Page 175 - madame-bovary

advising him to calm himself, since his fancy was over.
‘It procured me the advantage of making your acquain-
tance,’ he added, and he looked at Emma as he said this.
Then he put three francs on the corner of the table, bowed
negligently, and went out.
He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his
way back to La Huchette), and Emma saw him in the mead-
ow, walking under the poplars, slackening his pace now and
then as one who reflects.
‘She is very pretty,’ he said to himself; ‘she is very pretty,
this doctor’s wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a fig-
ure like a Parisienne’s. Where the devil does she come from?
Wherever did that fat fellow pick her up?’
Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was
of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having,
moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing them
well. This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking
about her and her husband.
‘I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt.
He has dirty nails, and hasn’t shaved for three days. While
he is trotting after his patients, she sits there botching
socks. And she gets bored! She would like to live in town
and dance polkas every evening. Poor little woman! She is
gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table.
With three words of gallantry she’d adore one, I’m sure of
it. She’d be tender, charming. Yes; but how to get rid of her
afterwards?’
Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance
made him by contrast think of his mistress. She was an ac-

1 Madame Bovary