The landlady never took her eyes off the “Cafe Francois” and the chemist went on—­

“Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they would pay more attention to the counsels of science.  Thus lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages, entitled, ’Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with some New Reflections on the Subject,’ that I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among its members—­Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological.  Well, if my work had been given to the public—­” But the druggist stopped, Madame Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.

“Just look at them!” she said.  “It’s past comprehension!  Such a cookshop as that!” And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands at her rival’s inn, whence songs were heard issuing.  “Well, it won’t last long,” she added.  “It’ll be over before a week.”

Homais drew back with stupefaction.  She came down three steps and whispered in his ear—­

“What! you didn’t know it?  There is to be an execution in next week.  It’s Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed him with bills.”

“What a terrible catastrophe!” cried the druggist, who always found expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.

Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin’s servant, and although she detested Tellier, she blamed Lheureux.  He was “a wheedler, a sneak.”

“There!” she said.  “Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to Madame Bovary, who’s got on a green bonnet.  Why, she’s taking Monsieur Boulanger’s arm.”

“Madame Bovary!” exclaimed Homais.  “I must go at once and pay her my respects.  Perhaps she’ll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure under the peristyle.”  And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind.

Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her, said in a rough tone—­

“It’s only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist.”  She pressed his elbow.

“What’s the meaning of that?” he asked himself.  And he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes.

Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it.  It stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it like the leaves of weeds.  Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheek-bones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin.  A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils.  Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white teeth were seen between her lips.