Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist’s, his scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated various respectable persons from him.  The clerk never failed to be there.  As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots when there was snow.

First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her advice.

Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon.  With every movement that she made to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up.  From her turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost itself little by little in the shade.  Then her dress fell on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the ground.  When Leon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one.

When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table, turning over the leaves of “L’Illustration”.  She had brought her ladies’ journal with her.  Leon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages.  She often begged him to read her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love passages.  But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him.  Monsieur Homais was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six.  Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in front of the fire, and were soon asleep.  The fire was dying out in the cinders; the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading.

Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances with their balancing-poles.  Leon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard.

Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce of books and of romances.  Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did not trouble himself about it.

On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked with figures to the thorax and painted blue.  This was an attention of the clerk’s.  He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on his knees in the “Hirondelle,” pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.

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.