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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 colza, farther 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.

Tuvache by his side listened to him with staring eyes.

Monsieur Derozerays 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 waistcoats in

sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the platform

rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with

out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air.

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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

Tuvache, 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, wore an 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, others 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

Lieuvain’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 bleating of the

lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In fact,

the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus

far, and these lowed from time to time, while with their

tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung

above their mouths.

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Rodolphe 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 organised

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 Vaubyessard, 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 old diligence, the ‘Hirondelle,’ that

was slowly descending the hill of Leux, dragging after it a

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long trail of dust. It was in this yellow carriage that Leon

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 Leon 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 fanned her face with her

handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples

she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the

councillor intoning his phrases. He said—‘Continue,

persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor

to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism.

‘Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the

soil, to good manures, 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

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forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise 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 accede to your

just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden

of your painful sacrifices.’

Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur

Derozerays got up, beginning another speech. His was not

perhaps so florid as that of the councillor, 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 Bovary 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, tilled the soil, planted the vine.

Was this a good, and in this discovery was there not more

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of injury than of gain? Monsieur Derozerays set himself

this problem. From magnetism little by little Rodolphe

had come to affinities, and while the president was citing

Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his

cabbages, and the Emperors of China inaugurating the

year by the sowing of 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 Bizat of Quincampoix.’

‘Did I know I should accompany you?’

‘Seventy francs.’

‘A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you—

I remained.’

‘Manures!’

‘And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days,

all my life!’

‘To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!’

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‘For I have never in the society of any other person

found so complete a charm.’

‘To Monsieur Bain of Givry-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 Belot of Notre-Dame.’

‘Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your

life, shall I not?’

‘Porcine race; prizes—equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and

Cullembourg, sixty 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

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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: ‘Flemish 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.

‘Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-

Guerriere, for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a

silver medal—value, twenty-five francs!’

‘Where is Catherine Leroux?’ repeated the councillor.

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 Tuvache.

‘Yes; here she is.’

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

‘Then let her come up!’

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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 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

councillor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to

advance or run away, nor why the crowd was pushing her

and the jury were smiling at her.

Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-

century of servitude.

‘Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth

Leroux!’ said the councillor, who had taken the list of

prize-winners from the president; and, looking at the piece

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of paper and the old woman by turns, he repeated in a

fatherly tone—‘Approach! approach!’

‘Are you deaf?’ said Tuvache, fidgeting 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 a

smile of beatitude spread over her face; and as she walked

away they could hear her muttering ‘I’ll give it to our cure

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 Rodolphe’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.

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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. Rodolphe, 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

shakos, 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 Homais, and the

druggist, who was worrying about the danger of stray

rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and