alleged he had some business engagement.

“Ah! I will escort you,” said Homais.

And all the while he was walking through the streets with him he talked of his wife, his children, of their future, and of his business; told him in what a decayed condition it had formerly been, and to what a degree of perfection he had raised it.

Arrived in front of the Hotel de Boulogne, Léon left him abruptly, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress in great excitement. At mention of the chemist she flew into a passion. He, however, piled up good reasons; it wasn’t his fault; didn’t she know Homais—did she believe that he would prefer his company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and, sinking on his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous pose, full of concupiscence and supplication.

She was standing up, her large flashing eyes looked at him seriously, almost terribly. Then tears obscured them, her red eyelids were lowered, she gave him her hands, and Léon was pressing them to his lips when a servant appeared to tell the gentleman that he was wanted.

“You will come back?” she said.

“Yes.”

“But when?”

“Immediately.”

“It’s a trick,” said the chemist, when he saw Léon. “I wanted to interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you. Let’s go and have a glass of garus at Bridoux’s.”

Léon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the druggist joked him about quill-drivers and the law.

“Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil prevents you? Be a man! Let’s go to Bridoux’s. You’ll see his dog. It’s very interesting.”

And as the clerk still insisted—

“I’ll go with you. I’ll read a paper while I wait for you, or turn over the leaves of a ‘Code.’ ”

Léon, bewildered by Emma’s anger, Monsieur Homais’s chatter, and, perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was undecided, and, as it were, fascinated by the chemist, who kept repeating—

“Let’s go to Bridoux’s. It’s just by here, in the Rue Malpalu.”

Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through that indefinable feeling that drags us into the most distasteful acts, he allowed himself to be led off to Bridoux‘s, whom they found in a small yard, superintending three workmen, who panted as they turned the large wheel of a machine for making seltzer-water. Homais gave them some good advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took some garus. Twenty times Léon tried to escape, but the other seized him by the arm saying—

“Presently ! I’m coming! We’ll go to the ‘Fanal de Rouen’ to see the fellows there. I’ll introduce you to Thomassin.”

At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight to the hotel. Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, and cowardly.

Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had, no doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.

They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naïve resources of a waning passion striving to keep itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey. Then she confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake. She went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see once more that the door was closed, then, pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one movement, she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.

Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms, something vague and dreary that seemed to Léon to glide between them subtly as if to separate them.

He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she must have passed, he thought, through every experience of suffering and of pleasure. What