Why?  Monsieur Homais suspected some “young man’s affair” at the bottom of it, an intrigue.  But he was mistaken.  Leon was after no love-making.  He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of food he left on his plate.  To find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector.  Binet answered roughly that he “wasn’t paid by the police.”

All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Leon often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms.  Complained vaguely of life.

“It’s because you don’t take enough recreation,” said the collector.

“What recreation?”

“If I were you I’d have a lathe.”

“But I don’t know how to turn,” answered the clerk.

“Ah! that’s true,” said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction.

Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it.  He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him.  Yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him.

This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes.  As he was to finish reading there, why not set out at once?  What prevented him?  And he began making home-preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand.  He furnished in his head an apartment.  He would lead an artist’s life there!  He would take lessons on the guitar!  He would have a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers!  He even already was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death’s head on the guitar above them.

The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed more reasonable.  Even his employer advised him to go to some other chambers where he could advance more rapidly.  Taking a middle course, then, Leon looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately.  She consented.

He did not hurry.  Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes, valises, parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville; and when Leon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three arm-chairs restuffed, bought a stock of neckties, in a word, had made more preparations than for a voyage around the world, he put it off from week to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation.

When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Homais wept, Justin sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend’s overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary, who was taking Leon to Rouen in his carriage.