"And our poor cactuses, where are they?"

"The cold killed them this winter."

"Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them again as

of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down upon your blinds,

and I saw your two bare arms passing out amongst the flowers."

"Poor friend!" she said, holding out her hand to him.

Leon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep

breath-"At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that

took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to see you; but you, no

doubt, do not remember it."

"I do," she said; "go on."

"You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out, standing on

the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with small blue flowers; and

without any invitation from you, in spite of myself, I went with you.

Every moment, however, I grew more and more conscious of my folly, and

I went on walking by you, not daring to follow you completely, and

unwilling to leave you. When you went into a shop, I waited in the

street, and I watched you through the window taking off your gloves and

counting the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache's;

you were let in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy

door that had closed after you."

Madame Bovary, as she listened to him, wondered that she was so old. All

these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out her life; it was

like some sentimental immensity to which she returned; and from time to

time she said in a low voice, her eyes half closed-"Yes, it is true--true--true!"

They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the Beauvoisine

quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and large empty hotels.

They no longer spoke, but they felt as they looked upon each other a

buzzing in their heads, as if something sonorous had escaped from the

fixed eyes of each of them. They were hand in hand now, and the past,

the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were confounded in the

sweetness of this ecstasy. Night was darkening over the walls, on which

still shone, half hidden in the shade, the coarse colours of four bills

representing four scenes from the "Tour de Nesle," with a motto in

Spanish and French at the bottom. Through the sash-window a patch of

dark sky was seen between the pointed roofs.




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