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.
There is always after the death of anyone a kind of
stupefaction; so difficult is it to grasp this advent
of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe
in it. But still, when he saw that she did not
move, Charles threw himself upon her, crying—
“Farewell! farewell!”
Homais and Canivet dragged him from the room.
“Restrain yourself!”
“Yes.” said he, struggling, “I’ll
be quiet. I’ll not do anything. But
leave me alone. I want to see her. She is
my wife!”
And he wept.
“Cry,” said the chemist; “let nature
take her course; that will solace you.”
Weaker than a child, Charles let himself be led downstairs
into the sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went
home. On the Place he was accosted by the blind
man, who, having dragged himself as far as Yonville,
in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic pomade, was
asking every passer-by where the druggist lived.
“There now! as if I hadn’t got other fish
to fry. Well, so much the worse; you must come
later on.”
And he entered the shop hurriedly.
He had to write two letters, to prepare a soothing
potion for Bovary, to invent some lie that would conceal
the poisoning, and work it up into an article for
the “Fanal,” without counting the people
who were waiting to get the news from him; and when
the Yonvillers had all heard his story of the arsenic
that she had mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla
cream. Homais once more returned to Bovary’s.
He found him alone (Monsieur Canivet had left), sitting
in an arm-chair near the window, staring with an idiotic
look at the flags of the floor.
