her establishment. So that evening, when he

recognised Madame Bovary in the “Hirondelle,” the cure told her his

dilemma, without, however, appearing to attach much importance to it,

for he began praising a preacher who was doing wonders at the Cathedral,

and whom all the ladies were rushing to hear.

Still, if he did not ask for any explanation, others, later on, might

prove less discreet. So she thought well to get down each time at the

“Croix-Rouge,” so that the good folk of her village who saw her on the

stairs should suspect nothing.

One day, however, Monsieur Lheureux met her coming out of the Hotel

de Boulogne on Léon’s arm; and she was frightened, thinking he would

gossip. He was not such a fool. But three days after he came to her

room, shut the door, and said, “I must have some money.”

She declared she could not give him any. Lheureux burst into

lamentations and reminded her of all the kindnesses he had shown her.

In fact, of the two bills signed by Charles, Emma up to the present had

paid only one. As to the second, the shopkeeper, at her request, had

consented to replace it by another, which again had been renewed for a

long date. Then he drew from his pocket a list of goods not paid for; to

wit, the curtains, the carpet, the material for the armchairs, several

dresses, and divers articles of dress, the bills for which amounted to

about two thousand francs.

She bowed her head. He went on--

“But if you haven’t any ready money, you have an estate.” And he

reminded her of a miserable little hovel situated at Barneville, near

Aumale, that brought in almost nothing. It had formerly been part of a

small farm sold by Monsieur Bovary senior; for Lheureux knew everything,

even to the number of acres and the names of the neighbours.

“If I were in your place,” he said, “I should clear myself of my debts,

and have money left over.”

She pointed out the difficulty of getting a purchaser. He held out the

hope of finding one; but she asked him how she should manage to sell it.

“Haven’t you your power of attorney?” he replied.

The phrase came to her like a breath of fresh air. “Leave me the bill,”

said Emma.

“Oh, it isn’t worth while,” answered Lheureux.

He came back the following week and boasted of having, after much

trouble, at last discovered a certain Langlois, who, for a long time,

had had an eye on the property, but without mentioning his price.

“Never mind the price!” she cried.

But they would, on the contrary, have to wait, to sound the fellow.

The thing was worth a journey, and, as she could not undertake it, he

offered to go to the place to have an interview with Langlois. On his

return he announced that the purchaser proposed four thousand francs.

Emma was radiant at this news.

“Frankly,” he added, “that’s a good price.”

She drew half the sum at once, and when she was about to pay her account

the shopkeeper said--

“It really grieves me, on my word! to see you depriving yourself all at

once of such a big sum as that.”

Then she looked at the bank-notes, and dreaming of the unlimited number

of rendezvous represented by those two thousand francs, she stammered--

“What! what!”

“Oh!” he went on, laughing good-naturedly, “one puts anything one likes

on receipts. Don’t you think I know what household affairs are?” And he

looked at her fixedly, while in his hand he held two long papers that he

slid between his nails. At last, opening his pocket-book, he spread out

on the table four bills to order, each for a thousand francs.

“Sign these,” he said, “and keep it all!”

She cried out, scandalised.

“But if I give you the surplus,” replied Monsieur Lheureux impudently,

“is that not helping you?”

And taking a pen he wrote at the bottom of the account, “Received of

Madame Bovary four thousand francs.”

“Now who can trouble you, since in six months you’ll draw the arrears

for your cottage, and I don’t make the last bill due till after you’ve

been paid?”

Emma grew rather confused in her calculations, and her ears tingled

as if gold pieces, bursting from their bags, rang all round her on

the floor. At last Lheureux explained that he had a very good friend,

Vincart, a broker at Rouen, who would discount these four bills. Then

he himself would hand over to madame the remainder after the actual debt

was paid.

But instead of two thousand francs he brought only eighteen hundred, for

the friend Vincart (which was only fair) had deducted two hundred francs

for commission and discount. Then he carelessly asked for a receipt.

“You understand--in business--sometimes. And with the date, if you

please, with the date.”

A horizon of realisable whims opened out before Emma. She was prudent

enough to lay by a thousand crowns, with which the first three bills

were paid when they fell due; but the fourth, by chance, came to the

house on a Thursday, and Charles, quite upset, patiently awaited his

wife’s return for an explanation.

If she had not told him about this bill, it was only to spare him such

domestic worries; she sat on his knees, caressed him, cooed to him, gave

him a long enumeration of all the indispensable things that had been got

on credit.

“Really, you must confess, considering the quantity, it isn’t too dear.”

Charles, at his wit’s end, soon had recourse to the eternal Lheureux,

who swore he would arrange matters if the doctor would sign him two

bills, one of which was for seven hundred francs, payable in three

months. In order to arrange for this he wrote his mother a pathetic

letter. Instead of sending a reply she came herself; and when Emma

wanted to know whether he had got anything out of her, “Yes,” he

replied; “but she wants to see the account.” The next morning at

daybreak Emma ran to Lheureux to beg him to make out another account for

not more than a thousand francs, for to show the one for four thousand

it would be necessary to say that she had paid two-thirds, and confess,

consequently, the sale of the estate--a negotiation admirably carried

out by the shopkeeper, and which, in fact, was only actually known later

on.

Despite the low price of each article, Madame Bovary senior, of course,

thought the expenditure extravagant.

“Couldn’t you do without a carpet? Why have recovered the arm-chairs? In

my time there was a single arm-chair in a house, for elderly persons--at

any rate it was so at my mother’s, who was a good woman, I can tell you.

