“Yes,” she said stammering; “I am just coming from the nurse where my child is.”

“Ah! very good! very good!  For myself, I am here, just as you see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun—­”

“Good evening, Monsieur Binet,” she interrupted him, turning on her heel.

“Your servant, madame,” he replied drily; and he went back into his tub.

Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly.  No doubt he would form unfavourable conjectures.  The story about the nurse was the worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the little Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year.  Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette.  Binet, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain.  She remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.

Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of distraction, to take her to the chemist’s, and the first person she caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again.  He was standing in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was saying—­

“Please give me half an ounce of vitriol.”

“Justin,” cried the druggist, “bring us the sulphuric acid.”  Then to Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais’ room, “No, stay here; it isn’t worth while going up; she is just coming down.  Warm yourself at the stove in the meantime.  Excuse me.  Good-day, doctor,” (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word “doctor,” as if addressing another by it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it).  “Now, take care not to upset the mortars!  You’d better fetch some chairs from the little room; you know very well that the arm-chairs are not to be taken out of the drawing-room.”

And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting away from the counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid.

“Sugar acid!” said the chemist contemptuously, “don’t know it; I’m ignorant of it!  But perhaps you want oxalic acid.  It is oxalic acid, isn’t it?”

Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting things.

Emma shuddered.  The chemist began saying—­

“Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp.”

“Nevertheless,” replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, “there are people who like it.”

She was stifling.

“And give me—­”

“Will he never go?” thought she.

“Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the varnished leather of my togs.”