Page 69 - madame-bovary

dallion bracelets trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts,
clinked on bare arms.
The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted
at the nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of myto-
sotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and
corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with
forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.
Emma’s heart beat rather faster when, her partner hold-
ing her by the tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line
with the dancers, and waited for the first note to start. But
her emotion soon vanished, and, swaying to the rhythm of
the orchestra, she glided forward with slight movements of
the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases
of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other
instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of
the louis d’or that were being thrown down upon the card
tables in the next room; then all struck again, the cornet-a-
piston uttered its sonorous note, feet marked time, skirts
swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted; the same
eyes falling before you met yours again.
A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty,
scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at
the doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by
a certain air of breeding, whatever their differences in age,
dress, or face.
Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and
their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples,
glossy with more delicate pomades. They had the complex-
ion of wealth—that clear complexion that is heightened by

Madame Bovary