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!"




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