 Part II. CHAPTER VIII. At last it came the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been hung with garlands of ivy, a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet, and in the middle of the plass, in front of the church, a kind of bombard was to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buxi, there was none at Yonville, had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Bine was the captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual, and tightly buttoned in his tunic his figure was so stiff and emotionless that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement. As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the Colonel, both to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One saw the red epaulettes and the black breast-plates pass and reparse alternately. There was no end to it, and it constantly began again. There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had scoured their houses the evening before, tri-coloured flags hung from half-open windows, all the public houses were full, and in the lovely weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured necker-chiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved with the motley colours the somber monotony of the frock-coats and blue smocks. The neighbouring farmer's wives, when they got off their horses, pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their dresses, turned up for fear of mud, and the husbands, for their part, in order to save their hats, kept their handkerchiefs around them, holding one corner between their teeth. The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village. People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses, and from time to time one heard knockers banging against doors, closing behind women with their gloves, who were going out to see the fate. What was most admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns that flanked a platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles, each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth embellished with inscriptions in gold letters. On one was written to commerce, on the other to agriculture, on the third to industry, and on the fourth to the fine arts. But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of Madame Lefrançois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she muttered to herself, what rubbish, what rubbish, with their canvas-booth. Do you think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a tent like a gypsy? They'd call all this fussing doing good to the place. Then it wasn't worth while sending to Nuffchattel for the keeper of a cook-shop. And for whom? For cowherds, tattered amalians. The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankine trousers, beaver shoes, and for a wonder a hat with a low crown. You're servant. Excuse me, I'm in a hurry. And as the fat widow asked where he was going, it seems odd to you, doesn't it? I, who am always more cooped up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese. What cheese! asked the landlady. Oh, nothing, nothing! Ome continued. I merely wished to convey to you, Madame Lefrançois, that I usually live at home like a recluse. Today, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary. Oh, you're going down there, she said contemptuously. Yes, I'm going, replied the druggist, astonished. Am I not a member of the consulting commission? Mais Lefrançois looked at him for a few moments and ended by saying with a smile, that's another pair of shoes. But what does agriculture matter to you? Do you understand anything about it? Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist, that is to say a chemist, and the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrançois, being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies, it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses of gases, and the influence of Myers-Martyr, what, I ask you, is all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple? The landlady did not answer. Ome went on. Do you think that to be an agriculturalist, it is necessary to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary, rather, to know the composition of the substances in question, the geological strata, the atmospheric conditions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different bodies, their capillarity and what not. And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct, criticise the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals, the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrançois, one must know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and resew them there, to propagate some, destroy others. In brief one must keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the alert to find out improvements. The landlady never took her eyes off the Café François, and the chemist went on. Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they would pay more attention to the councils of science. Thus lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages, entitled CIDR, Its Manufacture and Its Effects, together with some new reflections on the subject, that I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among its members. Section Agriculture Class Pomological. Well, if my work had been given to the public, that the drug is stopped, Madame Lefrançois seemed so preoccupied. Just look at them, she said, its past comprehension, such a cook-shop as that. And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands at her rivals in, when songs were heard issuing. Well, it won't last long, she added, it'll be over before a week. Norma drew back with stupifaction. She came down three steps and whispered in his ear, What? You didn't know it? There is to be an execution in next week. It's Lerre who is selling him out. He has killed him with bills. What a terrible catastrophe! cried the drugist, who always found expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances. Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from Theodore, Monsieur Guillaume, a servant, and although she detested Tellier, she blamed Lerre. He was a weedler, a sneak. There, she said, look at him. He is in the market. He is bowing to Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why? She's taking Monsieur Boulanger's arm. Madame Bovary exclaimed Ommé, I must go at once and pay her my respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure under the peristyle. And without heeding Madame Lefrançois, who was calling him back to tell him more about it, the drugist walked off rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his frockcoat that fluttered behind him in the wind. Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame Bovary lost her breath, so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her, said in a rough tone, It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the drugist, she pressed his elbow. What's the meaning of that? he asked himself, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it, like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes, with their long curved lashes, looked straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheekbones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils. Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white teeth were seen between her lips. Is she making fun of me? thought Rodolphe. Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning, for Monsieur Leurot was accompanying them, and spoke now and again, as if to enter into the conversation. What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east! And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, whilst at the slightest movement made by them, he drew near, saying, I beg your pardon, and raised his hat. When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him Madame Bovary. He called out, Good evening, Monsieur Leurot, see you again presently. How you got rid of him, she said, laughing. Why, he went on, allow oneself to be intruded upon by others. And as to-day I have the happiness of being with you. Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine weather, and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had sprung up again. Here are some pretty Easter daisies, he said, and enough of them to furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place. He added, Shall I pick some? What do you think? Are you in love? she asked, coughing a little. Who knows, answered Rodolphe. The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with their great umbrellas, their baskets and their babies. One had often to get out of the way of a long file of country-folk, servant maids with blue stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelt of milk when one passed close to them. They walked along, holding one another by the hand, and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to the banquet tent. But this was the examination time, and the farmers, one after the other, entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks. The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts. Carves were bleeding, lambs buying. The cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them. Plowmen, with bare arms, were holding by the halter, prancing stallions that naid with dilated nostrils looking towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and flowing maids. While their foals rested in the shadow, or now and again came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some sharp horn sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull, muzzled, with an iron ring in his nostrils, and who moved no more than if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by her rope. Between the two lines the committee men were walking with heavy steps, examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One who seemed of more importance, now and then, took notes in a book as he walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur de Roseride de la Panville. As soon as he recognized Rodolphe, he came forward quickly, and smiling amiably, said, What? Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us? Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had disappeared, ma foi, said he, I shall not go, your company is better than his. And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily, showed the gendarm his blue card, and even stopped now and then in front of some fine beast, which Madame Bouverie did not at all admire. He noticed this, and began jeering at the youngville ladies and their dresses. Then he apologized for the negligence of his own. He had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambrick shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of grey ticking, and his broad striped trousers disclosed at the ankle nankine boots with patent leather gaiters. These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on horses dung with them one hand in the pocket of his jacket, and his straw hat on one side. Besides, added he, when one lives in the country, it's a waste of time, said Emma. That is true, replied Rodolphe, to think that not one of these people is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat. Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed, the illusions lost there. And I, too, said Rodolphe, drifting into depression. You, she said in astonishment, I thought you very light-hearted. Ah, yes, I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face. And yet, how many a time, at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight, have I not asked myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping there. Oh, and your friends, she said, you do not think of them? My friends, what friends? Have I any? Who cares for me? And he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips. But they were obliged to separate from each other, because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudoir, the grave-digger, who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the show to account, and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they lent against the thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration. Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm. He went on, as if speaking to himself. Yes, I have missed so many things, always alone. Ah, if I had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone—oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything. Yet it seems to me, said Emma, that you are not to be pitied. Ah, you think so? said Rodolphe. For after all, she went on, you are free! she hesitated. Rich! Do not mock me, he replied. And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell towards the village. It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to begin the meeting, or still wait. At last at the end of the plass a large hired landlord appeared, drawn by two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily. Binet had only just time to shout, present arms! and the colonel to imitate him. All ran towards the enclosure. Every one pushed forward. A few even forgot their collars, but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, traipsing in their harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town hall, at the very moment when the National Guard and Fireman deployed, beating drums and marking time. Present! shouted Binet. Halt! shouted the colonel. Left about. March! And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage, a gentleman in a short coat, with silver braiding, with a bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp nose and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognized the mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able to come. He himself was a counsellor at the prefecture. Then he added a few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments. The other confessed himself nervous, and they remained thus, face to face, their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round. The municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and the crowd. The counsellor, pressing his little cocked hat to his breast, repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled, stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the monarchy, and the honour that was being done to Yonville. Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of the Lyon d'Or, where a number of peasants collected to look at the carriage. The drum beat, the howits are thundered, and the gentlemen, one by one, mounted the platform, where they sat down in red, eutect velvet arm-chair that had been lent by Madame Tuvache. All these people looked alike. Their fair, flabby faces, somewhat tanned by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows. All the waistcoats were a velvet, double-breasted. All the watches had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval, cornelian seal. Everyone rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of their trousers, whose unspunged, glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the leather of their heavy boots. The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between the pillars, while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestier-Boudoir had brought thither all those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to the small steps of the platform. I think, said Monsieur Lorreur to the chemist, who was passing to his place, that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts, with something rather severe and rich for ornaments. It would have been a very pretty effect. To be sure, replied Omey, but what can you expect? The mayor took everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvasch! And he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art. Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Boverie, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall, to the council room, and as it was empty he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other. There was a commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying. At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his name was Yovan, and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began. Gentlemen, may I be permitted, first of all, before addressing you on the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will, I am sure, be shared by you all, may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the government, to the monarch, gentle men, our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils of the stormy sea, knowing moreover how to make peace respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts. I ought, said Hodorov, to get back a little further. Why? said Emma. But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an extraordinary pitch. He declined. This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord and sanguine dark public places, when the landlord, the businessman, the working man himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary toxins, when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations. Well, someone down there might see me, Hodorov resumed, then I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight, and with my bad reputation. Oh, you are slandering yourself, said Emma. No, it is dreadful, I assure you. But, gentlemen, continued the councillor, if banishing from my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures I carry my eyes back to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see everywhere? Everywhere, commerce and the fine arts are flourishing. Everywhere new means of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state, establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centres have recovered all their activity. Religion more consolidated, smiles in all hearts. Our ports are full. Confidence is born again, and France breathes once more. Besides, added Hodorov, perhaps from the world's point of view they are right. How so? she asked. What, said he, do you not know that there are souls constantly tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies. Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has voyaged over strange lands, and went on. We have not even this distraction, we poor women. A sad distraction, for happiness, isn't found in it. But is it ever found? she asked. Yes, one day it comes, he answered. And this is what you have understood, said the councillor. You farmers, agricultural labourers, you Pacific pioneers of a work that belongs wholly to civilisation, you men of progress and morality, you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances. It comes one day, repeated Hodorov, one day suddenly, and when one is despairing of it, then the horizon expands. It is as if a voice cried, it is here. You feel the need of confiding the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There is no need for explanations, they understand one another, they have seen each other in dreams. And he looked at her. In fine, here it is, this treasure so sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes, yet one still doubts, one does not believe it, one remains dazzled, as if one went out from darkness into light. And as he ended, Hodorov suited the action to the word. He passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it fall on Emma's. She took hers away. And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who is so blind, so plunged, I do not fear to say it, so plunged in the prejudices of another age as to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural populations, where indeed is to be found more patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence in a word. And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that applies itself above all to useful objects, thus contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of duty. Ah, again, S. Rudolf, always duty, I am sick of the word. There are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries, who constantly drone into our ears. Duty! Duty! Ah, by Jove! One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us. Yet, yet, objected Madame Bovary, no, no, why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, music, the arts, of everything in a word? But one must, said Emma, to some extent bow to the opinion of the world and accept its moral code. Ah, but there are two, he replied, the small, the conventional, that of men, that which constantly challenges, that braves out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthly, like the massive imbeciles you see down there, but the other, the eternal, that is about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us and the blue heavens that give us light. Monsieur Lyovain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket tanker chief. He continued, And what should I do here, gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with the boreous hand the fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the bakers, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it not the agriculturist who fattens for our clothes his abundant flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish ourselves without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far, for examples, who has not frequently reflected on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the ornament of poultry-yards that provides us at once with a soft pillow for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different products which the earth well cultivated, like a generous mother lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple-tree for cider, there coals are, further on cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and to which I will more particularly call your attention. He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide open as if to drink in his words. Tuvash by his side listened to him with staring eyes. Monsieur de Rosaray, from time to time, softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable. The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waist-coats in sign of approval. The fireman at the foot of the platform rested on their bayonets, and Binet, motionless, stood without turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing because of the visor of his helmet that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of Monsieur Tuvash, had a bigger one, for his was enormous and shook on his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence drops were running, war and expression of enjoyment and sleepiness. The square, as far as the houses, was crowded with people. One saw folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, other standing at doors, and justin in front of the chemist's shop seemed quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence, Monsieur Lyovain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd. Then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleeding of lambs, who answered one another at street-corners. In fact the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and these had loathed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths. Rodolf had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice, speaking rapidly. Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered, and if at length two poor souls do meet, all is so organized that they cannot blend together. Yet they will make the attempt, they will flutter their wings, they will call upon each other. Oh! no matter! Sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will come together, will love, for fate has decreed it, and they are born one for the other. His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils. She even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. Then a faintness came over her. She recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vau Biaissar, and his beard exhaled like this air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the alte-déligeance, the irendelle that was slowly descending the hill of Lue, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow carriage that Léon had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his windows, then all grew confused. Clouds gathered. It seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Léon was not far away, that he was coming, and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves. She wiped her hands, then found her face with her handkerchief. While a thwart the throbbing of her temples, she heard the murmur of the crowd, and the voice of the counsellor in toning his phrases. He said, Continue, persevere, listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the overhasty councils of a rash empiricism. Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good moneurs, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. Let these shows be to you Pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternize with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard labour no government up to this day has taken into consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured that the State henceforward has its eye upon you, that it encourages you, protects you, that it will exceed to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices. Monsieur Lyovain then sat down. Monsieur de Rosarie got up, beginning another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the scholar, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the government took up less space in it, religion and agriculture more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Boverie was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, till the soil planted the vine. Was this a good, and in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur de Rosarie set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the President was citing Kinkinatus and his plow, Diocletian planting his cabbages, and the Emperor of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of the seed, the young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence. Thus we, he said, why did we come to know one another? What chance willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that flow but to unite, our special bents of mind had driven us towards each other. And he seized her hand. She did not withdraw it. For good farming generally, cried the President. Just now, for example, when I went to your house, to Monsieur Biza of Kinkampoie, did I know I should accompany you? Seventy francs. A hundred times I wished to go, and I followed you, I remained. Meneurs! and I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life. To Monsieur Caen of Argueille, a gold medal. For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a charm. To Monsieur Bain of Giveris Saint-Martin. And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you. For a merino ram. But you will forget me. I shall pass away like a shadow. To Monsieur Boulot of Notre-Dame. Oh no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I not? No sign, race. Prizes. Equal. To Monsieur Lehéris and Coulombour. Seventy francs. Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering like a captive dove that wants to fly away. But whether she was trying to take it away, or whether she was answering his pressure, she made a movement with her fingers. He exclaimed, Oh! I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good. You understand that I am yours. Let me look at you. Let me contemplate you. A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering. Use of oil-cakes, continued the President. He was hurrying on. Fish manure. Flax growing. Drainage. Long leases. Domestic service. Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without an effort, their fingers intertwined. Caterine Nises Elisabeth Le Roux of Sastola Guerrière, for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal, value twenty-five francs. Where is Caterine Le Roux? repeated the counsellor. She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering, Go up! Don't be afraid. Oh, how stupid she is! Well, is she there, cried Tuvash? Yes, here she is. Then let her come up. Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her pale face, framed in a borderless cap, was more wrinkled than a withered russet apple, and from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of washing the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water, and by dint of long service they remained half open as if to bear humble witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she had found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock coats, and the order of the counsellor she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run away, nor why the crowd was pushing her, and the jury was smiling at her. Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of servitude. "'Approach, venerable Catherine, Nicès, Elisabeth Leroux,' said the counsellor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president, and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he repeated in a fatherly tone, "'Approach! Approach!' "'Are you deaf?' said Tuvas, fiddling in his armchair, and he began shouting in her ear, "'Fifty-four years of service! A silver medal! Twenty-five francs! For you!' Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and as she walked away they could hear her muttering, "'I'll give it to our curé up home, to say some masses for me.'" What fanaticism exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary. The meeting was over. The crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had been read each one fell back into his place again, and everything into the old grooves. The masters bullied the servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors going back to the stalls, a green crown on their horns. The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall, with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolph's arm, he saw her home, they separated at her door, then he walked about alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet. The feast was long, noisy, ill-served. The guests were so crowded that they could hardly move their elbows, and the narrow planks used for forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolph, leaning against the calico of the tent, was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty plates. His neighbours were talking. He did not answer them. They filled his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips, her face as in a magic mirror shone on the plates of the sheikos, the folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all infinity before him in the vistas of the future. He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks. But she was with her husband, Madame Aume, and the drugist, who was worrying about the danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and give some advice to Binet. The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not light, and the principal set piece that was to represent a dragon biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then Amiga Rowan Candle went off. Then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the cry of the women whose wastes were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma silently nestled against Charles' shoulder. Then, raising her chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns. They went out one by one. The styles shone out. A few crops of rain began to fall. She knotted her fissue round her bare head. At this moment the counsellor's carriage came out from the inn. His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the distance above the hood between the two lanterns the mass of his body that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces. "'Truly,' said the druggist, one ought to proceed most rigorously against drunkenness. I should like to see written up weekly at the door of the town hall on a board, ad hoc, the names of all those who during the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics, one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in case of need. But excuse me! And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to see his lathe again. "'Perhaps you would not too ill,' Ome said to him, to send one of your men, or to go yourself.' "'Leave me alone,' answered the tax collector. "'It's all right.' "'Do not be uneasy,' said the druggist, when he returned to his friends. Monsieur Biney has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No sparks have fallen. The pumps are full. Let us go to rest.' "'Muffois, I want it,' said Madame Omey, yawning at large. "'But never mind. We've had a beautiful day for our fate.' Rodolf repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look. Oh, yes! Very beautiful!' And having bowed to one another, they separated. Two days later, in the Finale de Rouen, there was a long article on the show. Omey had composed it with verve the very next warning. "'Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands, wither hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon our heads?' Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the government was doing much, but not enough. Courage!' he cried to it. "'A thousand reforms are indispensable. Let us accomplish them.' Then, touching on the entry of the councillor, he did not forget the martial air of our militia. Nor our most merry village maidens. Nor the bold-headed old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums.' He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Omey, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society. When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of the prize-winners in dithy-vambic strophes. The father embraced the son, the brother, the brother, the husband, his consort. More than one showed his humble meddle with pride, and no doubt when he got home to his good-housewife he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot. About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Lejard brought together the principal personages of the fate. The greatest cordiality reigned here. The toasts were proposed. Monsieur Lyovain, the king. Monsieur Tuvashe, the prefect. Monsieur de Rosaray, agriculture. Monsieur Omey, industry and the fine arts, those twin sisters. Monsieur Leplichy, progress! In the evening some brilliant fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene, and for a moment our little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of a dream of the thousand and one nights. Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting. And he added, only the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please, messure the followers of Loyola. End of Part 2, Chapter 8. Part 2, Chapter 9 of Madame Bovary. 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 Maria Tafidis. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. Translated by Elianor Max Evelin. Part 2, Chapter 9. Six weeks passed. Rudolf did not come again. At last, one evening, he appeared. The day after the show, he had said to himself, we mustn't go back too soon. That would be a mistake. At the end of the week, he had gone off hunting. After the hunting, he had thought it was too late. And then he reasoned thus. If, from the first day, she loved me, she must, from impatience, deceive me again, love me more, let's go on with it. And he knew that his calculation had been right, when an entering the room is so Emma turned pale. She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, the gilding of the barometer on which the rays of the sun fell, shown in the looking glass between the meshes of the coral. Rudolf remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first conventional phrases. I, he said, have been busy, have been ill. Seriously, she cried. Well, said Rudolf, sitting down at her side in a foothold. No, it was because I didn't want to come back. Why? Can you not guess? He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing. He went in. Emma! Sir, she said, drawing back little. Ah, you see, replied he in a melancholy voice. That I was right not to come back. For this name, this name that fills my whole soul, that escaped me, you forbid me to use. Madame Bouvain, where all the world calls you thus, besides it is not your name, it is the name of another. He repeated, of another, and hid his face in his hands. Yes, I think of it constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Now, forgive me, I will leave you. Farewell, I will go far away, so far that you will never hear of me again. But yet, today, I know not what forced me towards you, for one does not struggle against heaven, one cannot resist the smile of angels, one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming, adorable. It was the first time that Emma had heard such words and spoken to herself, and her pride, like one who reposes bed and wall, expanded softly and fully at his glowing language. But if I did not come, he continued, if I could not see you, at least I have gazed along on all surrounding you. At night, every night I rose, I came here, there I watched you house, its glimmering in the moon, the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp gleam shining through the windowpane to the darkness. Ah, you never knew, there so near you so far from you was a poor wretch. She turned towards him with a sub. Oh, you are good, she said. No, I love you, that is all. You do not doubt that. Tell me one word, only one word. And Hordalph imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground. But a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the door in the room was not closed. How kind it would be of you, he went and rising, if you were a human, a whim of mine. To us to go over her house, he wanted to know it. And remember, by seeing no objection to this, that they both rose when Charles came in. Good morning, doctor, Hordalph said to him. The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into obscured phrases, of this the other two could manage to pull himself together a little. Madam was speaking to me, he then said about her health. Charles interrupted him. He had indeed a thousand anxieties. His wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Hordalph asked if riding would not be good. Certainly, excellent, just a thing. There is an idea. You had to follow it up. And as he subjected that he had no horse, Monsieur Hordalph, after all, he refused his offer, but did not insist. Then to explain his visit, he said that his plowman, the man of the bloodletting, still suffered from giddiness. I'll call round, said Bovary. Well, no, I'll send him to you. Welcome. That will be more convenient for you. However good, I thank you. And as soon as I roll over, why don't you accept Monsieur Boulanger's kind offer? I just hear a sulky air and invented a thousand excuses and finally declared that perhaps it would look odd. Well, what's the use, do I care for that? Charles, making a pure-wet health before everything. You're wrong. How do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit? You must order one, he answered. The riding habit decided her. The habit was ready. Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his wife was at his command that they could entail his good nature. The next day at noon, Hordolphe appeared at Charles' door with two saddle horses. One had pink hosettes at his ears and the ear-skimmed side saddle. Hordolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt he had never seen anything like them. In fact, and was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. She was ready, she was waiting for him. Justine escaped from the chemist to see her start and the chemist also came out who was giving Monsieur Boulanger little good advice. An accident happened so easily. Be careful, the horses perhaps are metalsome. She heard a noise above her. It was Felicity drumming the window-pairs to a new little bed. The child blew her a kiss. Her mother answered with a wave of a whip. A pleasant ride, cried Monsieur Ome. Prudence, above all, prudence. And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear. As soon as he felt the ground, he was horse set off at a gallop. Hordolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchange a word. Her finger slightly bent, her hand well up and her right arm stretched out. She gave herself up to the cattons of the movement that rocked her in his saddle. At the bottom of the hill, Hordolphe gave his horse its head and started to get right about and then it ended up suddenly the horses stopped. And her large blue veil fell about her. It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hesley clouds have another horizon between the outlines of the hills. Others, rent a sunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes, through a rift in the clouds beneath the ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of Jungvian. There were gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls, and