Page 267 - madame-bovary

her interest; I am honest.’
‘Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you
know to what an abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No,
you do not, do you? You were coming confident and fearless,
believing in happiness in the future. Ah! unhappy that we
are—insensate!’
Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.
‘If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would
stop nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later
on. As if one could make women like that listen to reason!’
He reflected, then went on—
‘I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have
a profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later,
this ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have
grown less, no doubt. Lassitude would have come to us,
and who knows if I should not even have had the atrocious
pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since
I should have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that
would come to you tortures me, Emma. Forget me! Why
did I ever know you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my
fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate.’
‘That’s a word that always tells,’ he said to himself.
‘Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that
one sees, certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an
experiment, in that case without danger for you. But that
delicious exaltation, at once your charm and your torment,
has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman
that you are, the falseness of our future position. Nor had
I reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of

Madame Bovary