Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only

one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops

short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand and

the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached.

At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall

was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all

the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore,

continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who is at once

gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the

parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to

plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows

smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to

rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.

"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curie at last said to him one

day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time;

but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and

even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally.

Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed

at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the

church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from

the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like lumps of white amadou,

rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of

the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its

poodle mane.

On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow

Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated

great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The

meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee

made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the

doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with

bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for

brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the

long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of

plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was

being chopped.

From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the

servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.

A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and

wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the

chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he

appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head

in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.




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