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 Artemise 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.
Leon 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 Leon'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 Leon, 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 Leon'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*, 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.
* 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 priesta 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 Leon'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 Leon! 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 Leon, 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 Leon 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?
