Page 210 - madame-bovary

She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on
the windowpanes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her
a kiss; her mother answered with a wave of her whip.
‘A pleasant ride!’ cried Monsieur Homais. ‘Prudence!
above all, prudence!’ And he flourished his newspaper as he
saw them disappear.
As soon as he felt the ground, Emma’s horse set off at a
gallop.
Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they ex-
changed a word. Her figure slightly bent, her hand well up,
and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the
cadence of the movement that rocked her in her saddle. At
the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head; they
started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the
horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.
It was early in October. There was fog over the land.
Hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines
of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and disap-
peared. Sometimes through a rift in the clouds, beneath
a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of Yonville,
with the gardens at the water’s edge, the yards, the walls and
the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out
her house, and never had this poor village where she lived
appeared so small. From the height on which they were the
whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its
vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there stood
out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that
rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.
By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light

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