tle given to jealousy, did
not trouble himself about it.

On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked
with figures to the thorax, and painted blue. This was an attention of
the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at
Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses
fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on
his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers with their stiff
hairs.

She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the
pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other
tending their flowers at their windows.

Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for
on Sundays, from morning to night, and every morning when the weather
was bright, one could see at the dormer-window of a garret the profile
of Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could
be heard at the Lion d'Or.

One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug in velvet and
wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur
Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief;
every one wished to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the
clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be in love
with him.

He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and
of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him:

"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?"

He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to
her, and, always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the
shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire.
Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put
it off to times that he again deferred. Often he set out with the
determination to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him in
Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into
his chaise to go with him to see some patient in the neighborhood, he at
once accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her husband, was he not
something belonging to her?

As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she
thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a
hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots
up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart