, so
common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although
she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each
other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a
woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than
the gown.

And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three
publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his
two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands
and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable
companions.

But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's stood
out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to
see a vague abyss.

In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the
druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him
again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being
indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.

Chapter Four

When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the
sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was
on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the
looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she could see
the villagers pass along the pavement.

Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Emma could hear
him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man
glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without
turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her
left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she
often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past.
She would get up and order the table to be laid.

Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on
tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase,
"Good evening, everybody." Then, when he had taken his seat at the table
between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter
consulted his as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked
of "what was in the paper."

Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end
to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories
of individual catastrophes that had occurred in France or abroad. But
the subject becoming exhaus