EMMA AND THE OTHER PHILISTINES ----Episode 11

                        THE COUNTY FAIR SCENE

   At the county fair the parallel interruption or counterpoint method is utilized once more. Rodolphe finds three stools, puts them together to form a bench, and he and Emma sit down on the balcony of the town hall to watch the show on the platform, listen to the speakers, and indulge in a flirtatious conversation. Technically, they are not lovers yet. In the first movement of the counterpoint, the councilor speaks, horribly mixing his metaphors and, through sheer verbal automatism, contradicting himself : "Gentlemen ! May I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the government, to the monarch, gentlemen, our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at once so firm and wise that the chariot of state amid the incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts." 
   In the first stage the conversation of Rodolphe and Emma alternates with chunks of official oratory. "I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further."
   "Why ?" said Emma.
   But at this moment the voice of the councilor rose to an extraordinary pitch. He declaimed -----
   "This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord shed blood in our public places, when the landed gentry, the business-man, the working-man himself, peacefully going to sleep at night, trembled lest he should be awakened suddenly by the disasters of fire and warning church bells, when the most subversive doctrines audaciously undermined foundations." 
   "Well, some one down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad reputation----"
   "Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma. 
   "No! It is dreadful, I assure you."
   "But, gentlemen,"continued the councilor, "if, banishing from my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there ?"

   Flaubert collects all the cliches of journalistic and political speech ; but it is very important to note that, if the official speeches are stale "journalese," the romantic conversation between Rodolphe and Emma is stale "romanese." The whole beauty of the thing is that it is not good and evil interrupting each other, but one kind of evil intermingled with another kind of evil. As Flaubert remarked, he paints color on color.
   The second movement starts when Councilor Lieuvain sits down and Monsieur Derozerays speaks. According to Flaubert : "His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councilor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the Government took up less space in it ; religion and agriculture more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilization. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism." In contrast to the preceding movement, at the start the conversation between the two and the speech from the platform are rendered descriptively until in the third movement the direct quotation resumes and the snatches of prize-giving exclamations borne on the wind from the platform alternate rapidly without comment or description : "From  magnetism little by little Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing Cincinnatus and his plow, Diocletian planting his cabbages, and the Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence.
   "Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another ? What chance willed it ? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that flow but to unite, our special bents of mind had driven us towards each other." 
    And he seized her hand ; she did not withdraw it.
   "For good farming generally !" cried the president. 
   "Just now, for example, when I went to your house ----."
   "To Monsieur Bizet of Quincampoix."
   "---did I know I should accompany you ?"
   "Seventy francs." 
   "A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you---I remained."
   "Manures!"
   "And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all of my life! "
   "To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!" 
   "For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a charm."
   "To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."
   "And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you."
   "Fora merino ram !"
   "But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow."
   "To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame." 
   "Oh, do say no ! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I not ? "
   "Porcine race ; prizes ---equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg, sixty francs !" 
   Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering like a captive dove that wants to continue its flight; but, whether she was trying to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure, she made a movement with her fingers. He exclaimed ---
   "Oh, I thank you ! You do not repulse me ! You are good ! You understand that I am yours ! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you !"
   A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.
   "Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on :"Flemish manure---flax growing---drainage---long leases---domestic service." 

                      {Will begin the fourth movement next episode.}