Page 294 - madame-bovary

plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing
from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Sud-
denly Edgar-Lagardy appeared.
He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the
majesty of marble to the ardent races of the South. His vig-
orous form was tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet;
a small chiselled poniard hung against his left thigh, and
he cast round laughing looks showing his white teeth. They
said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night
on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen
in love with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had de-
serted her for other women, and this sentimental celebrity
did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation. The diplomat-
ic mummer took care always to slip into his advertisements
some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person and the
susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable cool-
ness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of
emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this
admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something
of the hairdresser and the toreador.
From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed
Lucy in his arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed des-
perate; he had outbursts of rage, then elegiac gurglings of
infinite sweetness, and the notes escaped from his bare
neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward to see him,
clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was fill-
ing her heart with these melodious lamentations that were
drawn out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like
the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She