"Well, good-bye," he sighed.
She raised her head with a quick movement.
"Yes, good-bye--go!"
They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.
"In the English fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand wholly to
him, and forcing a laugh.
Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being
seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their
eyes met again, and he disappeared.
When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to
look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds.
He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the
curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it,
slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single
movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Leon
set off running.
From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in
a coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were
talking. They were waiting for him.
"Embrace me," said the druggist with tears in his eyes. "Here is your
coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after
yourself."
"Come, Leon, jump in," said the notary.
Homais bend over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs uttered
these three sad words-"A pleasant journey!"
"Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give him his head." They set
out, and Homais went back.
Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched
the clouds. They gathered around the sunset on the side of Rouen and
then swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great
rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy,
while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust
of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered
against the green leaves.
Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in
the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed
away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia.
"Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought.
Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner.
"Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!"
"So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair; "Any news
at home?"