Page 168 - madame-bovary

pugnance towards her husband for aspirations towards her
lover, the burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness; but
as the tempest still raged, and as passion burnt itself down
to the very cinders, and no help came, no sun rose, there
was night on all sides, and she was lost in the terrible cold
that pierced her.
Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought
herself now far more unhappy; for she had the experience
of grief, with the certainty that it would not end.
A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could
well allow herself certain whims. She bought a Gothic prie-
dieu, and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons for
polishing her nails; she wrote to Rouen for a blue cashmere
gown; she chose one of Lheureux’s finest scarves, and wore
it knotted around her waist over her dressing-gown; and,
with closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched
out on a couch in this garb.
She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair a la Chi-
noise, in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted in on one
side and rolled it under like a man’s.
She wanted to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a
grammar, and a supply of white paper. She tried serious
reading, history, and philosophy. Sometimes in the night
Charles woke up with a start, thinking he was being called
to a patient. ‘I’m coming,’ he stammered; and it was the
noise of a match Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But
her reading fared like her piece of embroidery, all of which,
only just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it,
passed on to other books.

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