Léon was with the Bovarys.
"He was standing behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair."
You were spoken to just now of the pollution of marriage; then you are shown adultery in all its poesy, in its ineffable seductions. I have said that the expression should be modified to read: the disillusions of marriage and the pollution of adultery. Very often when one is married, in the place of happiness without clouds which one promises himself, he finds but sacrifice and bitterness. The word disillusion can then be used justifiably, that of pollution, never.
Léon and Emma have a rendezvous at the cathedral. They look around or they do not, it makes no difference. They go out.
"A lad was playing about the close.
"'Go and get me a cab!'
"The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quartre-Vents; then they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.
"'Ah! Léon! Really—I don't know—if I ought,' she whispered. Then with a more serious air, 'Do you know, it is very improper?'
"'How so?' replied the clerk. 'It is done at Paris.'
"And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her."