Page 139 - madame-bovary

clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had down
there, Leon standing up with one hand behind his cane,
and with the other holding Athalie, who was quietly suck-
ing a piece of ice. She thought him charming; she could not
tear herself away from him; she recalled his other attitudes
on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of his
voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her
lips as if for a kiss—
‘Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?’ she asked
herself; ‘but with whom? With me?’
All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt.
The flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling;
she turned on her back, stretching out her arms.
Then began the eternal lamentation: ‘Oh, if Heaven had
out willed it! And why not? What prevented it?’
When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to
have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she
complained of a headache, then asked carelessly what had
happened that evening.
‘Monsieur Leon,’ he said, ‘went to his room early.’
She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul
filled with a new delight.
The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur
Lherueux, the draper. He was a man of ability, was this
shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted
upon his southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois.
His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction
of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the
keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what

1 Madame Bovary