three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and
her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell
over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case,
pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she
dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,
and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She
longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same
time to die and to live in Paris.

Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on
farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid
spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined
basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he
found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed
woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say
whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous
her chemise.

She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of
arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on
her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the
servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last
mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the
watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two
large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory necessaire with a
silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements
the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the
senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust
sanding all along the narrow path of his life.