“Ah!” said Emma, “it is no earthly remedy I need.”

But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs of cards.

“I should like to know—­” she went on.

“You look out, Riboudet,” cried the priest in an angry voice; “I’ll warm your ears, you imp!” Then turning to Emma, “He’s Boudet the carpenter’s son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases.  Yet he could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp.  And so sometimes for a joke I call him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to Maromme) and I even say ‘Mon Riboudet.’  Ha!  Ha!  ‘Mont Riboudet.’  The other day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he condescended to laugh at it.  And how is Monsieur Bovary?”

She seemed not to hear him.  And he went on—­

“Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest people in the parish.  But he is doctor of the body,” he added with a thick laugh, “and I of the soul.”

She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest.  “Yes,” she said, “you solace all sorrows.”

“Ah! don’t talk to me of it, Madame Bovary.  This morning I had to go to Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell.  All their cows, I don’t know how it is—­But pardon me!  Longuemarre and Boudet!  Bless me!  Will you leave off?”

And with a bound he ran into the church.

The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over the precentor’s footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were just about to venture into the confessional.  But the priest suddenly distributed a shower of cuffs among them.  Seizing them by the collars of their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them there.

“Yes,” said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, “farmers are much to be pitied.”

“Others, too,” she replied.

“Assuredly.  Town-labourers, for example.”

“It is not they—­”

“Pardon!  I’ve there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread.”

“But those,” replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she spoke, “those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have no—­”

“Fire in the winter,” said the priest.

“Oh, what does that matter?”

“What!  What does it matter?  It seems to me that when one has firing and food—­for, after all—­”

“My God! my God!” she sighed.

“It is indigestion, no doubt?  You must get home, Madame Bovary; drink a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with a little moist sugar.”

“Why?” And she looked like one awaking from a dream.