“You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it—”
Léon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier.
“But where are we going?” she said.
Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Bovary was already dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Léon turned back.
“Sir!”
“What is it?”
And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works “which treated of the cathedral.”
“Idiot!” growled Léon, rushing out of the church.
A lad was playing about the close.
“Go and get me a cab!”
The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.
“Ah! Léon! Really—I don’t know—if I ought,” she whispered. Then with a more serious air, “Do you know, it is very improper—”
“How so?” replied the clerk. “It is done at Paris.”