Page 44 - madame-bovary

CHAPTER FIVE

he brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather
Tthe road. Behind the door hung a cloak with a small col-
lar, a bridle, and a black leather cap, and on the floor, in a
corner, were a pair of leggings, still covered with dry mud.
On the right was the one apartment, that was both dining
and sitting room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at the top
by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over
the badly stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red
border hung crossways at the length of the window; and on
the narrow mantelpiece a clock with a head of Hippocrates
shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks under
oval shades. On the other side of the passage was Charles’s
consulting room, a little room about six paces wide, with a
table, three chairs, and an office chair. Volumes of the ‘Dic-
tionary of Medical Science,’ uncut, but the binding rather
the worse for the successive sales through which they had
gone, occupied almost along the six shelves of a deal book-
case.
The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls
when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear
the people coughing in the consulting room and recount-
ing their histories.
Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came
a large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-