the center, grew paler toward the surface of the
eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in
miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his head
and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window to see
him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geranium,
clad in her dressing-gown hanging loosely about her. Charles in the
street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while she
talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of flower or
leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating, described
semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before it reached the
ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare standing motionless
at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a kiss; she answered with
a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And then along the highroad,
spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the
trees bent over as in arbors, along paths where the corn reached to the
knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air in his nostrils, his
heart full of the joys of the past night, his mind at rest, his flesh at
ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness, like those who after dinner
taste again the truffles which they are digesting.

Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when he
remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of
companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his
accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school
with cakes in their muffs? Or later, when he studied medicine, and never
had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have
become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the
widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life
this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend
beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself
with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly,
ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing;
he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.

He could not keep from continually touching her comb, her rings, her
fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on
her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm from
the tip of her fingers up to