Everybody can’t be rich! No fortune can hold out against waste! I should

be ashamed to coddle myself as you do! And yet I am old. I need looking

after. And there! there! fitting up gowns! fallals! What! silk for

lining at two francs, when you can get jaconet for ten sous, or even for

eight, that would do well enough!”

Emma, lying on a lounge, replied as quietly as possible--“Ah! Madame,

enough! enough!”

The other went on lecturing her, predicting they would end in the

workhouse. But it was Bovary’s fault. Luckily he had promised to destroy

that power of attorney.

“What?”

“Ah! he swore he would,” went on the good woman.

Emma opened the window, called Charles, and the poor fellow was obliged

to confess the promise torn from him by his mother.

Emma disappeared, then came back quickly, and majestically handed her a

thick piece of paper.

“Thank you,” said the old woman. And she threw the power of attorney

into the fire.

Emma began to laugh, a strident, piercing, continuous laugh; she had an

attack of hysterics.

“Oh, my God!” cried Charles. “Ah! you really are wrong! You come here

and make scenes with her!”

His mother, shrugging her shoulders, declared it was “all put on.”

But Charles, rebelling for the first time, took his wife’s part, so that

Madame Bovary, senior, said she would leave. She went the very next day,

and on the threshold, as he was trying to detain her, she replied--

“No, no! You love her better than me, and you are right. It is natural.

For the rest, so much the worse! You will see. Good day--for I am not

likely to come soon again, as you say, to make scenes.”

Charles nevertheless was very crestfallen before Emma, who did not hide

the resentment she still felt at his want of confidence, and it needed

many prayers before she would consent to have another power of attorney.

He even accompanied her to Monsieur Guillaumin to have a second one,

just like the other, drawn up.

“I understand,” said the notary; “a man of science can’t be worried with

the practical details of life.”

And Charles felt relieved by this comfortable reflection, which gave his

weakness the flattering appearance of higher pre-occupation.

And what an outburst the next Thursday at the hotel in their room with

Léon! She laughed, cried, sang, sent for sherbets, wanted to smoke

cigarettes, seemed to him wild and extravagant, but adorable, superb.

He did not know what recreation of her whole being drove her more and

more to plunge into the pleasures of life. She was becoming irritable,

greedy, voluptuous; and she walked about the streets with him carrying

her head high, without fear, so she said, of compromising herself.

At times, however, Emma shuddered at the sudden thought of meeting

Rodolphe, for it seemed to her that, although they were separated

forever, she was not completely free from her subjugation to him.

One night she did not return to Yonville at all. Charles lost his head

with anxiety, and little Berthe would not go to bed without her mamma,

and sobbed enough to break her heart. Justin had gone out searching the

road at random. Monsieur Homais even had left his pharmacy.

At last, at eleven o’clock, able to bear it no longer, Charles

harnessed his chaise, jumped in, whipped up his horse, and reached the

“Croix-Rouge” about two o’clock in the morning. No one there! He thought

that the clerk had perhaps seen her; but where did he live? Happily,

Charles remembered his employer’s address, and rushed off there.

Day was breaking, and he could distinguish the escutcheons over the

door, and knocked. Someone, without opening the door, shouted out the

required information, adding a few insults to those who disturb people

in the middle of the night.

The house inhabited by the clerk had neither bell, knocker, nor porter.

Charles knocked loudly at the shutters with his hands. A policeman

happened to pass by. Then he was frightened, and went away.

“I am mad,” he said; “no doubt they kept her to dinner at Monsieur

Lormeaux’.” But the Lormeaux no longer lived at Rouen.

“She probably stayed to look after Madame Dubreuil. Why, Madame Dubreuil

has been dead these ten months! Where can she be?”

An idea occurred to him. At a cafe he asked for a Directory, and

hurriedly looked for the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived at

No. 74 Rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers.

As he was turning into the street, Emma herself appeared at the other

end of it. He threw himself upon her rather than embraced her, crying--

“What kept you yesterday?”

“I was not well.”

“What was it? Where? How?”

She passed her hand over her forehead and answered, “At Mademoiselle

Lempereur’s.”

“I was sure of it! I was going there.”

“Oh, it isn’t worth while,” said Emma. “She went out just now; but for

the future don’t worry. I do not feel free, you see, if I know that the

least delay upsets you like this.”

This was a sort of permission that she gave herself, so as to get

perfect freedom in her escapades. And she profited by it freely, fully.

When she was seized with the desire to see Léon, she set out upon any

pretext; and as he was not expecting her on that day, she went to fetch

him at his office.

It was a great delight at first, but soon he no longer concealed the

truth, which was, that his master complained very much about these

interruptions.

“Pshaw! come along,” she said.

And he slipped out.

She wanted him to dress all in black, and grow a pointed beard, to

look like the portraits of Louis XIII. She wanted to see his lodgings;

thought them poor. He blushed at them, but she did not notice this, then

advised him to buy some curtains like hers, and as he objected to the

expense--

“Ah! ah! you care for your money,” she said laughing.

Each time Léon had to tell her everything that he had done since their

last meeting. She asked him for some verses--some verses “for herself,”

a “love poem” in honour of her. But he never succeeded in getting a

rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying a sonnet in

a “Keepsake.” This was less from vanity than from the one desire of

pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes;

he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words

and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this

corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profanity and

dissimulation?