When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire.

His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was

quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the night-caps arranged in piles

of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn

in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not

understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when

Leon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,

his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his eyes

moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this

woman with the slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his

forehead: "What madness!" he said to himself. "And how to reach her!"

And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all

hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on

an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly

attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she

rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent

manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure

feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because

they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion

rejoices.

Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black

hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always

silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely

touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine

destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved,

that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder

in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the

marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist

said-"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a

sub-prefecture."

The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the

poor her charity.

But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with

the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose torment those chaste

lips said nothing. She was in love with Leon, and sought solitude that

she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his

form troubled the voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at

the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and

afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended

in sorrow.




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