“Has it ever happened to you,” Léon went on, “to come across some vague idea of one’s own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?”
“I have experienced it,” she replied.
“That is why,” he said, “I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears.”
“Still in the long run it is tiring,” continued Emma. “Now I, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature.”
“In fact,” observed the clerk, “these works, not touching the heart, miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself, living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville affords so few resources.”
“Like Tostes, no doubt,” replied Emma; “and so I always subscribed to a lending library.”
“If madame will do me the honour of making use of it,” said the chemist, who had just caught the last words, “I have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the Echo des Feuilletons ; and in addition I receive various periodicals, among them the Fanal de Rouen daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchâtel, Yonville, and vicinity.”
For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags, brought