guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled beneath playing waters. And then, one night they came to a fishing village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and in front of the huts. It was there that they would stay; they would live in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a gulf, by the sea. They would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. However, in the immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonised, azure, and bathed in sunshine. But the child began to cough in her cot or Bovary snored more loudly, and Emma did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn whitened the windows, and when little Justin was already in the square taking down the shutters of the chemist’s shop.
She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said to him—
“I want a cloak—a large lined cloak with a deep collar.”
“You are going on a journey?” he asked.
“No; but—never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and quickly?”
He bowed.
“Besides, I shall want,” she went on, “a trunk—not too heavy—handy.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half, as they are being made just now.”
“And a travelling bag.”