A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here

and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished

themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their

differences in age, dress, or face.

Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,

brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate

pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that

is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the

veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite

nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low

cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they

wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave

forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air

of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young.

In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and

through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality,

the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised

and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society

of loose women.

A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy

with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.

They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoly,

Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum

by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation

full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very

young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romolus,"

and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained

that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors

that had disfigured the name of his horse.

The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim.

Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair

and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary

turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed

against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux

came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in

a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly,

skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But

in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until

then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She

was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest.

She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand

in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her

teeth.




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