Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubertmaking a confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de lapigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves Panville. As soon as he recognised Rodolphe he came forwardwere bleating, lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, quickly, and smiling amiably, said—were stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the “What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?”cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when theround them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by president had disappeared—the halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils “Ma foi!*” said he, “I shall not go. Your company is betterlooking towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching than his.”out their heads and flowing manes, while their foals rested in And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to movetheir shadow, or now and then came and sucked them. And about more easily, showed the gendarme his blue card, andabove the long undulation of these crowded animals one saw even stopped now and then in front of some fine beast, whichsome white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some Madame Bovary did not at all admire. He noticed this, andsharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses; then heApart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that incongruityof common and elegant in which the habitually vulgarblack bull, muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and whomoved no more than if he had been in bronze. A child in rags think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of thewas holding him by a rope.perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always aBetween the two lines the committee-men were walking certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperatesthem. Thus his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs waswith heavy steps, examining each animal, then consulting oneanother in a low voice. One who seemed of more importance blown out by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat ofnow and then took notes in a book as he walked along. This*Upon my word!119