He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over

the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town

council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a

distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled

with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground,

and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door.

It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt,

prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders.

The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the

coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the

old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed

away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came

down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.

Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all

spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert

did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place

in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for

the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his

mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and

all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels,

which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of

his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.

An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across

the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had

even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight

of her; but it had been necessary to go on.

Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of this misfortune.

Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with

her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs

recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said had

been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another

had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four

rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve

years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street

as he was going to dine in town.




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