Bab Bab 32 · Part 3 Chapter Eight

. Part 3 Chapter Eight

She asked herself as she walked along, “What am I going to say? How

shall I begin?” And as she went on she recognised the thickets,

the trees, the sea-rushes on the hill, the château yonder. All the

sensations of her first tenderness came back to her, and her poor aching

heart opened out amorously. A warm wind blew in her face; the melting

snow fell drop by drop from the buds to the grass.

She entered, as she used to, through the small park-gate. She reached

the avenue bordered by a double row of dense lime-trees. They were

swaying their long whispering branches to and fro. The dogs in their

kennels all barked, and the noise of their voices resounded, but brought

out no one.

She went up the large straight staircase with wooden balusters that led

to the corridor paved with dusty flags, into which several doors in a

row opened, as in a monastery or an inn. His was at the top, right

at the end, on the left. When she placed her fingers on the lock her

strength suddenly deserted her. She was afraid, almost wished he

would not be there, though this was her only hope, her last chance of

salvation. She collected her thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening

herself by the feeling of present necessity, went in.

He was in front of the fire, both his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a

pipe.

“What! it is you!” he said, getting up hurriedly.

“Yes, it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your advice.”

And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to open her

lips.

“You have not changed; you are charming as ever!”

“Oh,” she replied bitterly, “they are poor charms since you disdained

them.”

Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excusing himself in

vague terms, in default of being able to invent better.

She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight of him,

so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed; in the pretext

he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on which depended the

honour, the very life of a third person.

“No matter!” she said, looking at him sadly. “I have suffered much.”

He replied philosophically--

“Such is life!”

“Has life,” Emma went on, “been good to you at least, since our

separation?”

“Oh, neither good nor bad.”

“Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted.”

“Yes, perhaps.”

“You think so?” she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. “Oh, Rodolphe!

if you but knew! I loved you so!”

It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time, their

fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With a gesture of

pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking upon his breast she

said to him--

“How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the habit

of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I will tell you

about all that and you will see. And you--you fled from me!”

For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in consequence

of that natural cowardice that characterises the stronger sex. Emma went

on, with dainty little nods, more coaxing than an amorous kitten--

“You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them, dear! I excuse

them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are indeed a man;

you have everything to make one love you. But we’ll begin again, won’t

we? We will love one another. See! I am laughing; I am happy! Oh,

speak!”

And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a tear,

like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.

He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of his hand was

caressing her smooth hair, where in the twilight was mirrored like a

golden arrow one last ray of the sun. She bent down her brow; at last he

kissed her on the eyelids quite gently with the tips of his lips.

“Why, you have been crying! What for?”

She burst into tears. Rodolphe thought this was an outburst of her

love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last remnant of

resistance, and then he cried out--

“Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was imbecile and

cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is it. Tell me!” He was

kneeling by her.

“Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand francs.”

“But--but--” said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a grave

expression.

“You know,” she went on quickly, “that my husband had placed his whole

fortune at a notary’s. He ran away. So we borrowed; the patients don’t

pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is not yet done; we shall

have the money later on. But to-day, for want of three thousand francs,

we are to be sold up. It is to be at once, this very moment, and,

counting upon your friendship, I have come to you.”

“Ah!” thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, “that was what she came for.”

At last he said with a calm air--

“Dear madame, I have not got them.”

He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have given them,

although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand

for money being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest and

most destructive.

First she looked at him for some moments.

“You have not got them!” she repeated several times. “You have not got

them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You never loved me.

You are no better than the others.”

She was betraying, ruining herself.

Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was “hard up” himself.

“Ah! I pity you,” said Emma. “Yes--very much.”

And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that shone against its

panoply, “But when one is so poor one doesn’t have silver on the butt of

one’s gun. One doesn’t buy a clock inlaid with tortoise shell,” she went

on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, “nor silver-gilt whistles for one’s

whips,” and she touched them, “nor charms for one’s watch. Oh, he wants

for nothing! even to a liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself;

you live well. You have a château, farms, woods; you go hunting; you

travel to Paris. Why, if it were but that,” she cried, taking up two

studs from the mantelpiece, “but the least of these trifles, one can get

money for them. Oh, I do not want them, keep them!”

