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Tuvache, the mayor, 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 the 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.

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CHAPTER FOUR

When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom

for the sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling,

in which there was on the mantelpiece a large bunch of

coral spread out against the looking-glass. Seated in her

arm chair near the window, she could see the villagers pass

along the pavement.

Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion

d’Or. Emma could hear him coming from afar; she leant

forward listening, and the young man glided past the

curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without

turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin

resting on her left hand, she let the embroidery she had

begun fall on her knees, she often shuddered at the

apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past. She would

get up and order the table to be laid.

Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in

hand, he came in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no one,

therepeatingalways same phrase, ‘Good evening,

everybody.’ Then, when he had taken his seat at the table

between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients,

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and the latter consulted his as to the probability of their

payment. Next they talked of ‘what was in the paper.’

Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he

repeated it from end to end, with the reflections of the

penny-a-liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes

that had occurred in France or abroad. But the subject

becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out

some remarks on the dishes before him.

Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out

to madame the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant,

gave her some advice on the manipulation of stews and

the hygiene of seasoning.

He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a

bewildering manner. Moreover, Homais, with his head

fuller of recipes than his shop of jars, excelled in making all

kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew

also all the latest inventions in economic stoves, together

with the art of preserving cheese and of curing sick wines.

At eight o’clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up

the shop.

Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially

if Felicite was there, for he half noticed that his apprentice

was fond of the doctor’s house.

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‘The young dog,’ he said, ‘is beginning to have ideas,

and the devil take me if I don’t believe he’s in love with

your servant!’

But a more serious fault with which he reproached

Justin was his constantly listening to conversation. On

Sunday, for example, one could not get him out of the

drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called him

to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the armchairs,

and dragging down with their backs calico chair-

covers that were too large.

Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist’s,

his scandal-mongering and political opinions having

successfully alienated various respectable persons from him.

The clerk never failed to be there. As soon as he heard the

bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took her shawl, and

put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that

she wore over her boots when there was snow.

First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next

Monsieur Homais played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind

her gave her advice.

Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he

saw the teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon. With

every movement that she made to throw her cards the

right side of her dress was drawn up. From her turned-up

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hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing

gradually paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then

her dress fell on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of

folds, and reached the ground. When Leon occasionally

felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back as if he

had trodden upon some one.

When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the

Doctor played dominoes, and Emma, changing her place,

leant her elbow on the table, turning over the leaves of

‘L’Illustration". She had brought her ladies’ journal with

her. Leon sat down near her; they looked at the

engravings together, and waited for one another at the

bottom of the pages. She often begged him to read her the

verses; Leon declaimed them in a languid voice, to which

he carefully gave a dying fall in the love passages. But the

noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais

was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give

him a double-six. Then the three hundred finished, they

both stretched themselves out in front of the fire, and

were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the cinders;

the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading.

Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around

the lampshade, on the gauze of which were painted

clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances with their

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balancing-poles. Leon stopped, pointing with a gesture to

his sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and

their conversation seemed the more sweet to them

because it was unheard.

Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a

constant commerce of books and of romances. Monsieur

Bovary, little given to jealousy, did not trouble himself

about it.

On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological

head, all marked with figures to the thorax and painted

blue. This was an attention of the clerk’s. He showed him

many others, even to doing errands for him at Rouen; and

the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses

fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary,

bringing them back on his knees in the ‘Hirondelle,’

pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.

She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her

window to hold the pots. The clerk, too, had his small

hanging garden; they saw each other tending their flowers

at their windows.

Of the windows of the village there was one yet more

often occupied; for on Sundays from morning to night,

and every morning when the weather was bright, one

could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile

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of Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose

monotonous humming could be heard at the Lion d’Or.

One evening on coming home Leon found in his room

a rug in velvet and wool with leaves on a pale ground. He

called Madame Homais, Monsieur Homais, Justin, the

children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief; every one

wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor’s wife give the

clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she

must be his lover.

He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of

her charms and of her wit; so much so, that Binet once

roughly answered him—

‘What does it matter to me since I’m not in her set?’

He tortured himself to find out how he could make his

declaration to her, and always halting between the fear of

displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward, he

wept with discouragement and desire. Then he took

energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it

off to times that he again deferred.

Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but

this resolution soon deserted him in Emma’s presence, and

when Charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into his

chaise to go with him to see some patient in the

neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame,

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and went out. Her husband, was he not something

belonging to her? As to Emma, she did not ask herself

whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come

suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings—a hurricane

of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots

up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the

abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it

makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she would

thus have remained in her security when she suddenly

discovered a rent in the wall of it.

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CHAPTER FIVE

It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the

snow was falling.

They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais,

and Monsieur Leon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was

being built in the valley a mile and a half from Yonville.

The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give

them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them,

carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder.

Nothing, however, could be less curious than this

curiosity. A great piece of waste ground, on which pellmell,

amid a mass of sand and stones, were a few break-

wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a quadrangular

building pierced by a number of little windows. The

building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the

joists of the roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the

gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears fluttered its

tricoloured ribbons in the wind.

Homais was talking. He explained to the company the

future importance of this establishment, computed the

strength of the floorings, the thickness of the walls, and

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regretted extremely not having a yard-stick such as

Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use.

Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his

shoulder, and she looked at the sun’s disc shedding afar

through the mist his pale splendour. She turned. Charles

was there. His cap was drawn down over his eyebrows,

and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look

of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was

irritating to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all

the platitude of the bearer.

While she was considering him thus, tasting in her

irritation a sort of depraved pleasure, Leon made a step

forward. The cold that made him pale seemed to add a

more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and his

neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the

skin; the lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of

hair, and his large blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed

to Emma more limpid and more beautiful than those

mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.

‘Wretched boy!’ suddenly cried the chemist.

And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated

himself into a heap of lime in order to whiten his boots.

At the reproaches with which he was being overwhelmed

Napoleon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes with

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a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered

his.

‘Ah!’ she said to herself, ‘he carried a knife in his

pocket like a peasant.’

The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to

Yonville.

In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her

neighbour’s, and when Charles had left and she felt herself

alone, the comparison re-began with the clearness of a

sensation almost actual, and with that lengthening of

perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from

her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as

she had down there, Leon standing up with one hand

behind his cane, and with the other holding Athalie, who

was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She thought him

charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she

recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had

spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she

repeated, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss—

‘Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?’ she asked

herself; ‘but with whom? With me?’

All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt.

The flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the

ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching out her arms.

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Then began the eternal lamentation: ‘Oh, if Heaven

had out willed it! And why not? What prevented it?’

When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to

have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing,

she complained of a headache, then asked carelessly what

had happened that evening.

‘Monsieur Leon,’ he said, ‘went to his room early.’

She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul

filled with a new delight.

The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from

Monsieur Lherueux, the draper. He was a man of ability,

was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman,

he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of the

Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a

decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more

vivid the keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one

knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar said some, a

banker at Routot according to others. What was certain

was that he made complex calculations in his head that

would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to

obsequiousness, he always held himself with his back bent

in the position of one who bows or who invites.

After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape,

he put down a green bandbox on the table, and began by