o the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better off
for teeth than a cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family,
successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented
church less assiduously, to the great approval of the chemist, who said
to her in a friendly way--

"You were going in a bit for the cassock!"

As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he came out
after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the
air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This was the time when
Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and
they drank together to madame's complete restoration.

Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace
wall, fishing for cray-fish. Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he
thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles.

"You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to
the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on
the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with little
thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at
restaurants."

But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their
faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this
joke--

"It's goodness strikes the eye!"

He was, in fact, a good fellow, and one day he was not even scandalised
at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction by
taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor,
Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion,
and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for
morals than literature.

But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he
contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of
pleasure, taught virtue.

"_Castigat ridendo mores_, Monsieur Bournisien! Thus, consider the
greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with
philosophical reflections, that make them a very school of morals and
diplomacy for the people."

"I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,' in which
there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T.
He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the
end----"

"Certainly," continued Homais, "there is bad literature as there is bad
pharmacy, but to condemn i