Page 186 - madame-bovary

hearted.’
‘Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I
know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and
yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moon-
light have I not asked myself whether it were not better to
join those sleeping there!’
‘Oh! and your friends?’ she said. ‘You do not think of
them.’
‘My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for
me?’ And he accompanied the last words with a kind of
whistling of the lips.
But they were obliged to separate from each other
because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying be-
hind them. He was so overladen with them that one could
only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his
two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger,
who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the peo-
ple. Alive to all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon
this means of turning the show to account; and his idea was
succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to turn. In
fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for these seats,
whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the
thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain
veneration.
Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe’s arm; he went on
as if speaking to himself—
‘Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah!
if I had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had
found someone! Oh, how I would have spent all the energy

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