And having bowed to one another, they separated.

Two days later, in the Fanal de Rouen, there was a long article on the show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next morning.

‘Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon our heads?’

Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government was doing much, but not enough. ‘Courage!’ he cried to it; ‘a thousand reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!’ Then touching on the entry of the councillor, he did not forget ‘the martial air of our militia’, nor ‘our most merry village maidens’, nor the ‘bald-headed old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums’. He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society. When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of the prizewinners in dithyrambic strophes. ‘The father embraced the son, the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.

‘About six o’clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard brought together the principal personages of the fête. The greatest cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays, Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of a dream of the Thousand and One Nights.

‘Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting.’ And he added: ‘Only the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the sacristy understands progress in another fashion. As you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!’

9

Six weeks slipped by. 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 – today – 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 here; I watched your house glimmering in the moon, the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining through the windowpanes in the darkness. Ah! you never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!’

She turned towards him with a sob.

‘Oh, you are good!’ she said.

‘No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me – one word – only one word!’

And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the door of the room was not closed.

‘How kind it would be of you,’ he went on, rising, ‘if you would humour a whim of mine.’ It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles came in.

‘Good-morning, doctor,’ Rodolphe said to him.

The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself together a little.

‘Madame was speaking to me,’ he then said, ‘about her health.’

Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife’s palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked whether riding might not be good.

‘Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There’s an ideal You ought to follow it up.’

And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness.

‘I’ll call around,’ said Bovary.

‘No, no! I’ll send him to you; we’ll come; that will be more convenient for you.’

‘Ah! very good! I thank you.’

And as soon as they were alone, ‘Why don’t you accept Monsieur Boulanger’s kind offer?’

She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally declared that perhaps it would look odd.

‘Well, what the deuce do I care for that?’ said Charles, making a pirouette. ‘Health before everything! You are wrong.’

‘And how do you think I can ride when I haven’t got a habit?’

‘You must order one,’ he answered.

The riding-habit decided her.

When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.

The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles’s door with two saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin side-saddle.

Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.

Justin escaped from the chemist’s to see her start, and the chemist also came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice.

‘An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are mettlesome.’

She heard a noise above her; it was Félicité drumming on the windowpanes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered with a wave of her whip.

‘A pleasant ride!’ cried Monsieur Homais. ‘Prudence! above all, prudence!’ And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear.