prompt:
Chapter: At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the
solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the
preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been hung with garlands
of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the
middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was
to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful
farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was
none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet
was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and,
tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless
that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into
his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement.
As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel,
both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One
saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and re-pass
alternately; there was no end to it, and it constantly began again.
There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had
scoured their houses the evening before; tri-coloured flags hung from
half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely
weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured
neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved
with the motley colours the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue
smocks. The neighbouring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses,
pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their dresses, turned
up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their part, in order to save
their hats, kept their handkerchiefs around them, holding one corner
between their teeth.

The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village.
People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time
to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women
with their gloves, who were going out to see the fete. What was most
admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a
platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were
against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles,
each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with
inscriptions in gold letters.

On one was written, "To Commerce"; on the other, "To Agriculture"; on
the third, "To Industry"; and on the fourth, "To the Fine Arts."

But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of
Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she
muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas
booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under
a tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place!
Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a
cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!"

The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers,
beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown.

"Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat widow asked
where he was going--

"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, I who am always more cooped up in my
laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese."

"What cheese?" asked the landlady.

"Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished to convey
to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home like a recluse.
To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--"

"Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously.

"Yes, I am going," replied the druggist, astonished. "Am I not a member
of the consulting commission?"

Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying
with a smile--

"That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you?
Do you understand anything about it?"

"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist--that is to say,
a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the
knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies,
it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in
fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the
analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is
all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?"

The landlady did not answer. Homais went on--

"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled
the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the
composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the
atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters,
the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not.
And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to
direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals,
the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know
botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are
the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive
and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them
there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace
with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the
alert to find out improvements."

The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francois" and the chemist
went on--

"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they
would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus lately I
myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages,
entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with some
New Reflections on the Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural Society
of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among
its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if my
work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame
Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.

"Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop
as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her
breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands
at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "Well, it won't
last long," she added. "It'll be over before a week."

Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and
whispered in his ear--

"What! you didn't know it? There is to be an execution in next week.
It's Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed him with bills."

"What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the druggist, who always found
expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.

Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from
Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she detested
Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak."

"There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to
Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur
Boulanger's arm."

"Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her my
respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure
under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was
calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off
rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously
to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his
frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind.

Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame
Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her,
said in a rough tone--

"It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist."
She pressed his elbow.

"What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he looked at her out
of the corner of his eyes.

Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood
out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it
like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked
straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered
by the cheek-bones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the
delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils.
Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white
teeth were seen between her lips.

"Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe.

Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur
Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter
into the conversation.

"What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!"

And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, whilst at the
slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your
pardon!" and raised his hat.

When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road
up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him
Madame Bovary. He called out--

"Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently."

"How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing.

"Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as
to-day I have the happiness of being with you--"

Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine
weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had
sprung up again.

"Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to
furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place."

He added, "Shall I pick some? What do you think?"

"Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little.

"H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe.

The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with their
great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get
out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue
stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelt of milk, when one
passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand,
and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to
the banquet tent.

But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other
entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks.

The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a
confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in
the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the
cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass,
slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats
that buzzed round them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by the
halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils looking
towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and
flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then
came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded
animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some
sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart,
outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull,
muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and who moved no more than
if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope.

Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps,
examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One
who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he
walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de
la Panville. As soon as he recognised Rodolphe he came forward quickly,
and smiling amiably, said--

"What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?"

Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had
disappeared--

"Ma foi!*" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his."

     *Upon my word!

And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily,
showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in
front of some fine beast, which Madame Bovary did not at all admire.
He noticed this, and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their
dresses; then he apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that
incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think
they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations
of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for
social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric
shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his
waistcoat of grey ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at
the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters.

These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on
horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his
straw hat on one side.

"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country--"

"It's waste of time," said Emma.

"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people
is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!"

Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed,
the illusions lost there.

"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."

"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted."

"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to
wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the
sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were
not better to join those sleeping there!"

"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them."

"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he
accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.

