airs in the
crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the
bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In
fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and
these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down
some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.

Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice,
speaking rapidly:

"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single
sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest
sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do
meet, all is so organized that they cannot blend together. Yet they will
make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon
each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years,
they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they
are born one for the other."

His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face toward
Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes
small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelled the
perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. Then a faintness came
over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at
Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this hair an odor of vanilla
and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to
breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leaned back in her
chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the
old diligence the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of
Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow
carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this route down
there that he had gone for ever. 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 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. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old
desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to
and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She
opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the
ivy round the capitals. She