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?"




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