Page 280 - madame-bovary

he had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that
he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of medita-
tion from his mind. He reproached himself with forgetting
Emma, as if, all his thoughts belonging to this woman, it
was robbing her of something not to be constantly think-
ing of her.
The winter was severe, Madame Bovary’s convalescence
slow. When it was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the
window that overlooked the square, for she now had an
antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on that side were
always down. She wished the horse to be sold; what she for-
merly liked now displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be
limited to the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking lit-
tle meals, rang for the servant to inquire about her gruel
or to chat with her. The snow on the market-roof threw a
white, still light into the room; then the rain began to fall;
and Emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for
the inevitable return of some trifling events which never-
theless had no relation to her. The most important was the
arrival of the ‘Hirondelle’ in the evening. Then the landlady
shouted out, and other voices answered, while Hippolyte’s
lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the boot, was like a
star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then he
went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards
five o’clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back
from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pave-
ment, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers
one after the other.
It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see