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The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.
She fancied she saw him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her side.
He devoured them to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the furniture, all the drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He found a box and broke it open with a kick. Rodolphe's portrait flew full in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters. People wondered at his despondency. He never went out, saw no one, refused even to visit his patients.
She fancied she saw him opposite at his window; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lusters on the arm of the Viscount, and that Léon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her side.
"Ah yes!" he went on, "you must suffer much from the destitution to which exile has brought you. Oh, if you would make me happy above all men, and consecrate my love, you would treat me as a friend. Ought I not to be your friend? My poor mother has left sixty thousand francs of savings; take half." Francesca looked steadily at him. This piercing gaze went to the bottom of Rodolphe's soul.
Without doubt Madame Bovary died of poison; she suffered much, it is true; but she died at her own time and in her own way, not because she had committed adultery but because she wished to; she died in all the prestige of her youth and beauty; she died after having two lovers, leaving a husband who loved her, who adored her, who found Rodolphe's portrait, his letters and Léon's, who read the letters of a woman twice an adulteress, and who, after that, loved her still more, even on the other side of the tomb.
Leopold brought back the most fatal, the most dreadful news: Rodolphe's mother was dead. While the two friends were on their way from Bale to Lucerne, the fatal letter, written by Leopold's father, had reached Lucerne the day they left for Fluelen. In spite of Leopold's utmost precautions, Rodolphe fell ill of a nervous fever.
An amber paleness overspread her face, betraying sudden interest, but it did not dim the voluptuous glance of her liquid eyes of velvety blackness. A pair of hands as beautiful as ever a Greek sculptor added to the polished arms of a statue grasped Rodolphe's arm, and their whiteness gleamed against his black coat.
"I want to know," said she, with the Italian artlessness which has always a touch of artfulness. "Well, this hour will shine on all my life like a diamond on a queen's brow." Francesca's only reply was to lay her hand on Rodolphe's. "Oh dearest! for ever dearest! Tell me, have you never loved?" "Never." "And you allow me to love you nobly, looking to heaven for the utmost fulfilment?" he asked.
But what a crime had he committed in the eyes of a woman in accepting a born princess as a citizen's wife! in believing that a daughter of one of the most illustrious houses of the Middle Ages was the wife of a bookseller! The consciousness of his blunders increased Rodolphe's desire to know whether he would be ignored and repelled.
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