Then she had strange ideas.

"When midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me."

And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of

reproaches that always ended with the eternal question-"Do you love me?"

"Why, of course I love you," he answered.

"A great deal?"

"Certainly!"

"You haven't loved any others?"

"Did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing.

Emma cried, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with

puns.

"Oh," she went on, "I love you! I love you so that I could not live

without you, do you see? There are times when I long to see you again,

when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself, Where is

he? Perhaps he is talking to other women. They smile upon him; he

approaches. Oh no; no one else pleases you. There are some more

beautiful, but I love you best. I know how to love best. I am your

servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are

beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!"

He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as

original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty,

gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony

of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He

did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of

sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine

and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the

candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be

discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in

the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of

his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human

speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to

make bears dance when we long to move the stars.

But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him who, in no

matter what circumstance, holds back, Rodolphe saw other delights to be

got out of this love. He thought all modesty in the way. He treated her

quite sans facon.* He made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers

was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of

voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank

into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in

his butt of Malmsey.




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