Page 274 - madame-bovary

little girl! Oh, kiss her!’
The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling
to her neck. But turning away her head, Emma said in a bro-
ken voice ‘No, no! no one!’
She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay
there stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids
closed, her hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen
image. Two streams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell
slowly upon the pillow.
Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and
the chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence
that is becoming on the serious occasions of life.
‘Do not be uneasy,’ he said, touching his elbow; ‘I think
the paroxysm is past.’
‘Yes, she is resting a little now,’ answered Charles, watch-
ing her sleep. ‘Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!’
Then Homais asked how the accident had come about.
Charles answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while
she was eating some apricots.
‘Extraordinary!’ continued the chemist. ‘But it might be
that the apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures
are so sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very
fine question to study both in its pathological and physio-
logical relation. The priests know the importance of it, they
who have introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. It
is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies—a thing,
moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are
more delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at
the smell of burnt hartshorn, of new bread—‘