These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on
horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his
straw hat on one side.
"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country--"
"It's waste of time," said Emma.
"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people
is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!"
Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed,
the illusions lost there.
"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."
"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted."
"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to
wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the
sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were
not better to join those sleeping there!"
"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them."
"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he
accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.
But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great
pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen
with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the
ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger,
who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to
all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning
the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew
which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for
these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the
thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.
Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to
himself-"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim
in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone! Oh, how I would
have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything,
overcome everything!"
"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied."
"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.
"For, after all," she went on, "you are free--" she hesitated, "rich--"