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. 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.

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."




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