Homais, when he returned at nine o’clock (for the last two days only Homais seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a stock of camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried a large jar full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata. Just then the servant, Madame Lefrançois, and Madame Bovary senior were busy about Emma, finishing dressing her, and they were drawing down the long stiff veil that covered her to her satin shoes.

Félicité was sobbing—“Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!”

“Look at her,” said the landlady, sighing; “how pretty she still is! Now, couldn’t you swear she was going to get up in a minute?”

Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise the head a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she were vomiting, from her mouth.

“Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!” cried Madame Lefrançois. “Now, just come and help,” she said to the chemist. “Perhaps you’re afraid?”

“I afraid?” replied he, shrugging his shoulders. “I dare say! I’ve seen all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying pharmacy. We used to make punch in the dissecting room! Nothingness does not terrify a philosopher; and, as I often say, I even intend to leave my body to the hospitals, in order, later on, to serve science.”

The curé on his arrival inquired how Monsieur Bovary was, and, on the reply of the druggist, went on—“The blow, you see, is still too recent.”

Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other people, to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed a discussion on the celibacy of priests.

“For,” said the chemist, “it is unnatural that a man should do without women! There have been crimes—”

“But, good heaven!” cried the ecclesiastic, “how do you expect an individual who is married to keep the secrets of the confessional, for example?”

Homais fell foul of the confessional. Bournisien defended it; he enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He cited various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become honest. Military men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had felt the scales fall from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a minister—

His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this awoke the chemist.

“Come, take a pinch of snuff,” he said to him. “Take it; it’ll relieve you.”

A continual barking was heard in the distance. “Do you hear that dog howling?” said the chemist.

“They smell the dead,” replied the priest. “It’s like bees; they leave their hives on the decease of any person.”

Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again dropped asleep. Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on moving his lips gently for some time, then insensibly his chin sank down, he let fall his big black boot, and began to snore.

They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs, puffed-up faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement uniting at last in the same human weakness, and they moved no more than the corpse by their side, that seemed to be sleeping.