Page 300 - madame-bovary

Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and
go and take an ice somewhere.
‘Oh, not yet; let us stay,’ said Bovary. ‘Her hair’s undone;
this is going to be tragic.’
But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the
acting of the singer seemed to her exaggerated.
‘She screams too loud,’ said she, turning to Charles, who
was listening.
‘Yes—a little,’ he replied, undecided between the frank-
ness of his pleasure and his respect for his wife’s opinion.
Then with a sigh Leon said—
‘The heat is—‘
‘Unbearable! Yes!’
‘Do you feel unwell?’ asked Bovary.
‘Yes, I am stifling; let us go.’
Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about
her shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the har-
bour, in the open air, outside the windows of a cafe.
First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupt-
ed Charles from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring
Monsieur Leon; and the latter told them that he had come
to spend two years at Rouen in a large office, in order to get
practice in his profession, which was different in Norman-
dy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais,
Mere Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband’s pres-
ence, nothing more to say to one another, the conversation
soon came to an end.
People coming out of the theatre passed along the pave-
ment, humming or shouting at the top of their voices, ‘O bel