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Updated: June 24, 2025
Charles sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to discover what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping, and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round him. When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair.
Rodolphe loved as every woman may dream of being loved, with a force, a constancy, a tenacity, which made Francesca the very substance of his heart; he felt her mingling with his blood as purer blood, with his soul as a more perfect soul; she would henceforth underlie the least efforts of his life as the golden sand of the Mediterranean lies beneath the waves.
Francesca, who had left them, returned with a large piece of sticking-plaster, which she applied to the wound. "You can now walk as far as your house," she said. Each took an arm, and Rodolphe was conducted to a side gate, of which the key was in Francesca's apron pocket. "Does Gina speak French?" said Rodolphe to Francesca. "No. But do not excite yourself," replied Francesca with some impatience.
"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!" He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves. "I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!" "Why? Emma! Emma!"
While they were directing the school at Rheims, they managed by repeated hints to stir up their archbishop, Rodolphe, against me, for the purpose of holding a meeting, or rather an ecclesiastical council, at Soissons, provided they could secure the approval of Conon, Bishop of Praeneste, at that time papal legate in France.
Now and then a meagre Roman-candle went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma silently nestled against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns. They went out one by one.
Beside them, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them. Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood.
Next to the pleasure of admiring the woman we love, comes that of seeing her admired by every one else. Rodolphe was enjoying both at once.
"Fear nothing," said he in French to the Italian girl, "I am not a spy. You are refugees, I have guessed that. I am a Frenchman whom one look from you has fixed at Gersau." Rodolphe, startled by the acute pain caused by some steel instrument piercing his side, fell like a log. "Nel lago con pietra!" said the terrible dumb girl. "Oh, Gina!" exclaimed the Italian.
"I don't blame you," he said. Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his hands, went on in a broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow "No, I don't blame you now." He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made "It is the fault of fatality!"
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