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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, ‘am 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

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of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the

gravedigger, 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 leant 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.

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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 Place a large hired landau

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; everyone pushed forward.

A few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the

prefect seemed to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked

jades, trapesing 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 firemen 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

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coat with silver braiding, with 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 recognised

the mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the

prefect was not able to come. He himself was a councillor

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

councillor 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 ‘Lion d’Or’, where

a number of peasants collected to look at the carriage. The

drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen

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one by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in

red utrecht velvet arm-chairs 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 of 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 unsponged

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, Lestiboudois 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 Lheureux to the chemist, who

was passing to his place, ‘that they ought to have put up

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two Venetian masts with something rather severe and rich

for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty effect.’

‘To be sure,’ replied Homais; ‘but what can you

expect? The mayor took everything on his own shoulders.

He hasn’t much taste. Poor Tuvache! and he is even

completely destitute of what is called the genius of art.’

Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had

gone up to the first floor of the town hall, to the ‘councilroom,’

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 commotion on the platform, long

whisperings, much parleying. At last the councillor got up.

They knew now that his name was Lieuvain, 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

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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 a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace

respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture,

and the fine arts?’

‘I ought,’ said Rodolphe, ‘to get back a little further.’

‘Why?’ said Emma.

But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to

an extraordinary pitch. He declaimed—

‘This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil

discord ensanguined our public places, when the landlord,

the business-man, 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

tocsins, when the most subversive doctrines audaciously

sapped foundations.’

‘Well, someone down there might see me,’ Rodolphe

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.’

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‘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 there? Everywhere commerce

and the 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 Rodolphe, ‘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.

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‘And this is what you have understood,’ said the

councillor.

‘You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific

pioneers of a work that belongs wholly to civilization!

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 Rodolphe, ‘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 iron darkness into light.’

And as he ended Rodolphe 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

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plunged in the prejudices of another age as still 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 else 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!’ said Rodolphe. ‘Always ‘duty.’ I am sick of

the word. They 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?’

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‘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 changes,

that brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion

here below, of the earth earthly, like the mass of 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 Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a

pocket-handkerchief. 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 laborious 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 baker’s,

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

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agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so

far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected on all