This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing

that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her

sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion

and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride, at length

found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she

saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a

wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then,

in the place of happiness, still greater joys--another love beyond all

loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She

saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the

earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become

a saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her

room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might

kiss it every evening.

The cure marvelled at this humour, although Emma's religion, he thought,

might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. But

not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a

certain limit he wrote to Monsieur Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor,

to send him "something good for a lady who was very clever." The

bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off

hardware to niggers, packed up, pellmell, everything that was then the

fashion in the pious book trade. There were little manuals in questions

and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur

de Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with

a honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent

blue-stockings. There were the "Think of it; the Man of the World at

Mary's Feet, by Monsieur de ***, decorated with many Orders"; "The

Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young," etc.

Madame Bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself

seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much

hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance

of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking

people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with

religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that

they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was

looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped

from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic

melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive.

As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the bottom of

her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than

a king's mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation escaped from this embalmed

love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the

immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. When she knelt on her

Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that

she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery.

It was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens,

and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic

dupery.




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