Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his

scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated

various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be

there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took

her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that

she wore over her boots when there was snow.

First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais

played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her advice.

Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of

her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made

to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up. From her

turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually

paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then her dress fell

on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the

ground. When Leon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it,

he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one.

When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played

dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table,

turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration". She had brought her ladies'

journal with her. Leon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings

together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages. She

often begged him to read her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a

languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love

passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais

was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six.

Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in

front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the

cinders; the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading.

Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the

gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances

with their balancing-poles. Leon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his

sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation

seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard.

Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce

of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did

not trouble himself about it.

On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked

with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of

the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him

at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses

fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on

his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.




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