n her overshoes, that she had hidden in the morning under the seat,
and sank into her place among the impatient passengers. Some got out
at the foot of the hill. She remained alone in the carriage. At every
turning all the lights of the town were seen more and more completely,
making a great luminous vapour about the dim houses. Emma knelt on the
cushions and her eyes wandered over the dazzling light. She sobbed;
called on Leon, sent him tender words and kisses lost in the wind.

On the hillside a poor devil wandered about with his stick in the midst
of the diligences. A mass of rags covered his shoulders, and an old
staved-in beaver, turned out like a basin, hid his face; but when he
took it off he discovered in the place of eyelids empty and bloody
orbits. The flesh hung in red shreds, and there flowed from it liquids
that congealed into green scale down to the nose, whose black nostrils
sniffed convulsively. To speak to you he threw back his head with an
idiotic laugh; then his bluish eyeballs, rolling constantly, at the
temples beat against the edge of the open wound. He sang a little song
as he followed the carriages--

"Maids an the warmth of a summer day Dream of love, and of love always"

And all the rest was about birds and sunshine and green leaves.

Sometimes he appeared suddenly behind Emma, bareheaded, and she drew
back with a cry. Hivert made fun of him. He would advise him to get a
booth at the Saint Romain fair, or else ask him, laughing, how his young
woman was.

Often they had started when, with a sudden movement, his hat entered the
diligence through the small window, while he clung with his other arm
to the footboard, between the wheels splashing mud. His voice, feeble
at first and quavering, grew sharp; it resounded in the night like the
indistinct moan of a vague distress; and through the ringing of the
bells, the murmur of the trees, and the rumbling of the empty vehicle,
it had a far-off sound that disturbed Emma. It went to the bottom of
her soul, like a whirlwind in an abyss, and carried her away into the
distances of a boundless melancholy. But Hivert, noticing a weight
behind, gave the blind man sharp cuts with his whip. The thong lashed
his wounds, and he fell back into the mud with a yell. Then the
passengers in the "Hirondelle" ended by falling asleep, some with open
mouths, others with lowered chins, leaning against their neighbour's
shoulder, or with their arm passed through the stra