the door, shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the wash-stand, near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu Laensbergh lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou. Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a “Fame” blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer’s prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.
Emma’s child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked herself to and fro.
Léon walked up and down the room! it seemed strange to him to see this beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty. Madame Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who had just been sick over her collar. The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn’t show.
“She gives me other doses,” she said: “I am always a-washing of her. If you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have a little soap; it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn’t trouble you then.”
“Very well! very well!” said Emma. “Good morning, Madame Rollet,” and she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.
The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.
“I’m that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I’m sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that’d last me a month, and I’d take it of a morning with some milk.”
After having submitted to her thanks, Madame Bovary left. She had gone a little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned round. It was the nurse.
“What is it?”
Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year that the captain—
“Oh be quick!” said Emma.
“Well,” the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, “I’m afraid he’ll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men—”
“But you are to have some,” Emma repeated; “I will give you some. You bother me!”
“Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see, in consequence of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him.”
“Do make haste, Mere Rollet!”
“Well,” the latter continued making a curtsey, “if it weren’t asking too much,” and she curtsied once more, “if you would”—and her eyes begged—“ajar of brandy,” she said at last, “and I’d rub your little one’s feet with it; they’re as tender as one’s tongue.”
Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Léon’s arm. She walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvet collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She noticed his nails, which were longer than one wore them at Yonville. It was one of his chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing-desk.
They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the banks, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eyes; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; sometimes at the top of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma’s dress rustling round her.
The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had