“That is extraordinary for a lady,” said Monsieur Boulanger; “but some people are very susceptible.  Thus in a duel, I have seen a second lose consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols.”

“For my part,” said the chemist, “the sight of other people’s blood doesn’t affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would make me faint if I reflected upon it too much.”

Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm himself, since his fancy was over.

“It procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance,” he added, and he looked at Emma as he said this.  Then he put three francs on the corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out.

He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to La Huchette), and Emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars, slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects.

“She is very pretty,” he said to himself; “she is very pretty, this doctor’s wife.  Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a Parisienne’s.  Where the devil does she come from?  Wherever did that fat fellow pick her up?”

Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing them well.  This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking about her and her husband.

“I think he is very stupid.  She is tired of him, no doubt.  He has dirty nails, and hasn’t shaved for three days.  While he is trotting after his patients, she sits there botching socks.  And she gets bored!  She would like to live in town and dance polkas every evening.  Poor little woman!  She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table.  With three words of gallantry she’d adore one, I’m sure of it.  She’d be tender, charming.  Yes; but how to get rid of her afterwards?”

Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by contrast think of his mistress.  She was an actress at Rouen, whom he kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in remembrance, he was satiated—­

“Ah!  Madame Bovary,” he thought, “is much prettier, especially fresher.  Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat.  She is so finiky about her pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns.”

The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe only heard the regular beating of the grass striking against his boots, with a cry of the grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats.  He again saw Emma in her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her.

“Oh, I will have her,” he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a clod in front of him.  And he at once began to consider the political part of the enterprise.  He asked himself—­

“Where shall we meet?  By what means?  We shall always be having the brat on our hands, and the servant, the neighbours, and husband, all sorts of worries.  Pshaw! one would lose too much time over it.”