"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them."
"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.
But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the church chairs about among the people. Alive to all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelled of incense, and they lent against the thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.
Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to himself:
"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found some one! Oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!"
"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied."
"For, after all," she went on, "you are free----" she hesitated, "rich----"
And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell toward the village.
It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to begin the meeting or still wait.
At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by two thin horses, whom a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily. Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to imitate him. All ran toward the enclosure; every one pushed forward. A few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed, beating drums and marking time.