Page 38 - madame-bovary

dered, their hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much
afraid of dirtying their gloves. As there were not enough
stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen
turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. Accord-
ing to their different social positions they wore tail-coats,
overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats,
redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the
wardrobe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flap-
ping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks;
shooting jackets of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap
with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with
two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of
eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
carpenter’s hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure,
would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blous-
es—that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders,
the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened
very low down with a worked belt.
And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses!
Everyone had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the
heads; they had been close-shaved; a few, even, who had had
to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave,
had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of
a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air en
route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces
were mottled here and there with red dabs.
The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they
went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the
ceremony in the church. The procession, first united like