Page 103 - madame-bovary

for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had
put it behind my ear!’
Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see
if the ‘Hirondelle’ were not coming. She started. A man
dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last
gleam of the twilight one could see that his face was rubi-
cund and his form athletic.
‘What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?’ asked the
landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of
the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row.
‘Will you take something? A thimbleful of Cassis*? A glass
of wine?’
*Black currant liqueur.
The priest declined very politely. He had come for his
umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Er-
nemont convent, and after asking Madame Lefrancois to
have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left
for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.
When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots
along the square, he thought the priest’s behaviour just
now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment
seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tip-
pled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of
the tithe.
The landlady took up the defence of her curie.
‘Besides, he could double up four men like you over his
knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw;
he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong.’
‘Bravo!’ said the chemist. ‘Now just send your daughters

10 Madame Bovary