But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great
pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen
with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the
ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger,
who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to
all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning
the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew
which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for
these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the
thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.

Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to
himself--

"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim
in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone! Oh, how I would
have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything,
overcome everything!"

"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied."

"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.

"For, after all," she went on, "you are free--" she hesitated, "rich--"

"Do not mock me," he replied.

And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a
cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell
towards the village.

It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the
members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to
begin the meeting or still wait.

At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by
two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily.
Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to
imitate him. All ran towards the enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A
few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed
to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their
harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town
hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed,
beating drums and marking time.

"Present!" shouted Binet.

"Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march."

And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting
loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns
were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman
in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft
of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most
benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were
half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his
sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognised the
mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able
to come. He himself was a councillor at the prefecture; then he added
a few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the
other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face,
their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round,
the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and
the crowd. The councillor pressing his little cocked hat to his
breast repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled,
stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the
monarchy and the honour that was being done to Yonville.

Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the
coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door
of the "Lion d'Or", where a number of peasants collected to look at the
carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one
by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet
arm-chairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.

All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned
by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers
emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows.
All the waist-coats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches
had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone
rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of
their trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than
the leather of their heavy boots.

The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between
the pillars while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting
on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all
those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back
every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion
with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to
the small steps of the platform.

"I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his
place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something
rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty
effect."

"To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor took
everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and
he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art."

Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first
floor of the town hall, to the "council-room," and, as it was empty,
he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He
fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch,
and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each
other.

There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying.
At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain,
and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had
collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began--

"Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on
the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will, I am sure, be
shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the
higher administration, to the government to the monarch, gentle men, our
sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private
prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at
once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils
of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well
as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts?"

"I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further."

"Why?" said Emma.

But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an extraordinary
pitch. He declaimed--

"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined
our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man
himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled
lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins,
when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations."

"Well, someone down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then
I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad
reputation--"

"Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma.

"No! It is dreadful, I assure you."

"But, gentlemen," continued the councillor, "if, banishing from my
memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back
to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there?
Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means
of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state,
establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centres have
recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in
all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France
breathes once more!"

"Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they
are right."

"How so?" she asked.

"What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly
tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions
and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all
sorts of fantasies, of follies."

Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has voyaged over
strange lands, and went on--

"We have not even this distraction, we poor women!"

"A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it."

"But is it ever found?" she asked.

"Yes; one day it comes," he answered.

"And this is what you have understood," said the councillor.

"You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of a work
that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress and morality,
you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more
redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!"

"It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when
one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice
cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your
life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There
is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen
each other in dreams!"

(And he looked at her.) "In fine, here it is, this treasure so sought
after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts,
one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from
darkness into light."

And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his
hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it
fall on Emma's. She took hers away.

"And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who is so blind,
so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices
of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural
populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the
country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a
word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence,
vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced
intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus
contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to
the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of
duty--"

"Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word.
They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with
foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty,
duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the
beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the
ignominy that it imposes upon us."

"Yet--yet--" objected Madame Bovary.

"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one
beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of
poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?"

"But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the
world and accept its moral code."

"Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conventional, that
of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that
makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthly, like the mass
of imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is
about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue
heavens that give us light."

Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief.
He continued--

"And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses
of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of
subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen,
who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country,
brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by
means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour,
and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the
baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it
not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant
flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish
ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even
necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected
on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the
ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow
for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should
never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different
products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother,
lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple
tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let
us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and
to which I will more particularly call your attention."

He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide
open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him
with staring eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed
his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between
his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable.
The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in
their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the
platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with
out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could
hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his
helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of
Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on
his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled
beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little
face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and
sleepiness.

The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk
leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors,
and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by
the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur
Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of
phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the
crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the
bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In
fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and
these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down
some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.

Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice,
speaking rapidly--

"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single
sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest
sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do
meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend together. Yet they will
make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon
each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years,
they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they
are born one for the other."

His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards
Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes
small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the
perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy.

Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had
waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an
odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes
the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant
back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the
horizon, the old diligence, the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending
the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this
yellow carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this
route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him
opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it
seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of
the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away,
that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent
of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced
through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust
of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which
suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink
in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves,
she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while
athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the
crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He
said--"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of
routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism.

"Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good
manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine
races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in
leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise
with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble
domestics, whose hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into
consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues,
and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it
encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just
demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful
sacrifices."

Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning
another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor,
but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by
more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise
of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture
more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had
always contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was
talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of
society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns
in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had
put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and
in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur
Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little
Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing
Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his cabbages, and the
Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the
young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible
attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence.

"Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance
willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that
flow but to unite; our special bents of mind had driven us towards each
other."

And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.

"For good farming generally!" cried the president.

"Just now, for example, when I went to your house."

"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."

"Did I know I should accompany you?"

"Seventy francs."

"A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained."

"Manures!"

"And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!"

"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"

"For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a
charm."

"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."

"And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you."

"For a merino ram!"

"But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow."

"To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame."

"Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I
not?"

"Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg,
sixty francs!"

Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering
like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but, whether she was trying
to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure; she made a
movement with her fingers. He exclaimed--

"Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand
that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!"

A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the
table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women
were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.

"Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on:
"Flemish manure-flax-growing-drainage-long leases-domestic service."

Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme
desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without an effort,
their fingers intertwined.

"Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere, for
fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value,
twenty-five francs!"

"Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councillor.

She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering--

"Go up!"

"Don't be afraid!"

"Oh, how stupid she is!"

"Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache.

"Yes; here she is."

"Then let her come up!"

Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid
bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she
wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her
pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered
russet apple. And from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two
large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of washing
the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that
they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and
by dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble
witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of
monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion
weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had
caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she
found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by
the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the
councillor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run
away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at
her.

Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of
servitude.

"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the
councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president;
and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he
repeated in a fatherly tone--"Approach! approach!"

"Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began
shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal!
Twenty-five francs! For you!"

Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude
spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her
muttering "I'll give it to our cure up home, to say some masses for me!"

"What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary.

The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had
been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into
the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the
animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green-crown on
their horns.

The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the
town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the
battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's
arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about
alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.

The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that
they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for
forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one
stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a
whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated
above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against
the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard
nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty
plates, his neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled
his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing
noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips;
her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the
folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all
infinity before him in the vistas of the future.

He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with
her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the
danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and
give some advice to Binet.

The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess
of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would
not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon
biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meagre Roman-candle
went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the
cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma
silently nestled against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she
watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe
gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.

They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops of rain began
to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.

At this moment the councillor's carriage came out from the inn.

His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from
the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his
body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.

"Truly," said the druggist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously
against drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door
of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the names of all those who during
the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics,
one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to
in case of need. But excuse me!"

     *Specifically for that.

And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to
see his lathe again.

"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your
men, or to go yourself--"

"Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!"

"Do not be uneasy," said the druggist, when he returned to his friends.
"Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No
sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest."

"Ma foi! I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never
mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fete."

Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very
beautiful!"

And having bowed to one another, they separated.

Two days later, in the "Final de Rouen," there was a long article on the
show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next morning.

"Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this
crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical
sun pouring its heat upon our heads?"

Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government
was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand
reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on
the entry of the councillor, he did not forget "the martial air of our
militia;" nor "our most merry village maidens;" nor the "bald-headed old
men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of
our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the
drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury,
and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais,
chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society.

When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of
the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced the son,
the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed
his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good
housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.

