Leon's longing; Back to the Lion d'Or; Meeting in a storm; More business with Lheureux; A forgotten accomplishment; Music lessons.

LEON soon began to give himself airs. He ignored his friends and neglected his business.

He waited eagerly for her letters; he read them again and again, and he wrote to her in return. He summoned her up before him with all the ardour of passionate remembrance. Instead of fading with absence, the longing to see her again grew stronger and stronger, till at last, one Saturday morning, he made a bolt from his office.

When he came to the top of the hill above Yonville and, looking down over the valley, saw the church tower with its tin tricolour turning in the wind, he was conscious of that mingled sensation of triumphant vanity and egoistical emotion that a man who has gone abroad and made his fortune must experience when he returns to visit his native village.

He went and roamed about outside her house. There was a light in the kitchen. He watched to see if he could catch her shadow behind the curtain. But nothing was visible.

Mere Lefrancois met him, and couldn't believe her eyes. She thought he was 'taller and thinner', whereas Artemise considered he was 'stouter and browner'.

He dined in the little parlour, as in the old days, but alone, without the tax-collector; for Binet, weary of waiting for the 'Hirondelle', had fixed his dinner-time one hour earlier, and now he dined sharp at five. However, as often as not, he would still have it that the tumbledown old rattle-trap was late.

Leon summoned up his courage and went and knocked at the doctor's door. Madame was upstairs in her bedroom, and didn't come down for a quarter of an hour. The doctor appeared delighted to see him; but he stuck at home the whole evening and all next day as well.

He saw her alone, very late in the evening, in the lane at the end of the garden- in the lane where she used to meet 'the other one'. There was a thunderstorm raging, and they talked under an umbrella with lightning flashing all around them.

Their severance was becoming intolerable. 'I would rather be dead,' she said. And she clung, writhing, to his arm, weeping,

'Good-bye! Good-bye! When shall I see you again?'

They turned back for one last embrace, and it was then that she promised by some means or another, no matter what, to find a pretext for seeing him regularly, at least once a week. Emma never doubted she would find a way. She was full of hope. She would soon have some money to play with.

This being so, she bought a pair of yellow curtains with broad stripes for her bedroom, which Monsieur Lheureux had told her were a bargain. She had dreams of a carpet, and Lheureux, declaring that it wasn't like craving for the moon, very civilly undertook to get her one. Lheureux had become simply indispensable. She sent for him twenty times a day, and he straightway put aside whatever he was doing and obeyed the summons without a murmur. And it was no less a mystery why Mere Rollet should go there every day for her lunch, and why she should want, as she often did, to see her in private.

It was about this time- that is to say, the beginning of winter- that she suddenly appeared to evince a tremendous enthusiasm for music.

One night, while Charles was listening to her, she began the same piece over again, four times running, finding fault with herself each time. He, never seeing any difference, cried, 'Bravo! Splendid! What did you stop for? Go on!'

'Oh, no! It's too dreadful! My fingers feel as if they were stiff with rust!'

Next day he begged her to play him something more.

'Oh, well; if you want me to.'

Charles confessed he had heard her play better. She struck the wrong notes, kept fumbling about, and finally came to a sudden stop.

'Ah, it's no good! I ought to have some lessons, but...'

She bit her lip and added,

'Twenty francs a time. It's too expensive, that!'

'Well, yes... it is... rather,' said Charles, sniggering like a nincompoop. 'But perhaps it could be managed a bit cheaper. Sometimes a more or less unknown artist is really better than a man with a big reputation.'

'They take some finding,' said Emma.

Next day, when he came in, he contemplated her with a knowing look, as if he had something up his sleeve, and at last, unable to keep it back any longer, blurted out,

'I say, how you do let your ideas run away with you, sometimes! Now, I've been to Barfeucheres today. Well, Madame Liegeard assures me that her three girls, who are at the Misericorde convent school, pay only fifty sous a lesson for their music, and a first-rate mistress too.'

She shrugged her shoulders, and did not open the piano again.

But whenever she went near it (if Bovary were in the room) she would sigh,

'Ah, my poor piano!'

And when she had visitors she never omitted to tell them she had given up her music, and could not now take it up again, because of circumstances. And they would sympathize with her, and say what a pity it was, seeing she had such a gift. They even spoke to Bovary about it, saying it was really too bad of him, especially the chemist.

'You're making a mistake. You should never let a natural gift lie fallow. Besides, my friend, you should bear in mind that by encouraging your wife to study now, you will be saving on your child's musical education later on. In my opinion, children ought always to be taught by their own mother. It's a theory of Rousseau's; perhaps somewhat advanced, but it will come- I'm sure of that- like maternal feeding and vaccination.'

So Charles again reverted to this piano question. Emma retorted bitterly that they might as well sell it, for all the good it was. But that this unfortunate piano, the possession of which had been for her such a source of pride, should now take its departure- well, it seemed to Bovary, somehow, as if she were loppin, off a part of herself.

'Well' he said, 'if you want a lesson now and again, it won't, after all, be so very ruinous.'

'Yes,' she replied, 'but it's no good having lessons unless you take them regularly.'

That was how she managed to get leave from her husband to go to Rouen once a week to see her lover.

At the end of a month she was considered to have made substantial progress.

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