The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville,
but who thought himself bound not to budge from it,
sighed as he saw them go.
“Well, a pleasant journey!” he said to
them; “happy mortals that you are!”
Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a
blue silk gown with four flounces—
“You are as lovely as a Venus. You’ll
cut a figure at Rouen.”
The diligence stopped at the “Croix-Rouge”
in the Place Beauvoisine. It was the inn that
is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables
and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of
the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy
gigs of the commercial travellers—a good
old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in
the wind on winter nights, always full of people,
noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky
with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow
by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine,
and that always smells of the village, like ploughboys
dressed in Sundayclothes, has a cafe on the street,
and towards the countryside a kitchen-garden.
Charles at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes
with the gallery, the pit with the boxes; asked for
explanations, did not understand them; was sent from
the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to
the inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several
times traversed the whole length of the town from
the theatre to the boulevard.
Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet.
The doctor was much afraid of missing the beginning,
and, without having had time to swallow a plate of
soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the
theatre, which were still closed.
The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically
enclosed between the balustrades. At the corner
of the neighbouring streets huge bills repeated in
quaint letters “Lucie de Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc.”
The weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration
trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from
pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and then
a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred
the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors
of the public-houses. A little lower down, however,
one was refreshed by a current of icy air that smelt
of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation
from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black warehouses
where they made casks.
For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going
in wished to have a little stroll in the harbour,
and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in his hand,
in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against
his stomach.
Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the
vestibule. She involuntarily smiled with vanity
on seeing the crowd rushing to the right by the other
corridor while she went up the staircase to the reserved
seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with
her finger the large tapestried door. She breathed
in with all her might the dusty smell of the lobbies,
and when she was seated in her box she bent forward
with the air of a duchess.
