She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the

pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other

tending their flowers at their windows.

Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for

on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was

bright, one could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile of

Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be

heard at the Lion d'Or.

One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug in velvet and

wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur

Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief;

every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the

clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be his

lover.

He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and

of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him-"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?"

He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to

her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the

shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire.

Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put

it off to times that he again deferred.

Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution

soon deserted him in Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in,

invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient

in the neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went

out. Her husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Emma,

she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come

suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies,

which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf,

and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on

the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she

would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a

rent in the wall of it.




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