in sable furs. Who was it?
She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.

Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was empty. She
was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean against a wall to keep
herself from falling.

Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know. All
within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost, sinking
at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on
reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she saw the good Homais, who was watching
a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the
"Hirondelle." In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchief six
cheminots for his wife.

Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped loaves,
that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige of Gothic food
that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the Crusades, and with which
the robust Normans gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the
table, in the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of hippocras
and huge boars' heads, the heads of Saracens to be devoured. The
druggist's wife crunched them up as they had done--heroically, despite
her wretched teeth. And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never
failed to bring her home some that he bought at the great baker's in the
Rue Massacre.

"Charmed to see you," he said, offering Emma a hand to help her into the
"Hirondelle." Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords of the netting,
and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive and Napoleonic.

But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill he
exclaimed--

"I can't understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable
industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to work.
Progress, my word! creeps at a snail's pace. We are floundering about in
mere barbarism."

The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door, as if it
were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.

"This," said the chemist, "is a scrofulous affection."

And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first
time, murmured something about "cornea," "opaque cornea," "sclerotic,"
"facies," then asked him in a paternal tone--

"My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of
getting drunk at the public, you'd do better to die yourself."

He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The blind
man went on with his