And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was being overwhelmed Napoléon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his.

‘Ah!’ she said to herself, ‘he carries a knife in his pocket, like a peasant.’

The hoarfrost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.

In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour’s, and when Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had down there, Léon standing up with one hand bending his cane, and with the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss – ‘Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?’ she asked herself; ‘but with whom? With me?’

All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching out her arms.

Then began the eternal lamentation: ‘Oh, if only Heaven had willed it! And why not? What prevented it?’

When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then asked carelessly what had happened that evening.

‘Monsieur Léon,’ he said, ‘went to his room early.’

She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a new delight.

The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lheureux, the draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar, said some, a banker at Routot according to others. One thing certain was that he made complex calculations in his head, enough to frighten Binet himself. Polite to the point of obsequiousness, he always held himself with his back bent in the position of one bowing or who is inviting.

After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract a ‘fashionable lady’; he emphasised the words; yet she had only to command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the best houses. You could speak of him at the ‘Trois Frères’, at the ‘Barbe d’Or’, or at the ‘Grand Sauvage’; all these gentlemen knew him as well as the insides of their pockets. Today, then, he had come to show madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half a dozen embroidered collars from the box.

Madame Bovary examined them. ‘I do not require anything,’ she said.

Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and, finally, four egg-cups in cocoanut wood, carved in open work by convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma’s look, who was walking up and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove some dust, he flicked the silk of the outspread scarves with his nail, and they rustled a little, making the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate in the green twilight like tiny stars.

‘How much are they?’

‘A mere nothing,’ he replied, ‘a mere nothing. But there’s no hurry; whenever it’s convenient. We are not Jews.’

She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur Lheureux’s offer. He replied quite unconcernedly – ‘Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got on with ladies – if I didn’t with my own!’

Emma smiled.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, ‘that it isn’t the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some, if need be.’

She made a gesture of surprise.

‘Ah!’ said he quickly and in a low voice, ‘I shouldn’t have to go far to find you some, rely on that.’

And he began asking after old Tellier, the proprietor of the Café Français, whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.

‘What’s the matter with old Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his whole house, and I’m afraid he’ll soon want a deal covering rather than a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! Those sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity; he’s burnt up with brandy. Still, it’s sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off.’

And while he fastened up his box he chatted about the doctor’s patients.

‘It’s the weather, no doubt,’ he said, looking frowningly at the floor, ‘that causes these illnesses. I, too, don’t feel the thing. One of these days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my back. Well, goodbye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble servant.’ And he closed the door gently.

Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with her.

‘How good I was!’ she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.

She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Léon. She got up and took from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be hemmed. When he came in she seemed very busy.

The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes, whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her speech.

‘Poor fellow!’ she thought.

‘How have I displeased her?’ he asked himself.

At last, however, Léon said that he should have, one of these days, to go to Rouen on some office business.

‘Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?’

‘No,’ she replied.

‘Why?’

‘Because – ’

And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread.

This work irritated Léon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers. A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it.

‘Then you are giving it up?’ he went on.

‘What?’ she asked hurriedly. ‘Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many duties that must be considered first?’

She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then she affected anxiety. Two or three times she even repeated, ‘He is so good!’

The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up his praises, which he said everyone was singing, especially the chemist.

‘Ah! he is a good fellow,’ continued Emma.

‘Certainly,’ replied the clerk.

And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance generally made them laugh.

‘What does it matter?’ interrupted Emma. ‘A good housewife does not trouble about her appearance.’

Then she relapsed into silence.

It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners, everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity.

She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Félicité brought her in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outbursts which would have reminded anyone but the Yonville people of Sachette in Notre-Dame de Paris.

When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire. His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the nightcaps arranged in piles of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when Léon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach, his two feet on the fender, his cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with the slender waist who came behind his armchair to kiss his forehead: ‘What madness!’ he said to himself. ‘And how to reach her!’

And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion rejoices.