Page 371 - madame-bovary

turning alone along the boulevard, she saw the walls of her
convent; then she sat down on a form in the shade of the elm-
trees. How calm that time had been! How she longed for the
ineffable sentiments of love that she had tried to figure to
herself out of books! The first month of her marriage, her
rides in the wood, the viscount that waltzed, and Lagardy
singing, all repassed before her eyes. And Leon suddenly
appeared to her as far off as the others.
‘Yet I love him,’ she said to herself.
No matter! She was not happy—she never had been.
Whence came this insufficiency in life—this instantaneous
turning to decay of everything on which she leant? But if
there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a val-
iant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a
poet’s heart in an angel’s form, a lyre with sounding chords
ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance,
should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides,
nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was
a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse,
all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your
lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.
A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes
were heard from the convent-clock. Four o’clock! And
it seemed to her that she had been there on that form an
eternity. But an infinity of passions may be contained in a
minute, like a crowd in a small space.
Emma lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no more
about money matters than an archduchess.
Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund and

0 Madame Bovary