Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the

bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small

blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar,

and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently

sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while

Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague

conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to

the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of

novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where

she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked

of everything till to the end of dinner.

When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room in the

new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was

asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was

waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw

stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had

taken in his other hand the cure's umbrella, they started.

The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the

earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was

only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost

immediately, and the company dispersed.

As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster

fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the

wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish

light passed through the curtainless windows.

She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields,

half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along

the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were

scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses

on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men who had brought the

furniture had left everything about carelessly.

This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place.

The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her

arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth.

And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in

her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in

the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life

lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be

better.




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