Page 282 - madame-bovary

she strove to recall her sensation. That still lasted, however,
but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness.
Her soul, tortured by pride, at length found rest in Christian
humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within
herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a wide
entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed,
then, in the place of happiness, still greater joys—another
love beyond all loves, without pause and without end, one
that would grow eternally! She saw amid the illusions of
her hope a state of purity floating above the earth mingling
with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become a
saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to
have in her room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in
emeralds that she might kiss it every evening.
The cure marvelled at this humour, although Emma’s
religion, he thought, might, from its fervour, end by touch-
ing on heresy, extravagance. But not being much versed in
these matters, as soon as they went beyond a certain limit
he wrote to Monsieur Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor, to
send him ‘something good for a lady who was very clever.’
The bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been
sending off hardware to niggers, packed up, pellmell, ev-
erything that was then the fashion in the pious book trade.
There were little manuals in questions and answers, pam-
phlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur de
Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and
with a honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminar-
ists or penitent blue-stockings. There were the ‘Think of it;
the Man of the World at Mary’s Feet, by Monsieur de ***,

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