part,
outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull,
muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, who moved no more than if he
had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope.

Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps,
examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One
who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he
walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de
la Panville. As soon as he recognized Rodolphe he came forward quickly,
and smiling amiably, said:

"What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?"

Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had
disappeared:

"_Ma foi!_" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his."

And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily,
showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in
front of some fine beast which Madame Bovary did not at all admire. He
noticed this and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses;
then he apologized for the negligence of his own. He had that
incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think
they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations
of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for
social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric
shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his
waistcoat of gray ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at
the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters. These were so
polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on horses' dung with
them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one
side.

"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country----"

"It's waste of time," said Emma.

"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people
is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!"

Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed,
the illusions lost there.

"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."

"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted."

"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to
wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the
sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it