Page 208 - madame-bovary

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 objec-
tion 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 advan-
tage 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 anx-
ieties; his wife’s palpitations of the heart were beginning
again. Then Rodolphe asked if riding would not be good.
‘Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There’s an idea! You
ought to follow it up.’
And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Ro-
dolphe 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

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