The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for forms almost broke down under their weight.  They ate hugely.  Each one stuffed himself on his own account.  Sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated above the table between the hanging lamps.  Rodolphe, leaning against the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard nothing.  Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty plates, his neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing noise.  He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all infinity before him in the vistas of the future.

He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and give some advice to Binet.

The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon biting his tail, failed completely.  Now and then a meagre Roman-candle went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness.  Emma silently nestled against Charles’s shoulder; then, raising her chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky.  Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.

They went out one by one.  The stars shone out.  A few crops of rain began to fall.  She knotted her fichu round her bare head.

At this moment the councillor’s carriage came out from the inn.

His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.

“Truly,” said the druggist, “one ought to proceed most rigorously against drunkenness!  I should like to see written up weekly at the door of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the names of all those who during the week got intoxicated on alcohol.  Besides, with regard to statistics, one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in case of need.  But excuse me!”

     Specifically for that.

And he once more ran off to the captain.  The latter was going back to see his lathe again.

“Perhaps you would not do ill,” Homais said to him, “to send one of your men, or to go yourself—­”

“Leave me alone!” answered the tax-collector.  “It’s all right!”