Page 128 - madame-bovary

in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.
They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who
were expected shortly at the Rouen theatre.
‘Are you going?’ she asked.
‘If I can,’ he answered.
Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their
eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced
themselves to find trivial phrases, they felt the same lan-
guor stealing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul,
deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices. Surprised
with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of
speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming
joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity before
them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are
lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon
that we do not even know.
In one place the ground had been trodden down by the
cattle; they had to step on large green stones put here and
there in the mud.
She often stopped a moment to look where to place her
foot, and tottering on a stone that shook, her arms out-
spread, her form bent forward with a look of indecision, she
would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of water.
When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bova-
ry opened the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.
Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just
glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took
up his hat and went out.
He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the

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