Page 129 - madame-bovary

beginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the ground
under the pines and watched the sky through his fingers.
‘How bored I am!’ he said to himself, ‘how bored I am!’
He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village,
with Homais for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for
master. The latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wear-
ing gold-rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white
cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements, although
he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning
had impressed the clerk.
As to the chemist’s spouse, she was the best wife in Nor-
mandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father,
her mother, her cousins, weeping for other’s woes, letting
everything go in her household, and detesting corsets; but
so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common
in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that al-
though she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept
in rooms next each other and he spoke to her daily, he never
thought that she might be a woman for another, or that she
possessed anything else of her sex than the gown.
And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two
or three publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache,
the mayor, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons,
who farmed their own lands and had feasts among them-
selves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable companions.
But from the general background of all these human
faces Emma’s stood out isolated and yet farthest off; for be-
tween her and him he seemed to see a vague abyss.
In the beginning he had called on her several times

1 Madame Bovary