And she threw the two links away from her, their gold chain breaking as

it struck against the wall.

“But I! I would have given you everything. I would have sold all, worked

for you with my hands, I would have begged on the highroads for a smile,

for a look, to hear you say ‘Thanks!’ And you sit there quietly in your

arm-chair, as if you had not made me suffer enough already! But for you,

and you know it, I might have lived happily. What made you do it? Was

it a bet? Yet you loved me--you said so. And but a moment since--Ah!

it would have been better to have driven me away. My hands are hot with

your kisses, and there is the spot on the carpet where at my knees you

swore an eternity of love! You made me believe you; for two years you

held me in the most magnificent, the sweetest dream! Eh! Our plans for

the journey, do you remember? Oh, your letter! your letter! it tore my

heart! And then when I come back to him--to him, rich, happy, free--to

implore the help the first stranger would give, a suppliant, and

bringing back to him all my tenderness, he repulses me because it would

cost him three thousand francs!”

“I haven’t got them,” replied Rodolphe, with that perfect calm with

which resigned rage covers itself as with a shield.

She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was crushing her, and she

passed back through the long alley, stumbling against the heaps of dead

leaves scattered by the wind. At last she reached the ha-ha hedge in

front of the gate; she broke her nails against the lock in her haste to

open it. Then a hundred steps farther on, breathless, almost falling,

she stopped. And now turning round, she once more saw the impassive

château, with the park, the gardens, the three courts, and all the

windows of the facade.

She remained lost in stupor, and having no more consciousness of herself

than through the beating of her arteries, that she seemed to hear

bursting forth like a deafening music filling all the fields. The earth

beneath her feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows seemed

to her immense brown waves breaking into foam. Everything in her

head, of memories, ideas, went off at once like a thousand pieces of

fireworks. She saw her father, Lheureux’s closet, their room at home,

another landscape. Madness was coming upon her; she grew afraid, and

managed to recover herself, in a confused way, it is true, for she did

not in the least remember the cause of the terrible condition she was

in, that is to say, the question of money. She suffered only in her

love, and felt her soul passing from her in this memory; as wounded men,

dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding wounds.

Night was falling, crows were flying about.

Suddenly it seemed to her that fiery spheres were exploding in the air

like fulminating balls when they strike, and were whirling, whirling,

to melt at last upon the snow between the branches of the trees. In the

midst of each of them appeared the face of Rodolphe. They multiplied and

drew near her, penetrating her. It all disappeared; she recognised the

lights of the houses that shone through the fog.

Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her. She was panting as

if her heart would burst. Then in an ecstasy of heroism, that made

her almost joyous, she ran down the hill, crossed the cow-plank, the

foot-path, the alley, the market, and reached the chemist’s shop. She

was about to enter, but at the sound of the bell someone might come, and

slipping in by the gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the

walls, she went as far as the door of the kitchen, where a candle stuck

on the stove was burning. Justin in his shirt-sleeves was carrying out a

dish.

“Ah! they are dining; I will wait.”

He returned; she tapped at the window. He went out.

“The key! the one for upstairs where he keeps the--”

“What?”

And he looked at her, astonished at the pallor of her face, that stood

out white against the black background of the night. She seemed to

him extraordinarily beautiful and majestic as a phantom. Without

understanding what she wanted, he had the presentiment of something

terrible.

But she went on quickly in a love voice; in a sweet, melting voice, “I

want it; give it to me.”

As the partition wall was thin, they could hear the clatter of the forks

on the plates in the dining-room.

She pretended that she wanted to kill the rats that kept her from

sleeping.

“I must tell master.”

“No, stay!” Then with an indifferent air, “Oh, it’s not worth while;

I’ll tell him presently. Come, light me upstairs.”

She entered the corridor into which the laboratory door opened. Against

the wall was a key labelled Capharnaum.

“Justin!” called the druggist impatiently.

“Let us go up.”

And he followed her. The key turned in the lock, and she went straight

to the third shelf, so well did her memory guide her, seized the blue

jar, tore out the cork, plunged in her hand, and withdrawing it full of

a white powder, she began eating it.

“Stop!” he cried, rushing at her.

“Hush! someone will come.”

He was in despair, was calling out.

“Say nothing, or all the blame will fall on your master.”

Then she went home, suddenly calmed, and with something of the serenity

of one that had performed a duty.

When Charles, distracted by the news of the distraint, returned home,

Emma had just gone out. He cried aloud, wept, fainted, but she did not

return. Where could she be? He sent Félicité to Homais, to Monsieur

Tuvache, to Lheureux, to the “Lion d’Or,” everywhere, and in the

intervals of his agony he saw his reputation destroyed, their fortune

lost, Berthe’s future ruined. By what?--Not a word! He waited till six

in the evening. At last, unable to bear it any longer, and fancying she

had gone to Rouen, he set out along the highroad, walked a mile, met no

one, again waited, and returned home. She had come back.

“What was the matter? Why? Explain to me.”

She sat down at her writing-table and wrote a letter, which she sealed

slowly, adding the date and the hour. Then she said in a solemn tone:

“You are to read it to-morrow; till then, I pray you, do not ask me a

single question. No, not one!”

“But--”

“Oh, leave me!”

She lay down full length on her bed. A bitter taste that she felt in her

mouth awakened her. She saw Charles, and again closed her eyes.

She was studying herself curiously, to see if she were not suffering.

But no! nothing as yet. She heard the ticking of the clock, the

crackling of the fire, and Charles breathing as he stood upright by her

bed.

“Ah! it is but a little thing, death!” she thought. “I shall fall asleep

and all will be over.”

She drank a mouthful of water and turned to the wall. The frightful

taste of ink continued.

“I am thirsty; oh! so thirsty,” she sighed.

“What is it?” said Charles, who was handing her a glass.

“It is nothing! Open the window; I am choking.”

She was seized with a sickness so sudden that she had hardly time to

draw out her handkerchief from under the pillow.

“Take it away,” she said quickly; “throw it away.”

He spoke to her; she did not answer. She lay motionless, afraid that

the slightest movement might make her vomit. But she felt an icy cold

creeping from her feet to her heart.

“Ah! it is beginning,” she murmured.

“What did you say?”

She turned her head from side to side with a gentle movement full of

agony, while constantly opening her mouth as if something very heavy

were weighing upon her tongue. At eight o’clock the vomiting began

again.

Charles noticed that at the bottom of the basin there was a sort of

white sediment sticking to the sides of the porcelain.

“This is extraordinary--very singular,” he repeated.

But she said in a firm voice, “No, you are mistaken.”

Then gently, and almost as caressing her, he passed his hand over her

stomach. She uttered a sharp cry. He fell back terror-stricken.

Then she began to groan, faintly at first. Her shoulders were shaken by

a strong shuddering, and she was growing paler than the sheets in which

her clenched fingers buried themselves. Her unequal pulse was now almost

imperceptible.

Drops of sweat oozed from her bluish face, that seemed as if rigid in

the exhalations of a metallic vapour. Her teeth chattered, her dilated

eyes looked vaguely about her, and to all questions she replied only

with a shake of the head; she even smiled once or twice. Gradually, her

moaning grew louder; a hollow shriek burst from her; she pretended she

was better and that she would get up presently. But she was seized with

convulsions and cried out--

“Ah! my God! It is horrible!”

He threw himself on his knees by her bed.

“Tell me! what have you eaten? Answer, for heaven’s sake!”

And he looked at her with a tenderness in his eyes such as she had never

seen.

“Well, there--there!” she said in a faint voice. He flew to the

writing-table, tore open the seal, and read aloud: “Accuse no one.” He

stopped, passed his hands across his eyes, and read it over again.

“What! help--help!”

He could only keep repeating the word: “Poisoned! poisoned!” Félicité

ran to Homais, who proclaimed it in the market-place; Madame Lefrancois

heard it at the “Lion d’Or”; some got up to go and tell their

neighbours, and all night the village was on the alert.

Distraught, faltering, reeling, Charles wandered about the room. He

knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist had never

believed that there could be so terrible a sight.

