"Does this amuse you?" said he, bending over her so closely that the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly--
"Oh, dear me, no, not much."
Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an ice somewhere.
"Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this is going to be tragic."
But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of the singer seemed to her exaggerated.
"She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was listening.
"Yes--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion.
Then with a sigh Leon said--
"The heat is--"
"Unbearable! Yes!"
"Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary.
"Yes, I am stifling; let us go."
Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside the windows of a cafe.
First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted Charles from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Leon; and the latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end.
People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or shouting at the top of their voices, "O bel ange, ma Lucie!*" Then Leon, playing the dilettante, began to talk music.