Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had expected.

Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing-"However, if you don't see me by three o'clock do not wait for me, my

darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!"

He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no strength

left for any sentiment.

Four o'clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville, mechanically

obeying the force of old habits.

The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and sharp,

when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen folk, in

Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She reached the

Place du Parvis. People were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed

out through the three doors like a stream through the three arches of

a bridge, and in the middle one, more motionless than a rock, stood the

beadle.

Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had

entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out before her, less

profound than her love; and she walked on weeping beneath her veil,

giddy, staggering, almost fainting.

"Take care!" cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard that was

thrown open.

She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between the

shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who was it?

She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.

Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was empty. She

was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean against a wall to keep

herself from falling.

Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know. All

within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost, sinking

at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on

reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she saw the good Homais, who was watching

a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the

"Hirondelle." In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchief six

cheminots for his wife.

Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped loaves,

that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige of Gothic food

that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the Crusades, and with which

the robust Normans gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the

table, in the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of hippocras

and huge boars' heads, the heads of Saracens to be devoured. The

druggist's wife crunched them up as they had done--heroically, despite

her wretched teeth. And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never

failed to bring her home some that he bought at the great baker's in the

Rue Massacre.




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