Page 107 - madame-bovary

CHAPTER TWO

mma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux,
Eand a nurse, and they had to wake up Charles in his
corner, where he had slept soundly since night set in.
Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to
madame and his respects to monsieur; said he was charmed
to have been able to render them some slight service, and
added with a cordial air that he had ventured to invite him-
self, his wife being away.
When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up
to the chimney.
With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the
knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her
foot in its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of
mutton. The flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with
a crude light the woof of her gowns, the fine pores of her
fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and
again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of
the wind through the half-open door.
On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair
hair watched her silently.
As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a
clerk at the notary’s, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon
Dupuis (it was he who was the second habitue of the ‘Lion
d’Or’) frequently put back his dinner-hour in hope that

10 Madame Bovary