Page 108 - madame-bovary

some traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could
chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done
early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come
punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete
with Binet. It was therefore with delight that he accepted
the landlady’s suggestion that he should dine in company
with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour
where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off,
had had the table laid for four.
Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for
fear of coryza; then, turning to his neighbour—
‘Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so
abominably in our ‘Hirondelle.’’
‘That is true,’ replied Emma; ‘but moving about always
amuses me. I like change of place.’
‘It is so tedious,’ sighed the clerk, ‘to be always riveted to
the same places.’
‘If you were like me,’ said Charles, ‘constantly obliged to
be in the saddle’—
‘But,’ Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame
Bovary, ‘nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant—when
one can,’ he added.
‘Moreover,’ said the druggist, ‘the practice of medicine
is not very hard work in our part of the world, for the state
of our roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as
the farmers are prosperous, they pay pretty well. We have,
medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis,
bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few in-
termittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of

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