It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to leave Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen.
Rodolphe would have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to Paris in order to have the whole mail coach reserved for them as far as Marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without stopping to Genoa. She would take care to send her luggage to Lheureux whence it would be taken direct to the "Hirondelle," so that no one would have any suspicion. And in all this there never was any allusion to the child. Rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer thought about it.
He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs; then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill; next he went on a journey. The month of August passed, and, after all these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the 4th September a Monday.
At length the Saturday before arrived.
Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual.
"Everything is ready?" she asked him.
"Yes."
Then they walked round a garden bed, and went to sit down near the terrace on the kerb stone of the wall.
"You are sad," said Emma.
"No; why?"
And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion.
"It is because you are going away?" she went on; "because you are leaving what is dear to you your life? Ah! I understand. I have nothing in the world! you are all to me; so shall I be to you. I will be your people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!"
"How sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms.
"Really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "Do you love me? Swear it then!"
"Do I love you love you? I adore you, my love."
