Page 113 - madame-bovary

sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to
dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections,
and pictures of happiness. For myself, living here far from
the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville affords so
few resources.’
‘Like Tostes, no doubt,’ replied Emma; ‘and so I always
subscribed to a lending library.’
‘If madame will do me the honour of making use of
it’, said the chemist, who had just caught the last words,
‘I have at her disposal a library composed of the best au-
thors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the ‘Echo
des Feuilletons’; and in addition I receive various period-
icals, among them the ‘Fanal de Rouen’ daily, having the
advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy,
Forges, Neufchatel, Yonville, and vicinity.’
For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the
servant Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers
over the flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot ev-
erything, and constantly left the door of the billiard-room
half open, so that it beat against the wall with its hooks.
Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot
on one of the bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary
was sitting. She wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up
like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar, and with the move-
ments of her head the lower part of her face gently sunk
into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while
Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of
those vague conversations where the hazard of all that is
said brings you back to the fixed centre of a common sym-

11 Madame Bovary