appeared so small. From
the height on which they were, the whole valley seemed an immense pale
lake sending off its vapor into the air. Clumps of trees here and there
stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose
above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.

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. She turned away
from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine
trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy.
The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.

Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.

"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.

"Do you think so?" she said.

"Forward! forward!" he continued.

He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot. Long
ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup. Rodolphe leant forward
and removed them as they rode along. At other times to turn aside the
branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing
against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred.
There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets
alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were gray, fawn,
or golden colored, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the
thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry
of the ravens flying off amid the oaks.

They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in front
on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way,
although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her,
saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white
stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.

She stopped. "I am tired," she said.

"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"

Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her
veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face
appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure
waves.

"But where are we going?"

He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round
him biting his mustache. T