He went home to write to Monsieur Canivet and to Doctor Lariviere. He

lost his head, and made more than fifteen rough copies. Hippolyte went

to Neufchâtel, and Justin so spurred Bovary’s horse that he left it

foundered and three parts dead by the hill at Bois-Guillaume.

Charles tried to look up his medical dictionary, but could not read it;

the lines were dancing.

“Be calm,” said the druggist; “we have only to administer a powerful

antidote. What is the poison?”

Charles showed him the letter. It was arsenic.

“Very well,” said Homais, “we must make an analysis.”

For he knew that in cases of poisoning an analysis must be made; and the

other, who did not understand, answered--

“Oh, do anything! save her!”

Then going back to her, he sank upon the carpet, and lay there with his

head leaning against the edge of her bed, sobbing.

“Don’t cry,” she said to him. “Soon I shall not trouble you any more.”

“Why was it? Who drove you to it?”

She replied. “It had to be, my dear!”

“Weren’t you happy? Is it my fault? I did all I could!”

“Yes, that is true--you are good--you.”

And she passed her hand slowly over his hair. The sweetness of this

sensation deepened his sadness; he felt his whole being dissolving

in despair at the thought that he must lose her, just when she was

confessing more love for him than ever. And he could think of nothing;

he did not know, he did not dare; the urgent need for some immediate

resolution gave the finishing stroke to the turmoil of his mind.

So she had done, she thought, with all the treachery; and meanness,

and numberless desires that had tortured her. She hated no one now; a

twilight dimness was settling upon her thoughts, and, of all earthly

noises, Emma heard none but the intermittent lamentations of this poor

heart, sweet and indistinct like the echo of a symphony dying away.

“Bring me the child,” she said, raising herself on her elbow.

“You are not worse, are you?” asked Charles.

“No, no!”

The child, serious, and still half-asleep, was carried in on the

servant’s arm in her long white nightgown, from which her bare

feet peeped out. She looked wonderingly at the disordered room, and

half-closed her eyes, dazzled by the candles burning on the table. They

reminded her, no doubt, of the morning of New Year’s day and Mid-Lent,

when thus awakened early by candle-light she came to her mother’s bed to

fetch her presents, for she began saying--

“But where is it, mamma?” And as everybody was silent, “But I can’t see

my little stocking.”

Félicité held her over the bed while she still kept looking towards the

mantelpiece.

“Has nurse taken it?” she asked.

And at this name, that carried her back to the memory of her adulteries

and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned away her head, as at the

loathing of another bitterer poison that rose to her mouth. But Berthe

remained perched on the bed.

“Oh, how big your eyes are, mamma! How pale you are! how hot you are!”

Her mother looked at her. “I am frightened!” cried the child, recoiling.

Emma took her hand to kiss it; the child struggled.

“That will do. Take her away,” cried Charles, who was sobbing in the

alcove.

Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed less agitated; and at

every insignificant word, at every respiration a little more easy, he

regained hope. At last, when Canivet came in, he threw himself into his

arms.

“Ah! it is you. Thanks! You are good! But she is better. See! look at

her.”

His colleague was by no means of this opinion, and, as he said of

himself, “never beating about the bush,” he prescribed, an emetic in

order to empty the stomach completely.

She soon began vomiting blood. Her lips became drawn. Her limbs were

convulsed, her whole body covered with brown spots, and her pulse

slipped beneath the fingers like a stretched thread, like a harp-string

nearly breaking.

After this she began to scream horribly. She cursed the poison, railed

at it, and implored it to be quick, and thrust away with her stiffened

arms everything that Charles, in more agony than herself, tried to make

her drink. He stood up, his handkerchief to his lips, with a rattling

sound in his throat, weeping, and choked by sobs that shook his whole

body. Félicité was running hither and thither in the room. Homais,

motionless, uttered great sighs; and Monsieur Canivet, always retaining

his self-command, nevertheless began to feel uneasy.

“The devil! yet she has been purged, and from the moment that the cause

ceases--”

“The effect must cease,” said Homais, “that is evident.”

“Oh, save her!” cried Bovary.

And, without listening to the chemist, who was still venturing the

hypothesis, “It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm,” Canivet was about to

administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of a whip; all the

windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three horses abreast, up to

their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round the corner of the market. It

was Doctor Lariviere.