"About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard
brought together the principal personages of the fete. The greatest
cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur
Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays,
Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin
sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant
fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a
veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our
little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of
a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' Let us state that no untoward
event disturbed this family meeting." And he added "Only the absence
of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests understand progress in
another fashion. Just as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: An Agricultural Show is organized in Yonville, and many visitors come to town. It is a great occasion for the village folk, and there is a fine display of decoration and patriotism. It is in such an atmosphere that Emma and Rodolphe meet for the second time. They have to avoid certain people, like Homais and Lheureux, to be together, but they manage to be alone. Rodolphe passes little hints to Emma about love, and she is flattered. There is a livestock competition and the judges are doing their rounds. The chairman of the judges, Monsieur Derozerays de la Panville, invites Rodolphe to join the team. Rodolphe tells Emma that he prefers her company by far. The topic of conversation shifts to attire, and they agree that there is no point in dressing up in the country. Rodolphe even admits to feeling depressed, a fact that surprises Emma. He states that he has no friends and thinks no one cares about him. He is obviously playing to Emma's emotions. Rodolphe and Emma watch the proceedings from the secluded Council Chamber of the Town Hall. Lieuvain, the Prefect's deputy, makes a speech that forms the backdrop of the amorous conversation Rodolphe engages in with Emma. When Lieuvain pauses in the course of his speech, ending with a few words on civic duty, Rodolphe speaks to Emma about emotions, stating that "to feel nobly and love what is beautiful -- that's our duty." Emma reminds him of the need to conform to the world's morality. To this he replies that there are "two moralities. " One is petty and conventional, and the other is eternal. When Lieuvain continues, Rodolphe draws closer to Emma and speaks to her about escaping from the "conspiracy of society." Emma is visibly attracted to Rodolphe and is filled with romantic visions of herself with him. He plays to her feelings and desires. As the announcement of prizes begins, Rodolphe takes Emma's hand, and every award that is announced is juxtaposed with a passionate declaration of love for Emma by Rodolphe. As their fingers intertwine, their passion is at a peak. When the ceremony ends, Rodolphe ushers Emma home. They see each other again in the evening at the fireworks, but Emma is accompanied by her husband and Homais. The fireworks show draws an enthusiastic response from the crowd, despite the fact that most of the fireworks cannot be lit because the powder is damp. In the dark, Rodolphe gazes at Emma, who is by her husband's side. Later he agrees with Madame Homais' view about it having been a lovely day, and with that a tender look creeps into his eyes. Two days later, Homais' exaggerated report about the show appears in the Rouen Beacon. His style is overblown, and his report ends with his observation that the clergy had remained absent throughout the festivities.


prompt:
Chapter: Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he
appeared.

The day after the show he had said to himself--"We mustn't go back too
soon; that would be a mistake."

And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he
had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned thus--

"If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience to see me
again love me more. Let's go on with it!"

And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the
room, he saw Emma turn pale.

She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain along
the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on
which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the
meshes of the coral.

Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first
conventional phrases.

"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."

"Seriously?" she cried.

"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it
was because I did not want to come back."

"Why?"

"Can you not guess?"

He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing.
He went on--

"Emma!"

"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.

"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not
to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and
that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the
world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of
another!"

He repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands.

"Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair.
Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far
that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what
force impelled me towards you. For one does not struggle against Heaven;
one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which
is beautiful, charming, adorable."

It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself,
and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly
and fully at this glowing language.

"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least
I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night-every night-I
arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its glimmering in the moon,
the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp,
a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never
knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!"

She turned towards him with a sob.

"Oh, you are good!" she said.

"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one
word--only one word!"

And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground; but
a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the
door of the room was not closed.

"How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humour
a whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and
Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles
came in.

"Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him.

The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into
obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself
together a little.

"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health."

Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's
palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if
riding would not be good.

"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to
follow it up."

And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered
one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit
he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered
from giddiness.

"I'll call around," said Bovary.

"No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient
for you."

"Ah! very good! I thank you."

And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur
Boulanger's kind offer?"

She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally
declared that perhaps it would look odd.

"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a
pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong."

"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?"

"You must order one," he answered.

The riding-habit decided her.

When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his
wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.

The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two
saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin
side-saddle.

Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she
had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his
appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white
corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.

Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also
came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice.

"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are
mettlesome."

She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the windowpanes
to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered
with a wave of her whip.

"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all,
prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear.

As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop.

Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her
figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out,
she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in
her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head;
they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses
stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.

It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds
hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent
asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the
clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of
Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls and
the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and
never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the
height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake
sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there
stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose
above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.

By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered
in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco,
deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the
horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.

Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned
away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine
trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy.
The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.

Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.

"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.

"Do you think so?" she said.

"Forward! forward!" he continued.

He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot.

Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup.

Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. At other
times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt
his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no
longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots
of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were
grey, fawn, or golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves.
Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the
hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks.

They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in
front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way,
although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her,
saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white
stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.

She stopped. "I am tired," she said.

"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"

Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her
veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face
appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure
waves.

"But where are we going?"

He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round
him biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice
had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe
began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her
with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy.

Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on
the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the words, "Are not our
destinies now one?"

"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!" She rose
to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having gazed
at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said
hurriedly--

"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back."

He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:

"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"

Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he
advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered:

"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!"

"If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became
respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He
said--

"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were
mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in
a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to live! I must have
your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!"

And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to disengage
herself. He supported her thus as they walked along.

But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.

"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!"

He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness
on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds.
At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide
themselves.

"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!"

"Why? Emma! Emma!"

"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder.

The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw
back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with
a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him--

The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the
branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves
or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying
about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something
sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose
beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a
stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she
heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she
heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing
nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his
penknife one of the two broken bridles.

They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again
the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same
stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her
something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved
in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand
to kiss it.

She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee
bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed by the fresh
air in the red of the evening.

On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People
looked at her from the windows.

At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to
hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there
with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.

"Emma!" he said.

"What?"

"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an old cob,
still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that could be bought; I
am sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might please
you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell me?"

She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later--

"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"

And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up
in her room.

At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches,
Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves
rustled and the reeds whistled.

But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never
had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something
subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover!
a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her.
So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness
of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all
would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed
her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary
existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the
interspaces of these heights.

Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the
lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with
the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were,
an actual part of these imaginings, and realised the love-dream of her
youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had
so envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not
suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up
burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse,
without anxiety, without trouble.

The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one
another She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with
kisses; and she looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to
call her again by her name--to say that he loved her They were in the
forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some woodenshoe maker. The walls
were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated
side by side on a bed of dry leaves.

From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening.
Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a
fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there,
that she always found fault with as too short.

One morning, when Charles had gone out before day break, she was seized
with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go quickly to La
Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while
everyone was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she
soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps,
without looking behind her.

Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognised her lover's house. Its
two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn.

Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must
be the chateau She entered--it was if the doors at her approach had
opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to
the corridor. Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end
of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry.

"You here? You here?" he repeated. "How did you manage to come? Ah! your
dress is damp."

"I love you," she answered, throwing her arms about his neck.

This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles went out
early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led
to the waterside.

But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls
alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall
she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across
ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling; and clogging her thin
shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the
meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out
of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a
fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe
still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room.

The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter
softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops
of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around
her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to his
breast.

Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables,
combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his
shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that
lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a
bottle of water.

It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then Emma cried.
She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than
herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come
unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.

"What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!"

