Page 290 - madame-bovary

pleasant dinner! Goodbye till to-morrow.’
The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary’s
head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first
refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for
a wonder, Charles did not give in, so sure was he that this
recreation would be good for her. He saw nothing to prevent
it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs which
he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very
large, and the falling in of Lheureux’s bills was still so far off
that there was no need to think about them. Besides, imag-
ining that she was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the
more; so that by dint of worrying her she at last made up
her mind, and the next day at eight o’clock they set out in
the ‘Hirondelle.’
The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville,
but who thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed
as he saw them go.
‘Well, a pleasant journey!’ he said to them; ‘happy mor-
tals that you are!’
Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a
blue silk gown with four flounces—
‘You are as lovely as a Venus. You’ll cut a figure at
Rouen.’
The diligence stopped at the ‘Croix-Rouge’ in the Place
Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every provincial fau-
bourg, with large stables and small bedrooms, where one
sees in the middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats
under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers—a good
old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind