One day she drew six small silver-gilt spoons from her bag (they were

old Roualt's wedding present), begging him to pawn them at once for her,

and Leon obeyed, though the proceeding annoyed him. He was afraid of

compromising himself.

Then, on, reflection, he began to think his mistress's ways were growing

odd, and that they were perhaps not wrong in wishing to separate him

from her.

In fact someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her

that he was "ruining himself with a married woman," and the good lady at

once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious

creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of

love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in

the affair. He kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open

his eyes, to warn him of the abyss into which he was falling. Such

an intrigue would damage him later on, when he set up for himself. He

implored him to break with her, and, if he would not make this sacrifice

in his own interest, to do it at least for his, Dubocage's sake.

At last Leon swore he would not see Emma again, and he reproached

himself with not having kept his word, considering all the worry and

lectures this woman might still draw down upon him, without reckoning

the jokes made by his companions as they sat round the stove in the

morning. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle

down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every

bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment,

has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises.

The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears

within him the debris of a poet.

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast, and his

heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music,

dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.

They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession

that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick of him as he

was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of

marriage.

But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated at

the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from

corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting

all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Leon of her

baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some

catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not

the courage to make up her mind to it herself.




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