Page 137 - madame-bovary

CHAPTER FIVE

t was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow
Iwas falling.
They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais,
and Monsieur Leon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being
built in the valley a mile and a half from Yonville. The drug-
gist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give them some
exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the um-
brellas on his shoulder.
Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curios-
ity. A great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid
a mass of sand and stones, were a few break-wheels, already
rusty, surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a
number of little windows. The building was unfinished; the
sky could be seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached
to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with
corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind.
Homais was talking. He explained to the company the
future importance of this establishment, computed the
strength of the floorings, the thickness of the walls, and re-
gretted extremely not having a yard-stick such as Monsieur
Binet possessed for his own special use.
Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his
shoulder, and she looked at the sun’s disc shedding afar
through the mist his pale splendour. She turned. Charles

1 Madame Bovary