into the abyss. She
did not know that on the terraces of houses lakes are formed when the
pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when
she suddenly discovered a rent in its wall.

V.

SMOTHERED FLAMES.

It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling.

They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Leon,
gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and
half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give
them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas
on his shoulder.

Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great
piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and
stones, were a few brake-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a
quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The
building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the
roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed
with corn-ears fluttered its tricolored ribbons in the wind.

Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance of
this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the
thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick
such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use.

Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she
looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale
splendor. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over his
eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of
stupidity to his face, his very back, his calm back, was irritating to
behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the
bearer.

While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of
depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale
seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and
his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the
lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large
blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more
beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.

"Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist.

And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of
lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which