Page 127 - madame-bovary

looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoul-
der of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvety
collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully ar-
ranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one
wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk’s chief occu-
pations 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 bank, 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 eye; long, thin
grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them,
and spread themselves upon the limpid water like stream-
ing hair; sometimes at the tip 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 sprung up between the bricks, and with
the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary, as she passed,
made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust,
or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught

1 Madame Bovary