Page 166 - madame-bovary

CHAPTER SEVEN

he next day was a dreary one for Emma. Everything
Tseemed to her enveloped in a black atmosphere floating
confusedly over the exterior of things, and sorrow was en-
gulfed within her soul with soft shrieks such as the winter
wind makes in ruined castles. It was that reverie which we
give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes
you after everything was done; that pain, in fine, that the
interruption of every wonted movement, the sudden cessa-
tion of any prolonged vibration, brings on.
As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the qua-
drilles were running in her head, she was full of a gloomy
melancholy, of a numb despair. Leon reappeared, taller,
handsomer, more charming, more vague. Though separat-
ed from her, he had not left her; he was there, and the walls
of the house seemed to hold his shadow.
She could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he
had walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. The
river still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the
slippery banks.
They had often walked there to the murmur of the waves
over the moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had
been! What happy afternoons they had seen along in the
shade at the end of the garden! He read aloud, bareheaded,
sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of the

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