Page 350 - madame-bovary

in the place of eyelids empty and bloody orbits. The flesh
hung in red shreds, and there flowed from it liquids that
congealed into green scale down to the nose, whose black
nostrils sniffed convulsively. To speak to you he threw back
his head with an idiotic laugh; then his bluish eyeballs,
rolling constantly, at the temples beat against the edge of
the open wound. He sang a little song as he followed the
carriages—
‘Maids an the warmth of a summer day Dream of love,
and of love always.’
And all the rest was about birds and sunshine and green
leaves.
Sometimes he appeared suddenly behind Emma, bare-
headed, and she drew back with a cry. Hivert made fun of
him. He would advise him to get a booth at the Saint Ro-
main fair, or else ask him, laughing, how his young woman
was.
Often they had started when, with a sudden movement,
his hat entered the diligence through the small window,
while he clung with his other arm to the footboard, between
the wheels splashing mud. His voice, feeble at first and
quavering, grew sharp; it resounded in the night like the
indistinct moan of a vague distress; and through the ring-
ing of the bells, the murmur of the trees, and the rumbling
of the empty vehicle, it had a far-off sound that disturbed
Emma. It went to the bottom of her soul, like a whirlwind in
an abyss, and carried her away into the distances of a bound-
less melancholy. But Hivert, noticing a weight behind, gave
the blind man sharp cuts with his whip. The thong lashed