Page 310 - madame-bovary

Then you rang at Madame Tuvache’s; you were let in, and I
stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy door that had
closed after you.’
Madame Bovary, as she listened to him, wondered that
she was so old. All these things reappearing before her
seemed to widen out her life; it was like some sentimental
immensity to which she returned; and from time to time
she said in a low voice, her eyes half closed—
‘Yes, it is true—true—true!’
They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the
Beauvoisine quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and
large empty hotels. They no longer spoke, but they felt as
they looked upon each other a buzzing in their heads, as
if something sonorous had escaped from the fixed eyes of
each of them. They were hand in hand now, and the past,
the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were confounded
in the sweetness of this ecstasy. Night was darkening over
the walls, on which still shone, half hidden in the shade, the
coarse colours of four bills representing four scenes from
the ‘Tour de Nesle,’ with a motto in Spanish and French at
the bottom. Through the sash-window a patch of dark sky
was seen between the pointed roofs.
She rose to light two wax-candles on the drawers, then
she sat down again.
‘Well!’ said Leon.
‘Well!’ she replied.
He was thinking how to resume the interrupted
conversation, when she said to him—
‘How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such

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