ast, and his
heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music,
dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.

They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession
that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick of him as he
was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of
marriage.

But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated at
the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from
corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting
all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Leon of her
baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some
catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not
the courage to make up her mind to it herself.

She none the less went on writing him love letters, in virtue of the
notion that a woman must write to her lover.

But whilst she wrote it was another man she saw, a phantom fashioned out
of her most ardent memories, of her finest reading, her strongest
lusts, and at last he became so real, so tangible, that she palpitated
wondering, without, however, the power to imagine him clearly, so lost
was he, like a god, beneath the abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in
that azure land where silk ladders hang from balconies under the breath
of flowers, in the light of the moon. She felt him near her; he was
coming, and would carry her right away in a kiss.

Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of vague love wearied
her more than great debauchery.

She now felt constant ache all over her. Often she even received
summonses, stamped paper that she barely looked at. She would have liked
not to be alive, or to be always asleep.

On Mid-Lent she did not return to Yonville, but in the evening went to
a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a club wig, and
three-cornered hat cocked on one side. She danced all night to the wild
tones of the trombones; people gathered round her, and in the morning
she found herself on the steps of the theatre together with five or six
masks, debardeuses* and sailors, Leon's comrades, who were talking about
having supper.

* People dressed as longshoremen.

The neighbouring cafes were full. They caught sight of one on the
harbour, a very indifferent restaurant, whose proprietor showed them to
a little room on the fourth floor.

The men w