Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and
they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly
since night set in.
Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his
respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render
them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had
ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.
When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney.
With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and
having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black
boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the
whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the
fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now
and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind
through the half-open door.
On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her
silently.
As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the
notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who
was the second habitue of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his
dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom
he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early,
he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure
from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with
delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine
in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour
where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the
table laid for four.
Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza;
then, turning to his neighbour-"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in
our 'Hirondelle.'"
"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like
change of place."
"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same
places."
"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the
saddle"-"But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it
seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added.