Charles several times asked himself by what means he should next year be

able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined expedients, such

as applying to his father or selling something. But his father would be

deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that

he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from

his mind. He reproached himself with forgetting Emma, as if, all his

thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to

be constantly thinking of her.

The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence slow. When it

was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the window that overlooked the

square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on

that side were always down. She wished the horse to be sold; what she

formerly liked now displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to

the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the

servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on

the market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain

began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for

the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no

relation to her. The most important was the arrival of the "Hirondelle"

in the evening. Then the landlady shouted out, and other voices

answered, while Hippolyte's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the

boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in;

then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five

o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school,

dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of

the shutters with their rulers one after the other.

It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He

inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion, in a

coaxing little prattle that was not without its charm. The mere thought

of his cassock comforted her.

One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself

dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the

preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the

night table covered with syrups into an altar, and while Felicite was

strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing

over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from

all feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was

beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would

be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into

vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew

from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial

joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the Saviour

presented to her. The curtains of the alcove floated gently round her

like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table

seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back,

fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived

in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green

palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to

earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms.




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