Emma is a woman of romantic longings. We saw earlier that she longed for a man who "should know about everything; excel in a multitude of activity, introduce you to passion in all its force, to life in all its graces, you into all mysteries" (see Chapters 6 and 7 of Part I), and now Rodolphe comes to call after a six weeks' absence, and tells her things she "had never been told before." Here then is the romantic dream come true. But, in reality, he is not the knight in shining armor. He is, after all, a thirty-four-year-old farmer. But to Emma who has lived in boredom so long and who has longed for some type of escape, he is the fulfillment of her dreams. After she surrenders to him, she then thinks of all the heroines of books and compares her shoddy seduction in the woods to those of the romanticized heroines of her novels. She is convinced that her affair has all the "passion, ecstasy and delirium" of the fictionalized accounts in romances. Emma then attempts to make her shoddy affair conform to those of fictionalized accounts. She insists that they leave letters for each other in secret hiding places. She comforts him about absurd, insignificant events and when once she thinks she hears Charles coming, she expects Rodolphe to grab his pistol so as to defend himself. She insists upon exchanging miniatures, locks of hair, and even rings. Even Rodolphe realizes the degree of sentimentality that Emma is attaching to their love affair.
Emma never realizes that Rodolphe is simply using her for a pretty mistress. Even though they are having their affair now in Charles' consulting room, she fails to realize how shoddy the affair is and continues to force their affair into the pattern of a great love.
Ironically, it was Charles who originally assured the success of the love affair by insisting that Emma accept Rodolphe's offer of the riding horse. Of course, we have seen earlier that Charles, due to the horrible disposition of his first wife, can see no fault in Emma.
Chapter 9 ends with Rodolphe's admonition to Emma that she is compromising herself by her visits to his cabin. This foreshadows his rejection of Emma. We know from the beginning that this is to be only a brief love affair for him, but as he reminds her of her position, we note already that he is beginning to tire of her.
