Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into
the square; they all spoke at once, asking for news,
for explanations, for hampers. Hivert did not
know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands
of the place in town. He went to the shops and
brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old
iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his
mistress, caps from the milliner’s, locks from
the hair-dresser’s and all along the road on
his return journey he distributed his parcels, which
he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting
at the top of his voice, over the enclosures of the
yards.
An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary’s
greyhound had run across the field. They had
whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had
even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment
to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary to
go on.
Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles
of this misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux, a draper,
who happened to be in the coach with her, had tried
to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs
recognizing their masters at the end of long years.
One, he said had been told of, who had come back to
Paris from Constantinople. Another had gone one
hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum
four rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle,
which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a
sudden jumped on his back in the street as he was
going to dine in town.
Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux,
and a nurse, and they had to wake up Charles in his
corner, where he had slept soundly since night set
in.
Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages
to madame and his respects to monsieur; said he was
charmed to have been able to render them some slight
service, and added with a cordial air that he had
ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.
When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up
to the chimney.
With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress
at the knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle,
held out her foot in its black boot to the fire above
the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up
the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the
woof of her gowns, the fine pores of her fair skin,
and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and again.
A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of
the wind through the half-open door.
On the other side of the chimney a young man with
fair hair watched her silently.
As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he
was a clerk at the notary’s, Monsieur Guillaumin,
Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who was the second
habitue of the “Lion d’Or”) frequently
put back his dinner-hour in hope that some traveler
might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in
the evening. On the days when his work was done
early, he had, for want of something else to do, to
come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a
tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with
delight that he accepted the landlady’s suggestion
that he should dine in company with the newcomers,
and they passed into the large parlour where Madame
Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had
the table laid for four.
