Page 99 - madame-bovary

has changed at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings
at the top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers
still flutter in the wind from the linen-draper’s; the chem-
ist’s fetuses, like lumps of white amadou, rot more and more
in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the inn
the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its
poodle mane.
On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yon-
ville, Widow Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so
very busy that she sweated great drops as she moved her
saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The meat had to be
cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made.
Moreover, she had the boarders’ meal to see to, and that of
the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room
was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in a small
parlour were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the
brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid
the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled
with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being
chopped.
From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the
fowls whom the servant was chasing in order to wring their
necks.
A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather
slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was
warming his back at the chimney. His face expressed noth-
ing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as
calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wick-
er cage: this was the chemist.

Madame Bovary