Page 401 - madame-bovary

had disappeared whilst they spoke; then catching sight of
her going up the Grande Rue, and turning to the right as if
making for the cemetery, they were lost in conjectures.
‘Nurse Rollet,’ she said on reaching the nurse’s, ‘I am
choking; unlace me!’ She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse
Rollet covered her with a petticoat and remained standing
by her side. Then, as she did not answer, the good woman
withdrew, took her wheel and began spinning flax.
‘Oh, leave off!’ she murmured, fancying she heard Binet’s
lathe.
‘What’s bothering her?’ said the nurse to herself. ‘Why
has she come here?’
She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that
drove her from her home.
Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes,
she saw things but vaguely, although she tried to with idi-
otic persistence. She looked at the scales on the walls, two
brands smoking end to end, and a long spider crawling over
her head in a rent in the beam. At last she began to collect
her thoughts. She remembered—one day—Leon—Oh! how
long ago that was—the sun was shining on the river, and
the clematis were perfuming the air. Then, carried away as
by a rushing torrent, she soon began to recall the day be-
fore.
‘What time is it?’ she asked.
Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand
to that side of the sky that was brightest, and came back
slowly, saying—
‘Nearly three.’

00 Madame Bovary