When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool.

She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.

Everyone looked at them.  They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward.  That woman knew how to waltz!  They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.

Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed.

Charles dragged himself up by the balusters.  His “knees were going up into his body.”  He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots.

Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.

The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling.  She breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids.  The music of the ball was still murmuring in her ears.  And she tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to give up.

Day began to break.  She looked long at the windows of the chateau, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the evening before.  She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated, blended with them.  But she was shivering with cold.  She undressed, and cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.

There were a great many people to luncheon.  The repast lasted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor.

Next, Mademoiselle d’Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing.  The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the chateau.  The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables.

Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black letters.  Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when anyone went near and said “Tchk! tchk!” The boards of the harness room shone like the flooring of a drawing room.  The carriage harness was piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.

Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to.  The dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.