Page 368 - madame-bovary

‘But when?’
‘Immediately.’
‘It’s a trick,’ said the chemist, when he saw Leon. ‘I want-
ed to interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you.
Let’s go and have a glass of garus at Bridoux’.’
Leon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the
druggist joked him about quill-drivers and the law.
‘Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil pre-
vents you? Be a man! Let’s go to Bridoux’. You’ll see his dog.
It’s very interesting.’
And as the clerk still insisted—
‘I’ll go with you. I’ll read a paper while I wait for you, or
turn over the leaves of a ‘Code.’’
Leon, bewildered by Emma’s anger, Monsieur Homais’
chatter, and, perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was
undecided, and, as it were, fascinated by the chemist, who
kept repeating—
‘Let’s go to Bridoux’. It’s just by here, in the Rue Malpa-
lu.’
Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through
that indefinable feeling that drags us into the most dis-
tasteful acts, he allowed himself to be led off to Bridoux’,
whom they found in his small yard, superintending three
workmen, who panted as they turned the large wheel of a
machine for making seltzer-water. Homais gave them some
good advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took some garus.
Twenty times Leon tried to escape, but the other seized him
by the arm saying—
‘Presently! I’m coming! We’ll go to the ‘Fanal de Rouen’