Page 224 - madame-bovary

again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of
shadow here and there loomed out in the darkness, and
sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and
swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to en-
gulf them. The cold of the nights made them clasp closer;
the sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes that
they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst of the silence
low words were spoken that fell on their souls sonorous,
crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied vibrations.
When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consult-
ing-room between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted
one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the
books. Rodolphe settled down there as if at home. The sight
of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine,
excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from mak-
ing jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma.
She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on
occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought
she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley.
‘Someone is coming!’ she said.
He blew out the light.
‘Have you your pistols?’
‘Why?’
‘Why, to defend yourself,’ replied Emma.
‘From your husband? Oh, poor devil!’ And Rodolphe fin-
ished his sentence with a gesture that said, ‘I could crush
him with a flip of my finger.’
She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt
in it a sort of indecency and a naive coarseness that scan-