Page 369 - madame-bovary

to see the fellows there. I’ll introduce you to Thornassin.’
At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight
to the hotel. Emma was no longer there. She had just gone
in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep
their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to
rake up other reasons to separate herself from him. He was
incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a
woman, avaricious too, and cowardly.
Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she
had, no doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging of
those we love always alienates us from them to some extent.
We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.
They gradually came to talking more frequently of mat-
ters outside their love, and in the letters that Emma wrote
him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, na-
ive resources of a waning passion striving to keep itself alive
by all external aids. She was constantly promising herself a
profound felicity on her next journey. Then she confessed to
herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This disappoint-
ment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned
to him more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed
brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled
around her hips like a gliding snake. She went on tiptoe,
barefooted, to see once more that the door was closed, then,
pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one movement,
she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.
Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops,
on those quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of
those arms, something vague and dreary that seemed to

Madame Bovary