Page 352 - madame-bovary

wide open, as if enmeshed in the innumerable threads of a
sudden reverie.
The following day was frightful, and those that came af-
ter still more unbearable, because of her impatience to once
again seize her happiness; an ardent lust, inflamed by the
images of past experience, and that burst forth freely on
the seventh day beneath Leon’s caresses. His ardours were
hidden beneath outbursts of wonder and gratitude. Emma
tasted this love in a discreet, absorbed fashion, maintained
it by all the artifices of her tenderness, and trembled a little
lest it should be lost later on.
She often said to him, with her sweet, melancholy
voice—
‘Ah! you too, you will leave me! You will marry! You will
be like all the others.’
He asked, ‘What others?’
‘Why, like all men,’ she replied. Then added, repulsing
him with a languid movement—
‘You are all evil!’
One day, as they were talking philosophically of earthly
disillusions, to experiment on his jealousy, or yielding, per-
haps, to an over-strong need to pour out her heart, she told
him that formerly, before him, she had loved someone.
‘Not like you,’ she went on quickly, protesting by the head
of her child that ‘nothing had passed between them.’
The young man believed her, but none the less questioned
her to find out what he was.
‘He was a ship’s captain, my dear.’
Was this not preventing any inquiry, and, at the same

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