Page 348 - madame-bovary

woman—a real mistress, in fine?
By the diversity of her humour, in turn mystical or mirth-
ful, talkative, taciturn, passionate, careless, she awakened
in him a thousand desires, called up instincts or memo-
ries. She was the mistress of all the novels, the heroine of
all the dramas, the vague ‘she’ of all the volumes of verse.
He found again on her shoulder the amber colouring of the
‘Odalisque Bathing”; she had the long waist of feudal chat-
elaines, and she resembled the ‘Pale Woman of Barcelona.’
But above all she was the Angel!
Often looking at her, it seemed to him that his soul, es-
caping towards her, spread like a wave about the outline of
her head, and descended drawn down into the whiteness
of her breast. He knelt on the ground before her, and with
both elbows on her knees looked at her with a smile, his
face upturned.
She bent over him, and murmured, as if choking with
intoxication—
‘Oh, do not move! do not speak! look at me! Something
so sweet comes from your eyes that helps me so much!’
She called him ‘child.’ ‘Child, do you love me?’
And she did not listen for his answer in the haste of her
lips that fastened to his mouth.
On the clock there was a bronze cupid, who smirked as
he bent his arm beneath a golden garland. They had laughed
at it many a time, but when they had to part everything
seemed serious to them.
Motionless in front of each other, they kept repeating,
‘Till Thursday, till Thursday.’