Page 67 - madame-bovary

women, bent over his full plate, and his napkin tied round
his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of
gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and
he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He was the
Marquis’s father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once
on a time favourite of the Count d’Artois, in the days of the
Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans’, and
had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette,
between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun. He
had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elope-
ments; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his
family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in
his ear the dishes that he pointed to stammering, and con-
stantly Emma’s eyes turned involuntarily to this old man
with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He had
lived at court and slept in the bed of queens! Iced cham-
pagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt
it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor
tasted pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her
whiter and finer than elsewhere.
The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for
the ball.
Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an
actress on her debut. She did her hair according to the di-
rections of the hairdresser, and put on the barege dress
spread out upon the bed.
Charles’s trousers were tight across the belly.
‘My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing,’
he said.

Madame Bovary