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 chateau
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 chateau, 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 chateau, 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 Felicite 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.
"Ahl 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!"
Felicite 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 Neufchatel, 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."
Felicite 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. Felicite 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. Felicite 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 an 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.
