Madame Bovary

They were three full, exquisite days — a true honeymoon. They stayed at the Hotel de Boulogne on the harbour, with drawn blinds and closed doors, flowers on the floor, and iced syrups brought to them early in the morning. Towards evening they took a covered boat and went to dine on one of the islands. It was the time when one hears by the side of the dockyard the caulking-mallets sounding against the hull of vessels. The smoke of tar rose up between the trees; there were large fatty drops on the water, undulating in the purple colour of the sun, like floating plaques of Florentine bronze. They rowed through moored boats, whose long oblique cables grazed lightly against the bottom of the shallop. The din of the town gradually grew distant — the rolling of carriages, the tumult of voices, the yelping of dogs on the decks of vessels. They sat in the low-ceilinged room of a tavern at whose door hung black nets, and ate fried smelts, cream and cherries. They lay upon the grass and kissed behind the poplars, and would fain, like two Robinsons, have lived for ever in this little place, which seemed to them in their beatitude the most magnificent on earth. It was not the first time they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; but no doubt they had never admired all this, as if Nature had not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful since the gratification of their desires. At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores of the islands, both hidden by shade, in silence. The square oars rang in the iron thwarts and, in the stillness, seemed to mark time like the beating of a metronome, while at the stern the rudder trailed behind with a gentle and unceasing splash against the water. Once the moon rose; they made fine phrases, finding the orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even began to sing: 'One night, do you remember, we were sailing.' Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves, and the winds carried off the trills that Leon heard pass like the flapping of wings about him. She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of the shallop, through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in. Her black dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her seem more slender, taller. Her head was raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards heaven. At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then she reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight. Leon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of scarlet silk. The boatman looked at it and said there had been another party out the other day — a lot of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne, cornets. There was one especially, a tall handsome man with small moustaches, who was that funny. 'Now tell us something, Adolphe — Dolpe,' they kept saying. She shivered. 'You are in pain?' asked Leon, coming closer. 'Oh, it is nothing. No doubt it is only the night air.' 'And who does not want for women, either,' softly added the sailor, thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment. Then, spitting on his hands, he took the oars again. The ribbon and the sailor's story — the tall man with small moustaches, the party, the champagne — are unmistakably Rodolphe. Emma flinches at his ghost on the same water, at the same island, now shared with a second lover. The night air explanation holds; Leon does not press. Yet they had to part. The adieux were sad. She gave him precise instructions: his letters were to be sent to Mere Rollet, inside a double envelope. He admired greatly her amorous astuteness. 'So you can assure me it is all right?' she said at their last kiss. 'Yes, certainly.' But walking home alone through the streets afterwards, Leon was puzzled by one thing: 'But why is she so very anxious to get this power of attorney?'