He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide open, as if to drink in his words.  Tuvache by his side listened to him with staring eyes.  Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable.  The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waistcoats in sign of approval.  The firemen at the foot of the platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air.  Perhaps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose.  His lieutenant, the youngest son of Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out.  He smiled beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and sleepiness.

The square as far as the houses was crowded with people.  One saw folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors, and Justin, in front of the chemist’s shop, seemed quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at.  In spite of the silence Monsieur Lieuvain’s voice was lost in the air.  It reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners.  In fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.

Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice, speaking rapidly—­

“Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you?  Is there a single sentiment it does not condemn?  The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend together.  Yet they will make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon each other.  Oh! no matter.  Sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they are born one for the other.”

His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her.  She noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy.