 CHAPTER VIII. THE SHATO. A modern building in Italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense green suede on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals. While large beds of Arbitus, Rotodendron, Syringes, and Gelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path, a river flowed under a bridge through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the field, bordered by two gently sloping, well-timbered hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old chateau. Charles's dog-heart pulled up before the middle flight of steps. The Marquis came forward, and offering his arm to the doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule. It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it, as in a church. Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the drawing room, Emma saw standing round the table, men with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders and smiled silently as they made their strokes. On the dark wainscoting of the walls, large gold frames bore, at the bottom, the names written in black letters. She read, Jean-Antoine D'Anderville de Dierbaubonbille, Count de la Vape-Biesar, and Baron de la Fresnée, killed at the Battle of Coutras on the 20th of October, 1857. And on another, Jean-Antoine Henri Guy D'Anderville de la Vape-Biesar, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of Saint-Michael, wounded at the Battle of Auge-Saint-Vaste on the 29th of May, 1962, died at Vape-Biesar on the 23rd of January, 1693. One could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered over the green cloth through a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the horizontal pictures, they broke up against these indelicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares, framed in with gold, stood out here and there, some lighter portion of the painting, a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, peruchs flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf. The Marquis opened the drawing room door. One of the ladies, the Marchioness herself, came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on the ottoman and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hooked nose, a drolling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young woman sat in a high-back chair in a corner, and the gentlemen with flowers in their button holes were talking to ladies round the fire. At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down at the first table in the vestibule, the ladies at the second, in the dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness. Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round in the warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes of the deans and the odor of the truffles. The silver dish covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal covered with light steam, reflected from one to the other pale rays. The bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table, and in the large bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop's mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval-shaped roll. The red claws of lapsters hung over the dishes. Rich fruit and open baskets were piled up on moss. There were quails in their plumage, smoke was rising, and in silk stockings, knee breeches, white cravat and frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offering ready-carved dishes between the shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon gave you the peace chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with copper baguettes, the statue of a woman draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room full of life. Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses. But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent over his plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little cue tied with black ribbon. He was the marquis's father-in-law, the old duke de la verdière, once a time favored of the Count d'Artois. In the days of the Vaudroy hunting parties at the Marquis de Conflant, and had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lausanne. He had lived a life of noisy debauche, full of duels, spets, elopements. He had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man, with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens. Ice champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates, nor tasted pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere. The ladies afterward went to their rooms to prepare for the ball. Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the barrage dress spread out upon the bed. Charles's trousers were tight across his belly. My trouser straps will be rather awkward for dancing, he said. Dancing? Repeated Emma? Yes. Why, you must be mad. They would make fun of you. Keep your place. Besides, it's more becoming for a doctor, she said. Charles was silent. He walked up and down and waited for Emma to finish dressing. He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes seemed blacker than ever, her hair undulating towards the ears, shone with a blue luster. A rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk, with artificial dew drops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of pale saffron, trimmed with three bouquets of pom-pom roses mixed with green. Charles came and kissed her on the shoulder. Let me alone, she said. You're tumbling me. One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She went downstairs, restraining herself from running. Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing. She sat down on a form near the door. The quadril, over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up and talking, and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line of seated women, painted fans were fluttering, bouquets, half-hits, smiling faces, and gold-stoppered scent bottles were turned in partly closed hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair, well smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns or bunches, or sprays of mitosatis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and corn flowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans. Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers and waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished and swaying in the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin that sometimes played alone while the other instruments were silent. One could hear the clear clink of the Louis d'Or that were being thrown down upon the car tables in the next room. Then all struck again. The cornet à pistons uttered its sonorous note. Feet marked time. Skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted. The same eyes, falling before, you met yours again. A few men, some fifteen or so, of twenty-five to forty, scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their differences in age, dress or face. Their clothes, better made, seemed a finer cloth, and their hair brought forward in curls toward the temples glossy with more delicate pomads. They had the complexion of wealth, that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats. Their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars. They wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young. In their unconcerned looks, with the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things in which force is exercised and vanity amused, the management of thoroughbred horses, and the society of loose women. A few steps from Emma, a gentle man in a blue coat, was talking of Italy, with a pale young woman wearing a parour of pearls. They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoli, Bessuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the Rose of Genoa, the Colosseum by moonlight. With her other ear, Emma was listening to a conversation full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very young man, who the week before had beaten Miss Arabella and Romulus, and won 2,000 Louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained that his racehorses were growing fat, another of the printer's errors that had disfigured the name of his horse. The atmosphere of the ball was heavy, the lamps were growing dim, guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair and broke the window panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of Bertot came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again, as formerly skimming with her finger, the cream off the milk pans in the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour her past life so distinct until then faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She was there. Beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a silver gilt cup, her eyes half closed and the spoon between her teeth. A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentleman was passing. Would you be so good, said the lady, as to pick up my fan that has fallen behind his sofa? The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm Emma saw the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle into his hat. The gentleman picking up the fan offered it to the lady respectfully. She thanked him with an inclination of the head and began smelling her bouquet. After supper where were plenty of Spanish and rind wines, soups a la visque and au lait d'amande, puddings à la trafalgar and all sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled on the dishes, the carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners of the muslin curtain one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through the darkness. The seats began to empty. Some card players were still left. The musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their tongues. Charles was half asleep. His back propped against the door. At three o'clock the patillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz. Everyone was waltzing. Madame Dondeur Villiers herself and the Marquis, only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a dozen persons. One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount and whose low-cut waist cut seemed molded to his chest, came a second time to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her and that she would get through it very well. They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned all around them was turning the lamps, the furniture, the wane-scotting, the floor, like a disk on a pivot. Unpassing near the doors, the bottom of Emma's dress caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled. He looked down at her. She raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her. She stopped. They started again, and with a more rapid movement, the Viscount, dragging her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where panting she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast, and then still turning but more slowly he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands. When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool. She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more. Everyone looked at them. They passed, and repast. She with rigid body, her chin bent down, and he, always in the same pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. The woman knew how to waltz. They kept up a long time and tired out all the others. Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the good nights, or rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed. Charles dragged himself up the balusters. His knees were going up into his body. He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play wist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots. Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and lent out. The night was dark. Some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still murmuring in her ears, and she tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to give up. Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the chateau, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated, blended with them, but she was shivering with cold. She undressed and cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep. There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten minutes. No le cures were served, which astonished the Here. Next, Mademoiselle Donder-Villet collected some pieces of roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the hothouses, where strange plants bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, wents, as from overfilled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the chateau. The marquee, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables. Above the basket-shaped racks, porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black letters. Each animal, in its stall, whisked its tail when anyone went near and said, The boards of the harness room shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line along the wall. Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The dog cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and all the parcels being crammed in, the bovarys paid their respects to the marquee and marcianesce, and sat out again for tostes. Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose reins hanging over his cropper were wet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the shezz gave great regular bumps against it. They were on the height of Thibourg Ville, when suddenly some horsemen with cigars between their lips passed, laughing. Emma thought she recognized the vicount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop. A mile further on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces that had broken. But Charles, giving a last look at the harness, saw something on the ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar case with a green silk border and be blazoned in the center like the door of a carriage. There are even two cigars in it, he said. They'll do for this evening after dinner. Why? Do you smoke? She asked. Sometimes, when I get a chance, he put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag. When they reached home, the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper. Nastasi answered rudely. Leave the room, said Emma. You're forgetting yourself. I give you a warning. For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel. Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully. How good it is to be home again! Nastasi could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place. Have you given her her warning for good? He asked at last. Yes. Who'd prevent me? She replied. Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen, and while their room was being made ready, Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding, spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff. You'll make yourself ill, she said scornfully. He put down his cigar, and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. Emma, seizing hold of the cigar case, threw it quickly to the back of the cupboard. The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden, up and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier, before the plaster quarat, looking with amazement at all these things of once on a time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed already. What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before yesterday, and the evening of today? Her journey to Vavisar had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still, she was resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth, something had come over it that could not be faced. The memory of this ball then became an occupation for Emma. Whenever the Wednesday came round, she said to herself as she awoke, Ah, I was there a week, a fortnight, three weeks ago. And little by little, the faces grew confused in her remembrance. She forgot the tune of the quadrills. She no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly. Some details escaped her. But the regret remained with her. End of part one, chapter eight, recording by Bob Sage. Part one, chapter nine of Madame Bovery. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bob Sage. Madame Bovery by Gustave Flaubert. Part one, chapter nine. Often, when Charles was out, she took from the cupboard between the folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar case. She looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odor of the lining, a mixture of verbena and tobacco. Who's was it? The Viscounts? Perhaps it was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes that had occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the canvas. Each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent passion. And then, one morning, the Viscount had taken it away with him. And what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide mantled chimneys between the flower vases and the pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes. He was at Paris now, far away. What was this Paris like? What a vague name. She repeated it in a low voice for the mere pleasure of it. It rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell. It shone before her eyes, even on the labels of her pommade pots. At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts singing the margillenne, she awoke and listened to the noise of the ironbound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon deadened by the soil. They will be here tomorrow, she said to herself. And she followed them and thought, up and down the hills, traversing villages, gliding along the high roads by the light of the stars. At the end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot into which her dream died. She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map, she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at every turning between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of her weary eyes and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind, and the steps of the carriages lowered with much noise before the peristals of theaters. She took in La Corvée, a lady's journal, and the Sylthe des Salons. She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of first nights, races and soirees, took interest in the debut of a singer in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the addresses of the best-tailors, the days of the bois and the opera. In Eugène Se, she studied descriptions of furniture, she read Balzac and Georges Sond, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires. Even a table she had her book with her and turned over the pages while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made comparisons, but the circle of which he was the center gradually widened round him, and the oriole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened out beyond, lighting up her other dreams. Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes in an atmosphere of vermilion, the many lives that stirred amid this tumult were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest and in themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over polished floors and drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses with trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the society of the duchesses. All were pale. All got up at four o'clock. The women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats and the men. Unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Badden, and towards the forties, married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigalous kings full of ideals ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it was lost with no particular place, as if nonexistent. The nearer things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had caught hold of her while beyond stretched as far as I could see an immense land of joys and passions. She confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance of manner with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the langurs of tenderness could not be separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled flower stands, a bed on a raised dais, nor from the flashing of precious stones and the shoulder knots of liveries. The lad from the posting house, who came to groom the mayor every morning, passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes. There were holes in his blouse, his feet were bare and list slippers, and this was the groom in knee britches with whom she had to be content. His work done, he did not come back again all day, for Charles, on his return, put up his horse himself, unsaddled him, and put on the halter, while the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could into the manger. To replace Nastasi, who left Tostis shedding torrents of tears, Emma took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her, wanted to make a lady's maid of her, the new servant obeyed without a murmur so as not to be sent away, and as Madame usually left the key in the sideboard, felicitée, every evening, took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone in her bed after she had set her prayers. Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the pastillions. Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that showed between the shawl-facings of her bodice a pleated chamoisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small, garnet-colored slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting-book, writing-case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to. She dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop to her knees. She longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished, at the same time to die and to live in Paris. Charles, in snow and rain, trotted across country. He ate omelets on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt of bloodlettings in his face, listened to death rattles, examined basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen. But every evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy chairs, and a well-dressed woman charming with an odor of freshness, though no one could say whence the perfume came, or, if it were not her skin, that made that odorous her chemise. She charmed him by numerous attentions. Now it was some new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the servant had spoiled. But the Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last mouthful. At Rouen, she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the watch chains. She bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and sometime after an ivory neccessaire with a silver-guilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements, the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life. He was well, looked well, his reputation was firmly established. The country folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the children, never went to the public house, and moreover his morals inspired confidence. He was specially successful with guitars and chest complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patience, Charles, in fact, only prescribed sedatives from time to time and a medic, a foot bath, or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery. He bled people copiously like horses, and for taking out of teeth he had the devil's own wrist. Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in LaRouche Mericale, a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little after dinner, but in about five minutes the warmth of the room, added to the effect of his dinner, sent him to sleep. And he sat there, his chin on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why at least was not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions, who work at their books all night and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat? She could have wished this name of Bowery, which was hers, had been illustrious. To see it displayed at the booksellers, repeated in newspapers known to all France, but Charles had no ambition. An Ivetteau doctor, whom he had lately met in consultation, had somewhat humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient before the assembled relatives. When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma invade loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes, but she was angered with the shame. She felt a wild desire to strike him. She went to open the window in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself. What a man! What a man! She said in a low voice, biting her lips. Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older, his manner grew heavier. At dessert, he cut the corks of the empty bottles. After eating, he cleaned his teeth with his tongue. In taking soup, he made gurgling noises with every spoonful, and as he was getting fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up to the temples. Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his undervests into his waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the dirty gloves he was going to put on. And this was not as he fancied for himself. It was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation. Sometimes too she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the upper ten that she had seen in a foyerton. For, after all, Charles was something, an ever-open ear, an ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace, or to the pendulum of the clock. At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be. What wind would bring it her? Towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop, or a three-decker laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portals? But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day. She listened to every sound sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come. Then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow. Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear trees began to blossom, she suffered from dyspenoia. From the beginning of July, she counted how many weeks there were to October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilier would give another bowl at Vobisar, but all September passed without letters or visits. After the ennui of this disappointment, her heart once more remained empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would thus follow one another, always the same, immovable and bringing nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences, and the scene changed, but nothing happened to her. God had willed it so. The future was a dark corridor with its door at the end shut fast. She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her? Since she would never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking with her light fingers the ivory keys of an irar at a concert, feel the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worthwhile, boring herself with practicing. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery, she left in the cupboard. What was the good? What was the good? Sewing irritated her. I have read everything, she said to herself, and she sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looking at the rain falling. How sad she was on Sundays when Vespers sounded. She listened with dull attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the high road blew up clouds of dust. A far-off, a dog sometimes howled, and the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away over the fields. But the people came out from church, the women in waxed clogs, the peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed children skipping along in front of them, all were going home. Until nightfall, five or six men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door of the inn. The winter was severe, the windows every morning were covered with rime and the light shining through them, dim as through ground glass sometimes did not change the whole day long, and at four o'clock the lamp had to be lighted. On fine day she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one to the other. No birds were to be heard. Everything seemed to sleep. The espalier covered with straw and the vine like a great sick serpent under the copping of the wall, along which, undrawing near, one saw the many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the courier in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right foot, and the very plaster scaling off from the frost had left white scabs on his face. Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with the heat of the hearth felt her boredom way more heavily than ever. She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of shame restrained her. Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skullcap opened the shutters of his house and the rural policeman wearing his saber over his blouse passed by. Night and morning the post horses, three by three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the bell of a public-house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop creaking on their two rods. This shop had, as decoration, an old engraving of a fashion plate stuck against a window pane and the wax bust of a woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some big shop in a big town at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbor near the theater, he walked up and down all day from the marie to the church somber and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up she always saw him there like a sentinel on duty with his skullcap over his ears and his vest of lasting. Sometimes in the afternoon outside the window of her room the head of a man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers smiling slowly with a broad gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately began and on the organ, in a little drawing room, dancers the size of a finger, women in pink turbans, terolions in jackets, monkeys in frock coats, gentlemen in knee breeches, turned and turned between the sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking glass held together at their corner by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle to the right and left and up at the windows, now and again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone with his knee raised, his instrument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder. And now, doleful and drawing or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were heirs played in other places at the theaters, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted lusters, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless sarabans ran through her head and like an Indian dancing girl on the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream to dream from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ onto his back and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him going. But it was above all the mealtimes that were unbearable to her in this small room on the ground floor with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweated the damp flags, all the bitterness and life seemed served up on her plate. And with the smoke of the boiled beef there rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow eater. She played with a few nuts or, leaning on her elbow, amused herself with drawing lines along the oil cloth table cover with the point of her knife. She now let everything in her household take care of itself and Madame Bovary Sr., when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much surprised at the change. She, who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now passed whole days without dressing, wore gray cotton stockings and burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that Tostes pleased her very much with other speeches that closed the mouth of her mother in law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow her advice. Once even Madame Bovary, having thought fit to maintain that mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good woman did not interfere again. Emma was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself, then she did not touch them. One day drank only pure milk, the next cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then stifling threw open the windows and put on light dresses. After she had well scolded her servant, she gave her presents, or sent her out to see neighbors, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her purse. Although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal hands. Toward the end of February, old Ruo, in memory of his cure, himself brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and staying three days at Tostes, Charles began with his patience. Emma kept him company. He smoked in the room, spat on the fire-dogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and municipal council, so that when he left, she closed the door on him with a feeling of satisfaction, that surprised even herself. Moreover, she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all of which made her husband open his eyes widely. Would this misery last forever? Would she never issue from it? Yet she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen duchesses at Vavisar with clumsier wastes and commoner ways, and she execrated the injustice of God. She lent her head against the walls to weep. She envied the lives of stir, longed for masked bulls, for violent pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not know, but that these must surely yield. She grew pale, and suffered from palpitations of the heart. Charles prescribed valerian and camp for baths. Everything that was tried only seemed to irritate her the more. On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor in which she remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was the pouring a bottle of Oda Cologne over her arms. As she was constantly complaining about tostes, Charles fancied that her illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere. From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and completely lost her appetite. It cost Charles much to give up tostes after living there for years, and when he was beginning to get on there, yet, if it must be, he took her to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint. Change of air was needed. After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learned that in Neuf Châtel Arondissement, there was a considerable market town called Yonville Lareille, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year and so forth, and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's health did not improve. One day, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust, and the silver bordered satin ribbon sprayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. She watched it burn. The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted, and the shriveled paper corollas fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney. When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant. End of Part 1, Chapter 9, Recording by Bob Sage Part 2, Chapter 1 We leave the high road at Laboisier, and keep straight on to the top of the Lue Hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies. All on the left is pastureland, all of the right, arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pastureland of the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as I can follow its blonde cornfields. The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the color of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle, with a green velvet cape, bordered with a fringe of silver. Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of Argyre, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean Hills scarred from top to bottom with red irregular lines. They are rain tracks, and these brick tones standing out in narrow streaks against the grey color of the mountain, are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country. Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Île de France—a bastard land whose language is without accent, and its landscape is without character. It is there that they make the worst nuffchâtel cheeses of all the arrondissement. And, on the other hand, farming is costly, because so much manure is needed to enrich this freeable soil full of sand and flints. Up to 1835, there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but about this time, a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen Wagoners on their way to Flanders. Yonville Abbe has remained stationary in spite of its new outlet. Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the pasturelands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the lazy burrow, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. It is seen from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking a siesta by the water side. At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine presses, cart sheds, and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or sides hung on to the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle, like the bottoms of bottles. Against the plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meager pear-tree sometimes leans, and the ground floors have at their door a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped inside her on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear. A bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick. There is a blacksmith's forge, and then a wheel-rights, with two or three new carts outside that partly block the way. Then across an open space appears a white house beyond a grass mound, ornamented by a cupid, his finger on his lips. Two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps. Scutians, the panaceau that have to be hung over the doors of notaries, blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the finest in the place. The church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast-high, is so full of graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows in its blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden shoes. The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat, bearing beneath it the words in large letters, Mr. So-and-So's pew. Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coiffed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands. And finally, a copy of the Holy Family presented by the Minister of the Interior, overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the perspective. The choir stalls of Deal Wood have been left unpainted. The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts, occupies of itself about half the public square of Yom Ville. The town hall, constructed from the designs of a Paris architect, is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On the ground floor are three Ionic columns, and on the first floor a semi-circular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the chart, and holding in the other the scales of justice. But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lyon door in, the chemist's shop, of Monsieur Omey. In the evening, especially, its argon lamp is lit up, and the red and green jars that embellish his shop front throw far across the street their two streams of colour. Then across them, as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. His house, from top to bottom, is placarded with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand. Vichy, Seltzer, Bar-Ege-Waters, Blood Purifiers, Raspel Panted Medicine, Arabian Rock-a-Hoot, Darset Losanges, Renyol Paste, Trusses, Baths, Hygienic Chocolate, etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters Omey, chemist. Then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word laboratory appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half way up once more repeats Omey, in gold letters on a black ground. Beyond this, there is nothing to see at Yom Ville. The street, the only one, a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side, stops short at the turn of the high road. If it is left on the right hand, and the foot of the San-Jean Hills followed, the cemetery is soon reached. At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased. But all the new portion is almost tenantless. The tombs, as heretofore, continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who as at once Gravedigger and Church Beedle, thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses, has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials. You live on the dead, l'estibudu. The curie at last said to him one day. This grim remark made him reflect. It checked him for some time, but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally. Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at Yom Ville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the church steeple. The two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linen drapers. The chemists' fetuses, like lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol. And above the big door of the inn, the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane. On the evening when the Bovaries were to arrive at Yom Ville, widow Le François, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans. Tomorrow was market-day. The meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made. Moreover, she had the boarder's meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant. The billiard room was echoing with bursts of laughter. Three millers in a small parlor were calling for brandy, the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped. From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the servant was chasing in order to ring their necks. A man slightly marked with smallpox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage. This was the chemist. Arta-mise, shouted the landlady, chop me some wood, fill the water-bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture movers are beginning their racket in the billiard room again, and their van has been left before the front door. The hereondale might run into it when it draws up. Call Polite and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur Omé, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk eight jars of cider. Why, they'll tear my cloth for me. She went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand. That wouldn't be much of a loss, replied Monsieur Omé. You would buy another. Another billiard table, exclaimed the widow. Since that one is coming to pieces, madame la Francois, I tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm. And besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now. Everything has changed. One must keep pace with the times. Just look at Tellier. The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on. You may say what you like. His table is better than yours, and if one would think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland, or the sufferers from the Lyon floods. It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us. Interrupted the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. Come, come, Monsieur Omé. As long as the Lyon door exists, people will come to it. We've feathered our nest. While one of these days you'll find the Café Francais closed with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard table. She went on, speaking to herself. The table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six visitors. But that dawdler, Yver, doesn't come. Are you waiting for him for your gentleman's dinner? Wait for him. And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six, you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlor. He'd rather die than die in anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider. Not like Monsieur Lyon. He sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young man never speaks a rough word. Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man, and an old cariboneer who is now a tax collector. Six o'clock struck. Binet came in. He wore a blue frock-coat, falling in a straight line round his thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair-collar, gray trousers, and all-the-year-round well-blacked boots that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking out of his big toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border, his long wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine hand, he had at home a laugh, and amused himself by turning napkin-rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois. He went to the small parlor, but the three millers had to be got out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way. It isn't with saying the civil things that he'll wear out his tongue, said the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady. He never talks more, she replied. Last week two travellers in the cloth-line were here. Such clever chaps who told such jokes in the evening, that I fairly cried with laughing. And he stood there like a dab fish, and never said a word. Yes, observed the chemist. No imagination, no sallies, nothing that makes the society man. Yet they say he has parts, objected the landlady. Parts! replied Monsieur Amé. He, parts! In his own line it is possible, he added in a calmer tone. And he went on. Ha! that a merchant, who has large connections, a jurist consult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become whimsical or even peevish, I can understand. Such cases are cited in history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something. Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had put it behind my ear? Madame Le François just then went to the door to see if the here-undale were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last gleam of twilight, one could see that his face was rubicund, and his form athletic. What can I do for you, monsieur Le Curie? asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. Will you take something? A thimble full of cassis. Black current, liquor. A glass of wine. The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Erne-Mont convent, and after asking Madame Le François to have it sent to him at the Presbyterie in the evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing. When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy. All priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe. The landlady took up the defence of her Curie. Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw. He carried as many as six trusses at once. He is so strong. Bravo, said the chemist. Now just send your daughters to confess to fellows with such a temperament. I, if I were the government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Le François, every month. A good phlebotomy, and the interests of the police and morals. Be quiet, M. Romay. You are an infidel. You've no religion. The chemist answered. I have a religion. My religion. And I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the supreme being, in a creator. Whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families. But I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates and fatten out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God. Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Berangers. I am for the profession of faith, of the Savoyard Vicar, and the immortal principles of eighty-nine. And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days. Things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed moreover to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would feign and gulf the people with them. He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling-over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council. But the landlady no longer heeded him. She was listening to a distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and at last the Hirondel stopped at the door. It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt, prevented travellers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders. The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amidst the old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came downhill its bottom jolted against the ground. Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square. They all spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Yver did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps from the milleners, locks from the hairdressers, and all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels, which he threw, standing upright on his seat, and shouting at the top of his voice, over the enclosures of the yards. An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovery's greyhound had run across the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour. Yver had even gone back a mile and a half, expecting every moment to catch sight of her. But it had been necessary to go on. Emma had wept, grown angry. She had accused Charles of this misfortune. Monsieur Le Rue, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said, had been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another had gone one hundred and fifty miles on a straight line, and swam four rivers, and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street, as he was going to dine in town. CHAPTER II Emma got out first, then Felicité, Monsieur Le Rue, and a nurse, and they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly since night set in. Omey introduced himself. He offered his homage to Madame and his respects to Monsieur, said he was charmed to have been able to render them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had ventured to invite himself, his wife being away. When Madame Bovery was in the kitchen, she went up to the chimney. With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to the fire, above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with the crude light the wolf of her gowns, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind through the half-open door. On the other side of the chimney, a young man with fair hair watched her silently. As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the notaries, Monsieur Guillaumein, Monsieur Léon Dupuis, it was he who was the second habitué of the Léon d'Or, frequently put back his dinner-hour in hope that some traveller might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a tête-à-tête with Benet. It was therefore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour, where Madame Le François, for the purpose of showing off, had had the table laid for four. Omey asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of choriza. Then, turning to his neighbour,—Madame is no doubt a little fatigued, one gets jolted so abominably in our here-and-dell. "'That is true,' replied Emma, but moving about always amuses me. I like change of place.' "'It is so tedious,' sighed the clerk, to be always riveted to the same places. "'If you were like me,' said Charles, constantly obliged to be in the saddle. "'But,' Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "'nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant, when one can,' he added. "'Moreover,' said the druggist, the practice of medicine is not very hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent fevers at harvest time. But on the whole, little of a serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of scroffula—do no doubt to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our present dwellings. Ha! you will find many prejudices to combat, Mr. Bovary. Much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your science will daily come into collision, for people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a few non-enginearians in our parish. The thermometer—I have made some observations—falls in winter to four degrees centigrade at the outside, which gives us twenty-four degrees Romur as the maximum, or otherwise fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit, English-scale, not more. And as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of Argyre on the one side, from the west winds by the Saint-Jean range on the other, and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapours given off by the river, and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia—that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen—no nitrogen and hydrogen alone—and which, sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender inslubrious miasmata. This heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come, that is to say, the southern side, by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like breezes from Russia. At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood," continued Madame Bovery, speaking to the young man. "'Oh, very few,' he answered. There is a place they call La Pature, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset.' "'I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets,' she resumed, but especially by the side of the sea. "'Oh, I adore the sea,' said Monsieur Léon. "'And then, does it not seem to you,' continued Madame Bovery, that the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?' "'It is the same with mountainous landscapes,' continued Léon. "'A cousin of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices, and a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy, and I no longer marvel at that celebrated musician, who, the better to inspire his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing sight. "'You play,' she asked. "'No, but I am very fond of music,' he replied. "'Ah, don't you listen to him, Madame Bovery?' interrupted Ome, bending over his plate. That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the other day in your room you were singing Lange-Gardien ravishingly. I heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor.' Léon, in fact, lodged at the chemists, where he had a small room on the second floor, overlooking the plos. He blushed at the compliment of his landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yom Ville. He was telling anecdotes, giving information. The fortune of the notary was not known exactly, and—there was the Tuvaash household, who made a good deal of show. Emma continued, "'And what music do you prefer?' "'Oh, German music—that which makes you dream.' "'Have you been to the opera?' "'Not yet, but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish reading for the bar.' "'As I had the honour of putting it to your husband,' said the chemist, with regards to this poor Yonoda who has run away, you will find yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the most comfortable houses of Yom Ville. Its greatest convenience for a doctor is a door giving on the walk, where one can go in and out unseen. Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household—a laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He was a gay dog who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden, by the side of the water, he had an arbor built just for the purpose of drinking beer in summer. And if madame is fond of gardening, she will be able—' "'My wife doesn't care about it,' said Charles. "'Although she has been advised to take exercise, she always prefers sitting in her room reading.'" "'Like me,' replied Léon. "'And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?' "'What indeed,' she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him. "'One thinks of nothing,' he continued. "'The hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries, we fancy, we see. And your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if you were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes.' "'That is true. That is true,' she said. "'Has it ever happened to you,' Léon went on, "'to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and has the complete expression of your own slightest sentiment?' "'I have experienced it,' she replied. "'That is why,' he said, "'I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears.' "'Still, in the long run, it is tiring,' continued Emma. "'Now I, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature.' "'In fact,' observed the clerk, "'these works, not touching the heart, miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself, living here far from the world, this is my one distraction, but Yon Ville affords so few resources.' "'Like tosts, no doubt,' replied Emma, "'and so I always subscribe to a lending library.' "'If madame will do me the honour of making use of it,' said the chemist, who had just caught the last words. I have, at her disposal, a library composed of the best authors—Voltaire, Rousseau, Deleel, Watterscott, the Echo de Fuiton—and in addition, I receive various periodicals, among them the Fanau de Rouen, Daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of Bouchy, Forge, Neuf-Châtel, Yon Ville, and Vicinity.' For two hours and a half they had been at table. For the servant Artemise, carelessly dragging her old list-slippers over the flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly left the door of the billiard-room half-open, so that it beat against the wall with its hooks. Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small blue silk neck-tie, that kept up like a rough, a go-ford cambrick collar, and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus, side by side, while Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to the fixed center of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of novels, new quadrils, and the world they did not know. Tostes where she had lived, and Yon Ville where they were, they examined all, talked of everything, till to the end of dinner. When coffee was served, Felicite went away to get ready the room in the new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Le François was asleep near the cinders, while the stable boy, Lantern in hand, was waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had taken in his other hand the curée's umbrella, they started. The town was asleep. The pillars of the market threw great shadows. The earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good night almost immediately, and the company dispersed. As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom on the first floor, a whitish light passed through the curtainless windows. She could catch glimpses of treetops, and beyond the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along the course of the river. In the middle of the room, Pelle Mal, were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the ground. The two men who had brought the furniture had left everything about carelessly. This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place. The first was the day of her going to the convent, the second of her arrival at Toste, the third at Vobiasar, and this was the fourth. And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better. CHAPTER III The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the plass. She had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and reclosed the window. Léon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet already at table. The dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him. He had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a lady. How then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and dissimulation. At Yonville he was considered well-bred. He listened to the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics, a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had some sort of accomplishments. He painted in watercolours, could read The Key of G, and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards. Monsieur Omé respected him for his education. Madame Omé liked him for his good nature, for he often took the little omé into the garden, little brats who were always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic like their mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Omé, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time as a servant. The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary information as to the tradespeople, sent expressly for his own cider-merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly placed in the cellar. He explained how to set about getting in a supply of butter, cheap, and made an arrangement with L'Esteboudoir, the sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year according to the taste of the customers. The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality. There was a plan underneath it all. He had infringed the law of the nineteenth vantos, year eleven, article one, which forbade all persons not having a diploma to practice medicine, so that, after certain anonymous denunciations, Omé had been summoned to Rouen to see the procura of the king in his own private room, the magistrates receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in the morning before the court opened. In the corridors one heard the heavy boots of the yondarm walking past, and like a far-off noise great locks that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke. He saw the depths of dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed, and he was obliged to enter a café and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover his spirits. Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and he continued, as here to four, to give anodyne consultations in his back parlour. But the mayor resented it. His colleagues were jealous. Everything was to be feared. Gaining over Monsieur Bouverie by his attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later on, should he notice anything. So every morning Omé brought him the paper, and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to have a chat with the doctor. Charles was dull. Patience did not come. He remained seated for hours without speaking, went into his consulting-room to sleep, or watched his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a workman. He even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been left behind by the painters. But money-matters worried him. He had spent so much for the repairs at Toste, for Madame's toilette, and for the moving, that the whole dowry over three thousand crowns had slipped away in two years. Then how many things had been spoiled or lost during their carriage from Toste to Yonville, without counting the plaster curee, who, falling out of the couch on an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavements of Quinquampois. A pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk and her figure without stays turning softly on her hips. When opposite one another he looked at her at his ease. While she took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds. He got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called her little mama, wanted to make her dance, and half laughing, half crying, uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity. Emma at first felt a great astonishment. Then was anxious to be delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a swing bassinet with rose silk curtains and embroidered caps in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the whole of it from a village needle-woman without choosing or discussing anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the very outset perhaps to some extent attenuated. As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to think of him more consecutively. She hoped for a son. He would be strong and dark. She would call him Georges, and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free. He may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most faraway pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet held by a string, flutters in every wind. There is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains. She was confined on a Sunday, at about six o'clock, as the sun was rising. "'It is a girl,' said Charles. She turned her head away and fainted. Madame Omé, as well as Madame Lefrançois of the Lyon d'Or, almost immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as a man of discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the half-opened door. He wished to see the child, and thought it well-made. Whilst she was getting well, she occupied herself much in seeking a name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian endings, such as Clara, Luisa, Amanda, Attala. She liked Galzion de pretty well, and Isulte and Leocadie still better. Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother. Emma opposed this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted outsiders. "'Monsieur Leon,' said the chemist, with whom I was talking about it the other day, one does you do not choose Madeline. It is very much in fashion just now.' But Madame Boveri-Signe cried out loudly against this name of a sinner. As to Monsieur Omé, he had a preference for all those that recalled some great man, an illustrious fact or a generous idea, and it was on this system that he had baptised his four children. Thus Napoleon represented glory and Franklin liberty. Irma was perhaps a concession to romanticism, but Attali was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere with his artistic tastes. In him the thinker did not stifle the man of sentiment. He could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the style. He detested the conception, but applauded all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages, he was transported. But when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for their show, he was disconsolate, and in this confusion of sentiments in which he was involved, he would have liked at once to crown Racine with both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour. At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vobjesart she had heard the Marchionnès call a young lady Berthe. From that moment this name was chosen, and as old Rueau could not come, Monsieur Omé was requested to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment, to wit six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahu, three cakes of marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar candy into the bargain that he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there was a grand dinner, the curée was present, there was much excitement. Monsieur Omé, towards le cure-time, began singing Le Dieu des bons gens. Monsieur Léon sang a barquerole, and Madame Bovary Sr., who was godmother, a romance of the time of the empire. Finally Monsieur Bovary Sr. insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptising it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery of the first of the sacraments made the abbey bournesien angry. Old Bovary replied by a quotation from La Guerre des Dieu, the curée wanted to leave, the ladies implored. Omé interfered, and they succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on with the half-finished coffee in his saucer. Monsieur Bovary Sr. stayed at Yongville a month, dazzling the natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to the liand d'or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law's whole supply of odour-colone. The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the world. He talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier-times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had partaken. Then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, Charle, look out for yourself! Then Madame Bovary Sr. became alarmed for her son's happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long run have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure. Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. The Bovary was not the man to respect anything. One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and without looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the virgin were yet past, she set out for the role's house, situated at the extreme end of the village, between the high road and the fields. It was midday, the shutters of the houses were closed, and the slaked roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to strike sparks from the rest of the gables. The heavy wind was blowing. Emma felt weak as she walked. The stones of the pavement hurt her. She was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to rest. At this moment Monsieur Léon came out from a neighbouring door, with a bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the shade in front of the Lure's shop, under the projecting grey awning. Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was beginning to go tired. If, said Léon, not daring to go on, have you any business to attend to? she asked. And on the clerk's answer she begged him to accompany her. That same evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, declared in the presence of her servant that Madame Bovary was compromising herself. To get to the nurses it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglentines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in the hedges one could see into the huts some pigs on a dung-heap, or tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace which he regulated by hers. In front of them a swarm of midges fluttered, buzzing in the warm air. They recognized the house by an old walnut tree which shaded it. Low, and covered with brown tiles there hung outside it beneath the dormer window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet pea strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny fellow, his face covered with scroffula, the son of a Ruan Hosier whom his parents, two taken up with their business, left in the country. "'Go in,' she said, your little one is there asleep. The room on the ground floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its further end against the wall a large bed without curtains, while a kneading trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door shining hobnailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the wash stand, near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth. A mature linesberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gun flints, candle ends, and bits of amadou. Finally the last luxury in the apartment was a fame blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shopegs. Emma's child was asleep in a wicker cradle. She took it up in the wrapping that enveloped it, and began singing softly as she rocked herself to and fro. Layle walked up and down the room. It seemed strange to him to see this beautiful woman in her nankine dress in the midst of all this poverty. Madame Bovary reddened. He turned away, thinking perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who had just been sick over her collar. The nurse came at once to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show. She gives me other doses, she said. I am always a wash-in-hover. If you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have a little soap, it really would be more convenient for you, as I needn't trouble you then. Very well, very well, said Emma. Good morning, Madame Role. And she went out, wiping her shoes at the door. The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights. I am that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I am sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee. That'd last me a month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk. After having submitted to her thanks, Madame Bovray left. She had gone a little way down the path, when at the sound of wooden shoes she turned round. It was the nurse. What is it? Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm-tree, began talking to her of her husband, who, with his trade and six francs a year that the captain, I'll be quick, said Emma. Well, the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word. I'm afraid he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone. You know, men. But you ought to have some, Emma repeated. I will give you some. You bother me. Oh, dear, my poor dear lady! You see in consequence of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that Cider weakens him. Do make haste, mere ole. Well, the latter continued, making a curtsy. If it weren't asking too much, and she curtsied once more, if you would—and her eyes begged—a jar of brandy, she said at last, and I'd rub your little one's feet with it, there as tender as one's tongue. Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock coat had a black velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one wore them at Yonville. It was one of the Clark's chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing desk. They returned to Yonville by the water side. In the warm season the bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls whence the few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift and cold to the eye. Long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair. Sometimes at the tip of the reeds, or on the leaf of a water lily, an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced with array the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each other. Brunchless old willows mirrored their gray backs in the water. Beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the dinner hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard nothing as they walked, but the fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's dress rustling around her. The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade, Madame Bovary, as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk. They were talking of a troop of Spanish dancers who were expected shortly at the Rouen Theatre. Are you going? she asked. If I can, he answered. Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases, they felt the same langur stealing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices. Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the sensation, or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know. In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle. They had to step on large green stones put here and there in the mud. She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and, tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of water. When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the little gate, ran up the steps, and disappeared. Leon returned to his office. His chief was away. He just glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went out. He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueille hills at the beginning of the forest. He threw himself upon the ground under the pines, and watched the sky through his fingers. How bored I am, he said to himself, how bored I am. He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homme for a friend, and Monsieur Guillaume for a master. The latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements, though he affected a stiff English manner which in the beginning had impressed the clerk. As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping for others' woes, letting everything go in her household, and detesting corsets. But so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next to each other, and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than the gown. And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three publicans, the curé, and finally Monsieur Tuvas, the maire, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons who farmed their own lands, and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable companions. But from the general background of all these human faces, Emma's stood out isolated and yet farthest off, for between her and him he seemed to see a vague abyss. In the beginning he had called on her several times along with a druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.