and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door.

It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt,
prevented travelers from seeing the road and soiled their shoulders. The
small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach
was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the old
layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away.
It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came
down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.

Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all
spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert
did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place
in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the
shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his
mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hairdresser's, and
all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels,
which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of
his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.

An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across
the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had
even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight
of her; but it had been necessary to go on. Emma had wept, grown angry;
she had accused Charles of this misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux, a draper,
who happened to be in the coach with her had tried to console her by a
number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of
long years. One, he said, had been told of who had come back to Paris
from Constantinople. Another had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a
straight line, and swam four rivers; and his own father had possessed a
poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped
on his back in the street as he was going to dine in town.

II.

NEW FRIENDS.

Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and
they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly
since night set in.

Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to Madame and his
respects to Monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render
them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had
ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.

When Madame Bovary was in the kit