The apparition of a god would not have caused more commotion. Bovary

raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Homais pulled off his

skull-cap long before the doctor had come in.

He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat, to that

generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners, who, loving

their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with enthusiasm and

wisdom. Everyone in his hospital trembled when he was angry; and his

students so revered him that they tried, as soon as they were themselves

in practice, to imitate him as much as possible. So that in all the

towns about they were found wearing his long wadded merino overcoat

and black frock-coat, whose buttoned cuffs slightly covered his brawny

hands--very beautiful hands, and that never knew gloves, as though to be

more ready to plunge into suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles,

and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous,

fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he

would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect

had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating

than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every

lie athwart all assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along,

full of that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness

of great talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a labourious and

irreproachable life.

He frowned as soon as he had passed the door when he saw the cadaverous

face of Emma stretched out on her back with her mouth open. Then, while

apparently listening to Canivet, he rubbed his fingers up and down

beneath his nostrils, and repeated--

“Good! good!”

But he made a slow gesture with his shoulders. Bovary watched him; they

looked at one another; and this man, accustomed as he was to the sight

of pain, could not keep back a tear that fell on his shirt-frill.

He tried to take Canivet into the next room. Charles followed him.

“She is very ill, isn’t she? If we put on sinapisms? Anything! Oh, think

of something, you who have saved so many!”

Charles caught him in both his arms, and gazed at him wildly,

imploringly, half-fainting against his breast.

“Come, my poor fellow, courage! There is nothing more to be done.”

And Doctor Lariviere turned away.

“You are going?”

“I will come back.”

He went out only to give an order to the coachman, with Monsieur

Canivet, who did not care either to have Emma die under his hands.

The chemist rejoined them on the Place. He could not by temperament keep

away from celebrities, so he begged Monsieur Lariviere to do him the

signal honour of accepting some breakfast.

He sent quickly to the “Lion d’Or” for some pigeons; to the butcher’s

for all the cutlets that were to be had; to Tuvache for cream; and

to Lestiboudois for eggs; and the druggist himself aided in the

preparations, while Madame Homais was saying as she pulled together the

strings of her jacket--

“You must excuse us, sir, for in this poor place, when one hasn’t been

told the night before--”

“Wine glasses!” whispered Homais.

“If only we were in town, we could fall back upon stuffed trotters.”

“Be quiet! Sit down, doctor!”

He thought fit, after the first few mouthfuls, to give some details as

to the catastrophe.

“We first had a feeling of siccity in the pharynx, then intolerable

pains at the epigastrium, super purgation, coma.”

“But how did she poison herself?”

“I don’t know, doctor, and I don’t even know where she can have procured

the arsenious acid.”

Justin, who was just bringing in a pile of plates, began to tremble.

“What’s the matter?” said the chemist.

At this question the young man dropped the whole lot on the ground with

a crash.

“Imbecile!” cried Homais, “awkward lout! block-head! confounded ass!”

But suddenly controlling himself--

“I wished, doctor, to make an analysis, and primo I delicately

introduced a tube--”

“You would have done better,” said the physician, “to introduce your

fingers into her throat.”

His colleague was silent, having just before privately received a severe

lecture about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so arrogant and so

verbose at the time of the clubfoot, was to-day very modest. He smiled

without ceasing in an approving manner.

Homais dilated in Amphytrionic pride, and the affecting thought of

Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic

reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him.

He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell cantharides, upas, the

manchineel, vipers.

“I have even read that various persons have found themselves

under toxicological symptoms, and, as it were, thunderstricken by

black-pudding that had been subjected to a too vehement fumigation.

At least, this was stated in a very fine report drawn up by one of our

pharmaceutical chiefs, one of our masters, the illustrious Cadet de

Gassicourt!”

Madame Homais reappeared, carrying one of those shaky machines that

are heated with spirits of wine; for Homais liked to make his coffee

at table, having, moreover, torrefied it, pulverised it, and mixed it

himself.

“Saccharum, doctor?” said he, offering the sugar.

Then he had all his children brought down, anxious to have the

physician’s opinion on their constitutions.

