chen she went up to the chimney. With
the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having
thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to
the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the whole
of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gown, the fine
pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and
again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind
through the half-open door. On the other side of the chimney a young man
with fair hair watched her silently.

As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the
notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who was
the second _habitue_ of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his
dinner-hour in the hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with
whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done
early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and
endure from soup to cheese a _tete-a-tete_ with Binet. It was therefore
with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should
dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large
parlor where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had
the table laid for four.

Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza;
then turning to his neighbor--

"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in
our 'Hirondelle.'"

"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like
change of place."

"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same
places."

"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the
saddle"--

"But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it
seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added.

"Moreover," said the chemist, "the practice of medicine is not very hard
work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the
use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are well off, they pay pretty
well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of
enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few
intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a
serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of
scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our
peasant dwellings