‘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.
As soon as he felt the ground, Emma’s horse set off at a gallop. Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head; they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.
It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roofs of Yonville, with the gardens at the water’s edge, the yards, the walls and the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.
By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.
Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy. The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.
Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.
‘God protects us!’ said Rodolphe.
‘Do you think so?’ she said.
‘Forward! forward!’ he continued.
He ‘tchk’d’ with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot. Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma’s stirrup. Rodolphe leaned forward and removed them as they rode along. At other times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were grey, fawn, or golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks.
They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way, although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her, saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white stocking, seeming to him as a part of her nakedness.
