bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be
better.

III.

ADDED CARES.

The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She
had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and
reclosed the window.

Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going
to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The
dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he
had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." How
then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of
things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually shy,
and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and
dissimulation. At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to
the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about
politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had some
accomplishments; he painted in water-colors, could read the key of _G_,
and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards.
Monsieur Homais respected him for his education; Madame Homais liked him
for his good-nature, for he often took the little Homaises into the
garden--little brats who were always dirty, very much spoiled, and
somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. Besides the servant to look after
them, they had Justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of
Monsieur Homais, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who
was useful at the same time as a servant.

The chemist proved the best of neighbors. He gave Madame Bovary
information as to the tradespeople, sent expressly for his own cider
merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly
placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply
of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the
sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funereal functions, looked
after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year,
according to the taste of the customers.

The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the
chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it
all.

He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi, article 1, which
forbade all persons not having a diploma to practice medicine; so that,
after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen
to see the p