where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in
the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered
the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The
colts neighed when anyone passed by, and galloped,
galloped. Under her window there was a beehive,
and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light
struck against her window like rebounding balls of
gold. What happiness there had been at that time,
what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of
illusions! Nothing was left of them now.
She had got rid of them all in her soul’s life,
in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood,
her marriage, and her love—thus constantly
losing them all her life through, like a traveller
who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along
his road.
But what then, made her so unhappy? What was
the extraordinary catastrophe that had transformed
her? And she raised her head, looking round as
if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer.
An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot;
the fire burned; beneath her slippers she felt the
softness of the carpet; the day was bright, the air
warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter.
In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on
the lawn in the midst of the grass that was being
turned. She was lying flat on her stomach at
the top of a rick. The servant was holding her
by her skirt. Lestiboudois was raking by her
side, and every time he came near she lent forward,
beating the air with both her arms.
“Bring her to me,” said her mother, rushing
to embrace her. “How I love you, my poor
child! How I love you!”
Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather
dirty, she rang at once for warm water, and washed
her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes,
asked a thousand questions about her health, as if
on the return from a long journey, and finally, kissing
her again and crying a little, she gave her back to
the servant, who stood quite thunderstricken at this
excess of tenderness.
That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than
usual.
“That will pass over,” he concluded; “it’s
a whim:”
And he missed three rendezvous running. When
he did come, she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous.
“Ah! you’re losing your time, my lady!”
And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs,
nor the handkerchief she took out.
Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why
she detested Charles; if it had not been better to
have been able to love him? But he gave her no
opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that
she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice,
when the druggist came just in time to provide her
with an opportunity.
He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for
curing club-foot, and as he was a partisan of progress,
he conceived the patriotic idea that Yonville, in
order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations
for strephopody or club-foot.
