racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate,” etc.  And the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, “Homais, Chemist.”  Then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word “Laboratory” appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up once more repeats “Homais” in gold letters on a black ground.

Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville.  The street (the only one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops short at the turn of the highroad.  If it is left on the right hand and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached.

At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue to crowd together towards the gate.  The keeper, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes there.  From year to year, however, his small field grows smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.

“You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!” the curie at last said to him one day.  This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time; but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally.

Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at Yonville.  The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linen-draper’s; the chemist’s fetuses, like lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane.

On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans.  To-morrow was market-day.  The meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made.  Moreover, she had the boarders’ meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped.

From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.

A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney.  His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage:  this was the chemist.