eling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs
of cards.

"I should like to know--" she went on.

"You lock out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "I'll warm
your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma. "He's Boudet the carpenter's
son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he
could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes
for a joke I call him _Ri_boudet (like the road one takes to go to
Maromme), and I even say '_Mon_ Riboudet.' Ha! ha! '_Mont_ Riboudet.'
The other day I repeated that jest to Monsignor, and he laughed at it;
he condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?"

She seemed not to hear him. And he went on:

"Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest
people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he added with a
thick laugh, "and I of the soul."

She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said, "you
solace all sorrows."

"Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to
Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a
spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon me!
Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! will you leave off?"

And with a bound he ran into the church.

The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over
the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were
just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly
distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of
their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their
knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them
there.

"Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton
handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are
much to be pitied."

"Others, too," she replied.

"Assuredly. Town-laborers, for example."

"It is not they--"

"Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I
assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread."

"But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she
spoke, "those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have no--"

"Fire in the winter," said the priest.

"Oh, what does that matter?"

"What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and
food--for, after all--"

"My God! my God!" she sighed.

"Do yo