Page 394 - madame-bovary

‘You who know the house through the servant, has the
master spoken sometimes of me?’
‘Yes, you’d do well to go there.’
She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with
jet beads, and that she might not be seen (there was still a
crowd on the Place), she took the path by the river, outside
the village.
She reached the notary’s gate quite breathless. The sky
was sombre, and a little snow was falling. At the sound of
the bell, Theodore in a red waistcoat appeared on the steps;
he came to open the door almost familiarly, as to an ac-
quaintance, and showed her into the dining-room.
A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that
filled up the niche in the wall, and in black wood frames
against the oak-stained paper hung Steuben’s ‘Esmeralda’
and Schopin’s ‘Potiphar.’ The ready-laid table, the two silver
chafing-dishes, the crystal door-knobs, the parquet and the
furniture, all shone with a scrupulous, English cleanliness;
the windows were ornamented at each corner with stained
glass.
‘Now this,’ thought Emma, ‘is the dining-room I ought
to have.’
The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown
to his breast with his left arm, while with the other hand he
raised and quickly put on again his brown velvet cap, pre-
tentiously cocked on the right side, whence looked out the
ends of three fair curls drawn from the back of the head,
following the line of his bald skull.
After he had offered her a seat he sat down to breakfast,