Page 337 - madame-bovary

the first time that they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows;
that they had heard the water flowing and the wind blowing
in the leaves; but, no doubt, they had never admired all this,
as if Nature had not existed before, or had only begun to be
beautiful since the gratification of their desires.
At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores
of the islands. They sat at the bottom, both hidden by the
shade, in silence. The square oars rang in the iron thwarts,
and, in the stillness, seemed to mark time, like the beating
of a metronome, while at the stern the rudder that trailed
behind never ceased its gentle splash against the water.
Once the moon rose; they did not fail to make fine phras-
es, finding the orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even
began to sing—
‘One night, do you remember, we were sailing,’ etc.
Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves,
and the winds carried off the trills that Leon heard pass like
the flapping of wings about him.
She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of
the shallop, through one of whose raised blinds the moon
streamed in. Her black dress, whose drapery spread out like
a fan, made her seem more slender, taller. Her head was
raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards heaven.
At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then
she reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight.
Leon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a
ribbon of scarlet silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last
said—
‘Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other

Madame Bovary