the church steeple. Emma half-closerized to pick out her house and never had this privilege where her legs appeared so small. From the hide in which there were, the whole valley seemed an immense pale leg, sending off its vapor into the air. Clums of trees here and there stood out like black rocks and the tall lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind. By the side on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmied in the warm atmosphere, the earth, a ready-loving powder of tobacco that deadened the noise of the steps. And with the edge of the shoes, the horses, as they walked, kicked the fallen furrow cones in front of them. With all of them Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned away from time to time to avoid his look. And then she saw only the pine trunks in line, whose militant succession made her a little giddy. The horses were panting the leather as saddles creaked. Just as they were entering the forest, the sun shone out. God protects us, said Houdalp. Do you think so? She said. Forward, forward, he continued. He checked with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot. Long furrows by the roadside coaxed in Emma's turf. Houdalp leaned forward and removed him at the road along at other times to turn aside the branches he passed close to her and Emma felt his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue. The leaves no longer stir. There were spaces full of heathering flower, and plots of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were gray, bold, or golden colored according to the nature of the leaves. Often in the second was heard the fluttering of wings or else the horse soft-cry of the ravens flying out for Mr. the orcs. It is mounted, Houdalp facing up the horses. She walked on in front of the marsh between the paths. But her long habits got in a way although she held it up by the skirt. And the Houdalp walking behind her saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of a white stocking that seemed to him as if it were part of a nakedness. She stopped. I am tired, she said. Come try again, he went in courage. Then some hundred paces further on she again stopped and through a veil that fell sideways from her man's head with her hips. Her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating on her azure waves. But where are we going? He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Houdalp looks around him, biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where the copies had been cut. They sat down at the trunk of a foreign tree and Houdalp began speaking to her of his love. It did not begin by threatening her with companies. It was calm, serious, melancholy. Emma listened to him with both head and stirred bits of wood on the ground with the tip of her foot. But other words, aren't our destinies now one? Who know? She replied, you know that well, it is impossible. She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then having gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and human look, she said, hurriedly, I do not speak of it again. Where are the horses? Let's go back. Made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She appeared. Where are the horses? Where are the horses? Then a smiling, strange smile. His pupil fixed. His teeth set. He advanced without chest arms. She required trembling. She stammered. Oh, you frightened me. You hurt me. Let me go. If it must be, he went to me, his face changing. He again became respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. Then went back. He said, what was the matter with you? Why? How do I understand? You were mistaken, no doubt. In my soul, you are as a Madonna and a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to live. You must have your eyes, your voice, your thought. You're my friend, my sister, my angel. And he put out his arm when I raised. She feel he tried to disengage herself. He supported her thus as he walked along. But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves. Oh, one moment, said Hodolf. Do not let us go. Stay. It was further on to a small pool, where duckweeds made greens on the water. They did water lilies emotionally between the reeds, and the noise of the steps in the grass frogs jumped away to hide themselves. I am wrong, I am wrong, she said. I am mad to listen to you. Oh, Hodolf, said the young woman slowly leaned on his shoulder. The cloth of her habit coat against the velvet of his coat. She threw back a white neck, swelling with a sign of faltering in tears, with a long shadow and hiding her face. She gave herself up to him. The shades of night were falling. The horizontal sun passing between the branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there, around her, the leaves on the ground trembled luminous patches, as its hummingbirds flying about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere. Something sweet seemed to come forth from the trees. She felt a hut whose beating had begun again, with the blood cursing through her flesh like the stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood on the other hills, she heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered. And in silence, she heard it mingling like music with the last causation of a throbbing nerve. Hodorf, the cigar between his lips, was mending with his penknife one of the two broken bridles. They returned to the only bed of the same room, and the mud is so again the traces of the horses side by side, the same thickets, the same stones to the grass. Nothing around them seemed changed. And yet, for her, something had happened, more stupendous than it the mountains had moved in their places. Hodorf now again bent forward and took her hand to kiss it. She was charming on horseback, upright, with the slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of the horse, her face so much flushed by the fresh air and the redder the evening. On the entering Yonville, she met a horse prance in the road. People looked at her from the window. At dinner, her husband thought she looked well, but she pretend not to hear him when inquired by her ride. She remained sitting there with her elbow on the side of a play between the two light candles. Emma, he said. What? Well, I spent the afternoon at Michelin-Dixon. He has an old car, silver fine, only a little broken need, and that could be boat. I am sure, for a hundred crowns. He had a thing he might please you. I would be spoken in, boat it. I've been right to tell me. She nodded her head in the sand in a quarter of an hour later. Are you going out tonight? She asked. Yes, why? Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear. And as soon as she had got rid of Charles, she went and shut herself up in a room. At first, she fell sterned. She saw the trees, the paths, the ditches, who dove, and she again felt the pressure of his arm while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled. But when she saw herself in the glass, she wandered her face. Never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, I have a lover, a lover. Delighting at the idea that the second puberty had come to her. So alas, she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had disappeared. She was entering upon marvels, who all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. And as your infinity encompassed her, the heights of sentiments buckled on her thought, an ordinary existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the interspaces of these heights. Then she recalled herrings of the books that she had read and the lyric readers and all these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were, a natural part of these imaginings. And realized the love dream of the youth that she saw herself in this type of amorous whim in which she had so envied. Besides, Emma felt satisfaction of revenge. Had she not suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love, so long pent up, burst forth in the full joyous bobbling, as she tasted it without remorse, without anxiety, without trouble. The day following passed with a new sweetness. And they made vows to one another. She told him of a sorrows, who thought of interrupting her with kisses. And she, looking at him through affluent highs, asked him to call her again by her name to say that he loves her. They were in the forests as yesterday in the shadow of some wooden shoemaker. The walls were of straw, and the roof so low that it had its tube that was filled side by side in the bed of dry leaves. From that day forth, the road to one another regularly every evening. Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden by the river in the fisher of the wall. Hodor left the game to fetch it and put another there, but she always found the fault with, as too short. One morning, when Charles had gone out before daybreak, she was seized with the fancy to see Hodor's response. She would go quickly to L'Avichette's stay there now, and be back again at Yom Ville while everyone was still asleep. This idea made her panned with desire, and she soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps without looking behind her. They was just breaking. Emma from afar recognized the lover's house. Two dove-tailed weather cocks stood out black against the pale dawn. Mio on the far meadow was a detached building. She fell with her pizza shuttle. She entered it with the doors, as her approach had opened wide to their own code, a large straight staircase laid up to the corridor. Emma raised with the latch of the door, and suddenly at the end of the room, she saw a man sleeping, but it was Hodor's, she added a cry. You hear, you hear! You repeat, how did he manage to come? Ah, your dress is damp. I love you, she answered, throwing her arms about his neck. This furthest piece of daring successful. Now every time Charles went out, early Emma dressed quickly and slipped and tipped down steps that led to the water side. But when the plan for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls alongside the river. The bank was slippery, in order not to fall, she could hold other types of faded wall flowers, and she went across plowed fields in which she sank, stumbling and clogging her thin shoes. Her scarf knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. She was afraid of the oxen, she began to run. She arrived out of breath with rose cheeks and breathing out from the whole person a fresh perfume of sap of verger or the open air. But this hour Hodor still slept, it was like a spring morning coming into this room. The yellow curtains along the windows let her heavy, whiteish light enter softly. Emma felt about opening and closing her eyes while the drops of the dew hanging from her hair formed as it were, the topaz Oriol ran aface. Hodor, laughing, drew her to him and pressed her to his breast. Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers at the tables, combed her hair within its comb, and looked at herself in his shaving glass. Often she put between teeth a big pipe at the lay of the table by the bed amongst lambs and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water. To them a good quarrel of an hour say goodbye, and Emma cried. She would have wished never to leave, Hodor, something stronger than herself forced her to leave. So much so, the one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out. What's the matter with you? She said, are you ill? Tell me. At last, he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming impudent that she was compromising herself. End of part two, chapter nine. Recording by Maya Defidis. Part two, chapter 10 of Madame Bovary. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flober, translated by Eleanor Marx Aveling. Part two, chapter 10. Gradually, Rodol's fears took possession of her. At first, love had intoxicated her and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this or even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house, she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon and every village window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the plows and she stopped short, white and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead. One morning, as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub, half buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch. Emma, half fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on and a man stepped out of the tub like a jack-in-the-box. He had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips and a red nose. It was Captain Biné lying in ambush for wild ducks. You ought to have called out long ago, he exclaimed, when one sees a gun, one should always give warning. The tax collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had for a prefectorial order having prohibited duck hunting except in boats. Monsieur Biné, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But this anxiety whetted his pleasure and all alone in his tub he congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness. At sight of Emma, he seemed relieved from a great weight and at once entered upon a conversation. It's warm, it's nipping. Emma answered nothing, he went on, and you're out so early. Yes, she said, stammering, I'm just come from the nurse where my child is. Ah, very good, very good. For myself, I'm here just as you see me, since break of day, but the weather is so muggy that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun. Good evening, Monsieur Biné, she interrupted him, turning on her heel. You're servant, madame," he replied, dryly, and he went back into his tub. Emma regretted having left the tax collector so abruptly. No doubt he would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the worst possible excuse. Everyone at Yonville, knowing that the little bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction. This path led only to low shet. Biné then would gas when she came, and he would not keep silence. He would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening, racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag. Charles, after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed by way of distraction to take her to the chemists, and the first person she caught sight of in the shop was the tax collector again. He was standing in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was saying, please give me half an ounce of vitriol. Just in, cried the druggist, bring us the sulfuric acid. Then to Emma, who was going up to Madame Aume's room, no, stay here. It isn't worthwhile going up. She's just coming down. Warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good day, doctor. For the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word doctor, as if addressing another by it, reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it. Now, take care not to upset the mortars. You've better fetch some chairs from the little room. You know very well that the armed chairs are not to be taken out of the drawing room. And to put his armchair back in its place, he was darting away from the counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid. Sugar acid, said the chemist contemptuously, don't know it. I'm ignorant of it. But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid, isn't it? Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some copper water, with which to remove rust from his hunting things. Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying, indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp. Nevertheless, replied the tax collector with a sly look, there are people who like it. She was stifling. And give me, will he never go? thought she. And give me half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the varnished leather of my togs. The druggist was beginning to cut the wax, when Madame Aumay appeared. Emma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Attali following. She sat down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a footstall, while his eldest sister hovered round the juju box near her papar. The latter was filling funnels and caulking files, sticking on labels, making up parcels. Around him all was silent, only from time to time were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil. And how's the little woman? suddenly asked Madame Aumay. Silence exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in his waste book. Why didn't you bring her? she went on in a low voice. Hush, hush, said Emma, pointing with her finger to the druggist. But Bine quite absorbed in looking over his bill, that probably heard nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma relieved, uttered a deep sigh. How hard your breathing, said Madame Aumay. Well, you see, it's rather warm, she replied. So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one. All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night, he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the gate, which Charles thought lost. To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She jumped up with a start, but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild with impatience. If her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go on reading very quietly, as if the book amused her. But Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too. Come now, Emma, he said. It is time. Yes, I'm coming, she answered. Then, as the candles dazzled him, he turned to the wall and fell asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. Rodolphe had a large cloak. He wrapped her in it, and putting his arm round her waist, he drew her, without a word, to the end of the garden. It was in the arbor, on the same seat of old sticks, where formerly Leon had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought of him now. The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they heard the river flowing, and now again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the darkness, and sometimes vibrating with one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense black waves, pressing forward to engulf them. The cold of the nights made them clasp closer. The size of their lips seemed to them deeper, their eyes that they could hardly see, larger. And in the midst of the silence, low words were spoken that fell on their souls sonorous crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied vibrations. When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting room between the cart shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rudolf settled down there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Sharl, which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic. As, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley. Someone is coming, she said. He blew out the light. Have you your pistols? Why? Why to defend yourself, replied Emma. From your husband, oh poor devil! And Rudolf finished his sentence with a gesture that said, I could crush him with a flip of my finger. She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalized her. Rudolf reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious, for he had no reason to hate the good Sharl, not being what is called devoured by jealousy. None this subject Emma had taken a great vow that he did not think in the best of taste. Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on exchanging miniatures. They had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring, a real wedding ring, in sign of an eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening chimes of the voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her mother, hers, and of his mother, his. Rudolf had lost his twenty years ago. Emma nonetheless consoled him with caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon, I'm sure that above there together they approve of our love. But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for him, and drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride. And his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming since it was lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways changed. He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her, like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. She would not believe it. She redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolf concealed his indifference less and less. She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection. It was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her. She almost feared him. Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolf having succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy. And at the end of six months, when the springtime came, they were to one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame. It was the time of year when old Ruhl sent his turkey in remembrance of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter. Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following lines. My dear children, I hope this will find you well, and that this one will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time, for a change, I'll give you a turkey cock, unless you have a preference for some dabs, and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I have had an accident with my cart sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees. The harvest has not been over good, either. Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor Emma. Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped his pen to dream a little while. For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other day at the fair at Yvetl, where I had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be pitted with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I heard from a peddler, who, travelling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth drawn, that Bovery was as usual working hard. That doesn't surprise me, and he showed me his tooth. We had some coffee together. I asked him if he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So much the better, my dear children, and may God send you every imaginable happiness. It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little granddaughter, Beatt Bovery. I have planted an Orléans plum-tree for her in the garden under your room, and I won't have it touched, unless it is to have jam made for her by and by, that I will keep in the cupboard for her when she comes. Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best compliments, your loving father, Theodore Role. She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The spelling mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma followed the kindly thought that cackled right through it, like a hen half-hidden in the hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on her dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in the great flame of the seasedges? She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine, the colts nade when anyone passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees, wheeling round in the light, struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been at that time! What freedom! What hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage, and her love, thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road. But what, then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer. An April ray was dancing on the china of the what-not, the fire burnt. Beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet. The day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter. In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt. Desdi Boudoir was raking by her side, and every time he came near, she leant forward, beating the air with both her arms. Bring her to me, said her mother, rushing to embrace her. How I love you, my poor child, how I love you! Then, noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at once for warm water and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite thunder-stricken at the success of tenderness. That evening Rodolf found her more serious than usual. That will pass over, he concluded. It's a whim. And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous. Ah, you're losing your time, my lady! And he pretended not to notice her melancholy size, nor the handkerchief she took out. Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Char, if it had not been better to have been able to love him. But he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the druggist came just in time to provide her with an opportunity. AND OF CHAPTER X