Page 265 - madame-bovary

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

o sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down
Nquickly at his bureau under the stag’s head that hung
as a trophy on the wall. But when he had the pen between
his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting on his
elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have
receded into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken
had suddenly placed a distance between them.
To get back something of her, he fetched from the cup-
board at the bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he
usually kept his letters from women, and from it came an
odour of dry dust and withered roses. First he saw a hand-
kerchief with pale little spots. It was a handkerchief of hers.
Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he had for-
gotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature
given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious,
and her languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then,
from looking at this image and recalling the memory of its
original, Emma’s features little by little grew confused in
his remembrance, as if the living and the painted face, rub-
bing one against the other, had effaced each other. Finally,
he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations
relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like
business notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those
of old times. In order to find them at the bottom of the box,

Madame Bovary