Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert (read novels website txt) đ
- Author: Gustave Flaubert
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âThat wouldnât be much of a loss,â replied Monsieur Homais. âYou would buy another.â
âAnother billiard-table!â exclaimed the widow.
âSince that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrançois. I tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards arenât played now; everything is changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!â
The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went onâ â
âYou may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or the sufferers from the Lyons floodsâ ââ
âIt isnât beggars like him thatâll frighten us,â interrupted the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. âCome, come, Monsieur Homais; as long as the Lion dâOr exists people will come to it. Weâve feathered our nest; while one of these days youâll find the CafĂ© Français closed with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!â she went on, speaking to herself, âthe table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesnât come!â
âAre you waiting for him for your gentlemenâs dinner?â
âWait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six youâll see him come in, for he hasnât his equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. Heâd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur LĂ©on; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesnât so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!â
âWell, you see, thereâs a great difference between an educated man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector.â
Six oâclock struck. Binet came in.
He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round, well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois.
He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way.
âIt isnât with saying civil things that heâll wear out his tongue,â said the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady.
âHe never talks more,â she replied. âLast week two travelers in the cloth line were hereâ âsuch clever chaps who told such jokes in the evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a dab fish and never said a word.â
âYes,â observed the chemist; âno imagination, no sallies, nothing that makes the society-man.â
âYet they say he has parts,â objected the landlady.
âParts!â replied Monsieur Homais; âhe, parts! In his own line it is possible,â he added in a calmer tone. And he went onâ â
âAh! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absentminded, that they should become whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something. Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had put it behind my ear!â
Madame Lefrançois just then went to the door to see if the Hirondelle were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his face was rubicund and his form athletic.
âWhat can I do for you, Monsieur le curĂ©?â asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. âWill you take something? A thimbleful of Cassis?9 A glass of wine?â
The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking Madame Lefrançois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.
When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priestâs behaviour just now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe.
The landlady took up the defence of her curé.
âBesides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong.â
âBravo!â said the chemist. âNow just send your daughters to confess to fellows which such a temperament! I, if
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