At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming
imprudent--that she was compromising herself.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Rodolphe keeps away from Emma for some time. He reasons that Emma will love him more passionately after the interval. He visits her six weeks later and observes her turn pale at his entrance. He looks at her with passion, and she is flustered. He bemoans her married state and reiterates that fate has brought him to her. He goes on to tell her how he "kept a watchful eye on all about her" during the period he stayed away. He declares his love for Emma and is about to go down on his knees, when Charles returns home. Emma's ill health becomes the topic of their conversation. Rodolphe suggests that riding would help and offers one of his horses for the purpose. After Rodolphe leaves, Charles persuades a "reluctant" Emma to reconsider Rodolphe's offer. He also sees to it that she is provided with riding-gear. He writes to "Monsieur Boulanger," accepting the offer. The next day at noon, Rodolphe presents himself at the Bovarys' house with two saddle horses. Emma and Rodolphe ride until they reach the pine woods outside Yonville. Few words are exchanged between them, and Emma turns away a few times to avoid eye contact with him. Once in the forest they dismount. In a clearing, they sit on a log where Rodolphe, in a "calm, serious, melancholy" manner, declares his love to Emma. She protests when he insists that they have a common destiny. But when he holds her wrist, she gazes at him "with moist, loving eyes. " Then she abruptly demands to be taken back. Seeing that she is disturbed, Rodolphe becomes all respect and attention. He pleads with Emma to be his "friend...sister...angel." As she tries to reason with him, she leans on his shoulder and then yields to him. When she recovers her senses, it is evening. As they ride into Yonville, "Eyes  her from windows. " Charles observes her return to health and informs her that he has bought a mare for her. Later, when she is alone in her room, she relives the moments of ecstasy with Rodolphe that afternoon. Noticing her reflection in the mirror, she realizes that "her whole person had undergone some subtle transformation." "I have a lover, a lover," are the words she chants, "reveling in the thought as if she had attained a second puberty. " The next day is equally ecstatic. When Emma sees Rodolphe, she makes him call out her name again and again and tell her that he loves her. The lovers begin to exchange passionate letters. One morning when Charles goes on a visit before daybreak, Emma is "taken with a fancy to see Rodolphe on the instant. " She walks all the way to La Huchette, Rodolphe's residence, and slips into his bedroom. The first venture is successful, and whenever Charles leaves home early, Emma slips off to see Rodolphe. This continues for some time until Rodolphe warns Emma about her indiscretion.


prompt:
Chapter: Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had
intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he
was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or
even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house she
looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the
horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She
listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped
short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.

One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the
long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out
sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the
edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked
on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had
gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes,
trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for
wild ducks.

"You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed; "When one sees a
gun, one should always give warning."

The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for
a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting except in boats,
Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them,
and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But
this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he
congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness. At sight of
Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a
conversation.

"It isn't warm; it's nipping."

Emma answered nothing. He went on--

"And you're out so early?"

"Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse where my
child is."

"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me,
since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the
bird at the mouth of the gun--"

"Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on her
heel.

"Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub.

Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he
would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the
worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the little
Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one
was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet,
then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he
would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her
brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before
her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.

Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of
distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she
caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again. He was standing
in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was
saying--

"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol."

"Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then to
Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't
worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the
stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor," (for the chemist
much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by
it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now,
take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from
the little room; you know very well that the arm-chairs are not to be
taken out of the drawing-room."

And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting away from the
counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid.

"Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; I'm
ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid,
isn't it?"

Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some
copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting things.

Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying--

"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp."

"Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are
people who like it."

She was stifling.

"And give me--"

"Will he never go?" thought she.

"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax,
and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the
varnished leather of my togs."

The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared,
Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat
down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a
footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near
her papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on
labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time
to time, were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low
words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil.

"And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais.

"Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in
his waste-book.

"Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice.

"Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the druggist.

But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard
nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh.

"How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais.

"Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied.

So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma
wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to
find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one.

All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night
he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the
gate, which Charles thought lost.

To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She
jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a
mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild
with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled
him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up
a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But
Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too.

"Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time."

"Yes, I am coming," she answered.

Then, as the candles dazzled him; he turned to the wall and fell asleep.
She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. Rodolphe had a large
cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm round her waist, he
drew her without a word to the end of the garden.

It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Leon
had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought
of him now.

The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they
heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling
of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the
darkness, and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and
swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The
cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips
seemed to them deeper; their eyes that they could hardly see, larger;
and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on
their souls sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied
vibrations.

When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room
between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen
candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down
there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the
whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not
refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma.
She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions
more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of
approaching steps in the alley.

"Someone is coming!" she said.

He blew out the light.

"Have you your pistols?"

"Why?"

"Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma.

"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his sentence
with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger."

She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort
of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised her.

Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had
spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for
he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called
devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had taken a great vow
that he did not think in the best of taste.

Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on
exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she
was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union.
She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature.
Then she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his!
Rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled
him with caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she
sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon--

"I am sure that above there together they approve of our love."

But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such
ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for
him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride
and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense
disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it
was lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up
appearances, and insensibly his ways changed.

He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry,
nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their great love,
which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of
a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it.
She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe
concealed his indifference less and less.

She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she
did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation
of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their
voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual
seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him.

Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having
succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the
end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another
like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame.

It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance
of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter.
Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following
lines:--

"My Dear Children--I hope this will find you well, and that this one
will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little more tender,
if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time, for a change,
I'll give you a turkeycock, unless you have a preference for some dabs;
and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I
have had an accident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one
windy night among the trees. The harvest has not been overgood either.
Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult
now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor Emma."

Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped
his pen to dream a little while.

"For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other day at
the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned
away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be pitied with such
a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I heard from a pedlar, who,
travelling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth
drawn, that Bovary was as usual working hard. That doesn't surprise me;
and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if
he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the
stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So much
the better, my dear children, and may God send you every imaginable
happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little
grand-daughter, Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for
her in the garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it
is to have jam made for her by and bye, that I will keep in the cupboard
for her when she comes.

"Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my
son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best
compliments, your loving father.

"Theodore Rouault."

She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The spelling
mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma followed the
kindly thought that cackled right through it like a hen half hidden
in the hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from
the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her
dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth
to take up the tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on
the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of
a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the
summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when anyone
passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive,
and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her
window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been
at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions!
Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's
life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage,
and her love--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like
a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his
road.

But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary
catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking
round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer.

An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot; the fire burned;
beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was
bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter.

In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst
of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach
at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt.
Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she
lent forward, beating the air with both her arms.

"Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How I love
you, my poor child! How I love you!"

Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at
once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings,
her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the
return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying
a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite
thunderstricken at this excess of tenderness.

That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual.

"That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim:"

And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed
herself cold and almost contemptuous.

"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!"

And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the
handkerchief she took out.

Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if
it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her
no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much
embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the druggist came just in
time to provide her with an opportunity.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Rodolphe's warning makes Emma nervous, but she does not stop visiting him. One morning while returning from La Huchette, she bumps into Captain Binet, who is out hunting for wild duck. He attempts to involve her in a conversation. Emma tells him that she has been to the nurse's to see her baby and then hurries off. She later realizes that her explanation must have aroused his suspicion, for "everyone in Yonville knew that the Bovary child had been back at home for the past year. Besides, no one lived in that direction; the path led only to La Huchette. So Binet would have guessed where she'd been. And he wouldn't keep it to himself. He'd chatter, for sure. " This realization leaves Emma quite worried. The same evening, Emma sees Binet at Homais' shop. She is terrified of what Binet might reveal, but he leaves without doing or saying anything. The next day, Emma discusses with Rodolphe the problem of organizing their meetings. Rodolphe promises to look for a house where they would be safe in Yonville. Meanwhile, all winter he meets Emma in her garden "in the dead of night" to exchange loving caresses. In describing these meetings, Flaubert emphasizes the darkness and the silence, accompanied by the winter chill, reflection of the emotions that are beginning to haunt their relationship. Differences between the lovers continue to develop. Emma wants Rodolphe to be "more serious -- more dramatic." She also finds in him "a kind of coarseness, a straightforward vulgarity that  her." Rodolphe, on the other hand, finds Emma to be "very sentimental," which both irks and amuses him. He scoffs when she asks him for a token wedding ring that would signify their eternal union and laughs at her claims that their mothers in heaven bless the relationship of her and Rodolphe. Although he is still attracted by her beauty, Rodolphe finds himself becoming indifferent to Emma. She cannot understand Rodolphe's behavior. After six months, the flame of passion has died out. At about this time, Emma receives a letter from her father, which is full of "kindly thoughts. " She grows reflective, thinking about her youth, her marriage, her love affair, and her suffering. She is also alerted to her immediate surroundings, noticing the wonderful April weather and her happy daughter shouting with laughter. Moved suddenly, she freely expresses her love for Berthe, who is rolling about on the grass. Emma's display of tenderness is unusual and surprises the maid. That night when she meets Rodolphe, he finds Emma cold and unresponsive. He then stays away for three days in a row and is treated "disdainfully" when he finally pays a visit. He ignores "her doleful sighs" and "the handkerchief she kept producing." His insensitivity prompts Emma to question herself. She wonders if she would do better to love Charles instead of Rodolphe.