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 remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first
conventional phrases.
"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."
"Seriously?" she cried.
"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."
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 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?"
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.
"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 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.
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 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 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?"
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.
"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.
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 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.
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. 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.
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 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.
