out
alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.

The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that
they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for
forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one
stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a
whitish steam, like the vapor of a stream on an autumn morning, floated
above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against the
calico of the tent, was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard
nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty
plates; his neighbors were talking; he did not answer them; they filled
his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing
noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips;
her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the
folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to
all infinity before him in the vistas of the future.

He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with
her husband. Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the
danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and
give some advice to Binet.

The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess
of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not
light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon
biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meager Roman-candle
went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the
cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma
silently nestled gently against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her
chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky.
Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.

They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few drops of rain began
to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.

At this moment the councilor's carriage came out from the inn. His
coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the
distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his
body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.

"Truly," said the chemist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously against
drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door of th