Madame Bovary - Penn State University

FlaubertShe stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground hippocras and huge boars’ heads, the heads of Saracens to bebetween the shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable devoured. The druggist’s wife crunched them up as they hadfurs. Who was it? She knew him. The carriage darted by and done—heroically, despite her wretched teeth. And so wheneverHomais journeyed to town, he never failed to bring herdisappeared.Why, it was he—the Viscount. She turned away; the street home some that he bought at the great baker’s in the Ruewas empty. She was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to Massacre.lean against a wall to keep herself from falling.“Charmed to see you,” he said, offering Emma a hand toThen she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did help her into the “Hirondelle.” Then he hung up his cheminotsnot know. All within her and around her was abandoning to the cords of the netting, and remained bare-headed in anher. She felt lost, sinking at random into indefinable abysses, attitude pensive and Napoleonic.and it was almost with joy that, on reaching the “Croix- But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot ofRouge,” she saw the good Homais, who was watching a large the hill he exclaimed—box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the “I can’t understand why the authorities tolerate such culpableindustries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and“Hirondelle.” In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchiefsix cheminots for his wife.forced to work. Progress, my word! creeps at a snail’s pace.Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shapedloaves, that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at theWe are floundering about in mere barbarism.”last vestige of Gothic food that goes back, perhaps, to the door, as if it were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.time of the Crusades, and with which the robust Normans “This,” said the chemist, “is a scrofulous affection.”gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the table, And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to seein the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of him for the first time, murmured something about “cornea,”255