At last Monsieur Lariviere was about to leave, when Madame Homais asked

for a consultation about her husband. He was making his blood too thick

by going to sleep every evening after dinner.

“Oh, it isn’t his blood that’s too thick,” said the physician.

And, smiling a little at his unnoticed joke, the doctor opened the

door. But the chemist’s shop was full of people; he had the greatest

difficulty in getting rid of Monsieur Tuvache, who feared his spouse

would get inflammation of the lungs, because she was in the habit of

spitting on the ashes; then of Monsieur Binet, who sometimes experienced

sudden attacks of great hunger; and of Madame Caron, who suffered

from tinglings; of Lheureux, who had vertigo; of Lestiboudois, who had

rheumatism; and of Madame Lefrancois, who had heartburn. At last the

three horses started; and it was the general opinion that he had not

shown himself at all obliging.

Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur

Bournisien, who was going across the market with the holy oil.

Homais, as was due to his principles, compared priests to ravens

attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was

personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the

shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other.

Nevertheless, not shrinking from what he called his mission, he returned

to Bovary’s in company with Canivet whom Monsieur Lariviere, before

leaving, had strongly urged to make this visit; and he would, but for

his wife’s objections, have taken his two sons with him, in order

to accustom them to great occasions; that this might be a lesson, an

example, a solemn picture, that should remain in their heads later on.

The room when they went in was full of mournful solemnity. On the

work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or six

small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix between

two lighted candles.

Emma, her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately wide

open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets with that hideous

and soft movement of the dying, that seems as if they wanted already to

cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a statue and with eyes red as

fire, Charles, not weeping, stood opposite her at the foot of the bed,

while the priest, bending one knee, was muttering words in a low voice.

She turned her face slowly, and seemed filled with joy on seeing

suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst of

a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her first

mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude that were

beginning.

The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward her

neck as one who is athirst, and glueing her lips to the body of the

Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest

kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and

the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give

extreme unction. First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly

pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze

and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had

curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands that

had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles of the

feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy her desires, and

that would now walk no more.

The cure wiped his fingers, threw the bit of cotton dipped in oil into

the fire, and came and sat down by the dying woman, to tell her that

she must now blend her sufferings with those of Jesus Christ and abandon

herself to the divine mercy.

Finishing his exhortations, he tried to place in her hand a blessed

candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was soon to be

surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her fingers, and the taper,

but for Monsieur Bournisien would have fallen to the ground.

However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an expression of

serenity as if the sacrament had cured her.

The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to Bovary

that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when he thought it

meet for their salvation; and Charles remembered the day when, so near

death, she had received the communion. Perhaps there was no need to

despair, he thought.

In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a dream;

then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass, and remained

some time bending over it, until the big tears fell from her eyes. Then

she turned away her head with a sigh and fell back upon the pillows.

Her chest soon began panting rapidly; the whole of her tongue protruded

from her mouth; her eyes, as they rolled, grew paler, like the two

globes of a lamp that is going out, so that one might have thought

her already dead but for the fearful labouring of her ribs, shaken

by violent breathing, as if the soul were struggling to free itself.

Félicité knelt down before the crucifix, and the druggist himself

slightly bent his knees, while Monsieur Canivet looked out vaguely at

the Place. Bournisien had again begun to pray, his face bowed against

the edge of the bed, his long black cassock trailing behind him in the

room. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched

towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering at

every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin. As the

death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his prayers

mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes all seemed lost

in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled like a passing

bell.

Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs and the

clattering of a stick; and a voice rose--a raucous voice--that sang--

“Maids in the warmth of a summer day

Dream of love and of love always”

Emma raised herself like a galvanised corpse, her hair undone, her eyes

fixed, staring.

“Where the sickle blades have been,

Nannette, gathering ears of corn,

Passes bending down, my queen,

To the earth where they were born.”

“The blind man!” she cried. And Emma began to laugh, an atrocious,

frantic, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the hideous face of the poor

wretch that stood out against the eternal night like a menace.

“The wind is strong this summer day,

Her petticoat has flown away.”

She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew near. She

was dead.