“So you can assure me it is all right?”
she said with her last kiss.
“Yes, certainly.”
“But why,” he thought afterwards as he
came back through the streets alone, “is she
so very anxious to get this power of attorney?”
Leon soon put on an air of superiority before his
comrades, avoided their company, and completely neglected
his work.
He waited for her letters; he re-read them; he wrote
to her. He called her to mind with all the strength
of his desires and of his memories. Instead of
lessening with absence, this longing to see her again
grew, so that at last on Saturday morning he escaped
from his office.
When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley
below the church-spire with its tin flag swinging
in the wind, he felt that delight mingled with triumphant
vanity and egoistic tenderness that millionaires must
experience when they come back to their native village.
He went rambling round her house. A light was
burning in the kitchen. He watched for her shadow
behind the curtains, but nothing appeared.
Mere Lefrancois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations.
She thought he “had grown and was thinner,”
while Artemise, on the contrary, thought him stouter
and darker.
He dined in the little room as of yore, but alone,
without the tax-gatherer; for Binet, tired of waiting
for the “Hirondelle,” had definitely put
forward his meal one hour, and now he dined punctually
at five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old
concern “was late.”
Leon, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the
doctor’s door. Madame was in her room,
and did not come down for a quarter of an hour.
The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never
stirred out that evening, nor all the next day.
He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind
the garden in the lane; in the lane, as she had the
other one! It was a stormy night, and they talked
under an umbrella by lightning flashes.
Their separation was becoming intolerable. “I
would rather die!” said Emma. She was writhing
in his arms, weeping. “Adieu! adieu!
When shall I see you again?”
They came back again to embrace once more, and it
was then that she promised him to find soon, by no
matter what means, a regular opportunity for seeing
one another in freedom at least once a week. Emma
never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides,
she was full of hope. Some money was coming to
her.
On the strength of it she bought a pair of yellow
curtains with large stripes for her room, whose cheapness
Monsieur Lheureux had commended; she dreamed of getting
a carpet, and Lheureux, declaring that it wasn’t
“drinking the sea,” politely undertook
to supply her with one. She could no longer do
without his services. Twenty times a day she sent
for him, and he at once put by his business without
a murmur. People could not understand either
why Mere Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and
even paid her private visits.
