ybody is out! The wind is east!"

And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, while at the
slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your
pardon!" and raised his hat.

When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up
to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him
Madame Bovary. He called out:

"Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently."

"How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing.

"Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as
to-day I have the happiness of being with you----"

Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine
weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had
sprung up again.

"Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to
furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place." He added, "Shall
I pick some? What do you think?"

"Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little.

"H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe.

The meadow began to fill, and the housewives, hustled one with their
great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get
out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue
stockings, flat shoes, and silver rings, who smelled of milk when one
passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand,
and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to
the banquet tent. But this was the examination time, and the farmers one
after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord
supported on sticks.

The beasts were there, their noses toward the cord, and making a
confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in
the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the
cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass,
slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats
that buzzed round them. Ploughmen with bare arms were holding by the
halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils, looking
toward the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and
flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then
came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded
animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some
sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. A