Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in.  But in making this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence, the “Hirondelle,” that was slowly descending the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust.  It was in this yellow carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone for ever.  She fancied she saw him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe’s head by her side.  This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul.  She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals.  She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases.  He said—­“Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism.

“Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races.  Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise with him in the hope of better success.  And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices.”

Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning another speech.  His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations.  Thus the praise of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more.  He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilisation.  Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism.  Going back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods.  Then they had