Page 158 - madame-bovary

But he wanted first to know ‘how much it would be.’ The in-
quiries would not put Monsieur Leon out, since he went to
town almost every week.
Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some ‘young man’s
affair’ at the bottom of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken.
Leon was after no love-making. He was sadder than ever,
as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of food he left
on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned the
tax-collector. Binet answered roughly that he ‘wasn’t paid
by the police.’
All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him,
for Leon often threw himself back in his chair, and stretch-
ing out his arms. Complained vaguely of life.
‘It’s because you don’t take enough recreation,’ said the
collector.
‘What recreation?’
‘If I were you I’d have a lathe.’
‘But I don’t know how to turn,’ answered the clerk.
‘Ah! that’s true,’ said the other, rubbing his chin with an
air of mingled contempt and satisfaction.
Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover
he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the rep-
etition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires
and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and
its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons, of certain
houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist,
good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely un-
bearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new condition of life
frightened as much as it seduced him.

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