“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.

“Well,” the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, “I’m afraid he’ll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men—­”

“But you are to have some,” Emma repeated; “I will give you some.  You bother me!”

“Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest.  He even says that cider weakens him.”

“Do make haste, Mere Rollet!”

“Well,” the latter continued, making a curtsey, “if it weren’t asking too much,” and she curtsied once more, “if you would”—­and her eyes begged—­“a jar of brandy,” she said at last, “and I’d rub your little one’s feet with it; they’re as tender as one’s tongue.”

Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon’s arm.  She walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvety collar.  His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged.  She noticed his nails which were longer than one wore them at Yonville.  It was one of the clerk’s chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing desk.

They returned to Yonville by the water-side.  In the warm season the bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls whence a few steps led to the river.  It flowed noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested.  The sun pierced with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty.  It was the dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma’s dress rustling round her.

The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory.  Wallflowers had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary, as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.

They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected shortly at the Rouen theatre.

“Are you going?” she asked.

“If I can,” he answered.