Page 390 - madame-bovary

mechanically obeying the force of old habits.
The weather was fine. It was one of those March days,
clear and sharp, when the sun shines in a perfectly white
sky. The Rouen folk, in Sunday-clothes, were walking about
with happy looks. She reached the Place du Parvis. People
were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed out through
the three doors like a stream through the three arches of a
bridge, and in the middle one, more motionless than a rock,
stood the beadle.
Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full
of hope, she had entered beneath this large nave, that had
opened out before her, less profound than her love; and she
walked on weeping beneath her veil, giddy, staggering, al-
most fainting.
‘Take care!’ cried a voice issuing from the gate of a court-
yard that was thrown open.
She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground
between the shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in
sable furs. Who was it? She knew him. The carriage darted
by and disappeared.
Why, it was he—the Viscount. She turned away; the
street was empty. She was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she
had to lean against a wall to keep herself from falling.
Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she
did not know. All within her and around her was abandon-
ing her. She felt lost, sinking at random into indefinable
abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on reaching the
‘Croix-Rouge,’ she saw the good Homais, who was watching
a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to