Page 283 - madame-bovary

decorated with many Orders”; ‘The Errors of Voltaire, for
the Use of the Young,’ etc.
Madame Bovary’s mind was not yet sufficiently clear to
apply herself seriously to anything; moreover, she began
this reading in too much hurry. She grew provoked at the
doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings
displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she
did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion,
seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that
they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose
proof she was looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and
when the volume slipped from her hands, she fancied her-
self seized with the finest Catholic melancholy that an
ethereal soul could conceive.
As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to
the bottom of her heart, and it remained there more solemn
and more motionless than a king’s mummy in a catacomb.
An exhalation escaped from this embalmed love, that, pen-
etrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness
the immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live.
When she knelt on her Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to
the Lord the same suave words that she had murmured for-
merly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery. It was to
make faith come; but no delights descended from the heav-
ens, and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling
of a gigantic dupery.
This searching after faith, she thought, was only one
merit the more, and in the pride of her devoutness Emma
compared herself to those grand ladies of long ago whose

Madame Bovary