the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was
compromising herself."

To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving
the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little
houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were in
bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the
sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in the
hedges one could see into the huts, some pig on a dung-heap, or tethered
cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two, side by
side, walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace,
which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges
fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.

They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it. Low,
and covered with brown tiles, outside it hung, beneath the dormer-window
of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright against a thorn fence
surrounded a bed of lettuces, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet
peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on the
grass, and several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico
jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen, were spread over the hedge.
At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling
on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little
fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom
his parents, too taken up with their business, left in the country.

"Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep."

The room on the ground floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its
farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a
kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was
mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door,
shining hobnailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand,
near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a _Matthieu
Laensberg_ lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gun-flints, candle-ends,
and bits of amadou. Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a
"Fame" blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some
perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.

Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the
wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked
herself to and fro.

Leon walked up and down the room