His companion was asleep.  Then he felt somewhat stifled by the over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this awoke the chemist.

“Come, take a pinch of snuff,” he said to him.  “Take it; it’ll relieve you.”

A continual barking was heard in the distance.  “Do you hear that dog howling?” said the chemist.

“They smell the dead,” replied the priest.  “It’s like bees; they leave their hives on the decease of any person.”

Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again dropped asleep.  Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on moving his lips gently for some time, then insensibly his chin sank down, he let fall his big black boot, and began to snore.

They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs, puffed-up faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement uniting at last in the same human weakness, and they moved no more than the corpse by their side, that seemed to be sleeping.

Charles coming in did not wake them.  It was the last time; he came to bid her farewell.

The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish vapour blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming in.  There were few stars, and the night was warm.  The wax of the candles fell in great drops upon the sheets of the bed.  Charles watched them burn, tiring his eyes against the glare of their yellow flame.

The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight.  Emma was lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond her own self, she blended confusedly with everything around her—­the silence, the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground.

Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench against the thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the threshold of their house, in the yard at Bertaux.  He again heard the laughter of the happy boys beneath the apple-trees:  the room was filled with the perfume of her hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a noise like electricity.  The dress was still the same.

For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her attitudes, her movements, the sound of her voice.  Upon one fit of despair followed another, and even others, inexhaustible as the waves of an overflowing sea.

A terrible curiosity seized him.  Slowly, with the tips of his fingers, palpitating, he lifted her veil.  But he uttered a cry of horror that awoke the other two.

They dragged him down into the sitting-room.  Then Felicite came up to say that he wanted some of her hair.

“Cut some off,” replied the druggist.

And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors in hand.  He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in several places.  At last, stiffening himself against emotion, Homais gave two or three great cuts at random that left white patches amongst that beautiful black hair.