ir
differences in age, dress, or face.

Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,
brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate
pomades. They had the complexion of wealth,--that clear complexion that
is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the
veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite
nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low
cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they
wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs, with embroidered initials, that
gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an
air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the
young. In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily
satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that
peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in
which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of
thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women.

A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy
with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.

They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoli,
Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum
by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation
full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very
young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romulus,"
and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained
that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors
that had disfigured the name of his horse.

The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. Guests
were flocking to the billiard-room. A servant got upon a chair and broke
the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary turned her
head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the
window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to
her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse
under the apple-trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming
with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the
refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then,
faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She was
there; beyond the ball was only shadow oversprea