Page 228 - madame-bovary

led right through it like a hen half hidden in the hedge of
thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the
hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to
her dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bend-
ing over the hearth to take up the tongs. How long since she
had been with him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-
corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in
the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the sum-
mer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when
anyone passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her win-
dow there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling
round in the light struck against her window like rebound-
ing balls of gold. What happiness there had been at that
time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illu-
sions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them
all in her soul’s life, in all her successive conditions of life-
maidenhood, her marriage, and her love—thus constantly
losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves
something of his wealth at every inn along his road.
But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the ex-
traordinary catastrophe that had transformed her? And she
raised her head, looking round as if to seek the cause of that
which made her suffer.
An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot;
the fire burned; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of
the carpet; the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard
her child shouting with laughter.
In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn
in the midst of the grass that was being turned. She was