"Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep."
The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its
farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a
kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which
was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door,
shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand,
near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu
Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and
bits of amadou.
Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame" blowing her
trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus
and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.
Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the
wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked
herself to and fro.
Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this
beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty.
Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been
an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who
had just been sick over her collar.
The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show.
"She gives me other doses," she said: "I am always a-washing of her. If
you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have
a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't
trouble you then."
"Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet," and
she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.
The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the
time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.
"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you
might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a
month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk."
After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had gone a
little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned
round. It was the nurse.
"What is it?"
Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began
talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year
that the captain-"Oh, be quick!" said Emma.