They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle of the day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to Justin, who, taking his apron¹ off, quickly ran to La Huchette. Rodolphe would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that her husband was odious², her life frightful³.

“But what can I do?” he cried one day impatiently.

“Ah! if you would —”

She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look lost.

“Why, what?” said Rodolphe.

She sighed.

“We would go and live elsewhere — somewhere!”

“You are really mad!” he said laughing. “How could that be possible?”

She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned the conversation.

What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair as love. She had a motive⁴, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her affection.

Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed⁵ the other. Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such stodgy⁶ fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing the spouse⁷ and virtue⁸, she was burning at the thought of that head whose black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that she filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs. She loaded herself with

分享到：