Page 416 - madame-bovary

bow.
‘You are not worse, are you?’ asked Charles.
‘No, no!’
The child, serious, and still half-asleep, was carried in on
the servant’s arm in her long white nightgown, from which
her bare feet peeped out. She looked wonderingly at the
disordered room, and half-closed her eyes, dazzled by the
candles burning on the table. They reminded her, no doubt,
of the morning of New Year’s day and Mid-Lent, when thus
awakened early by candle-light she came to her mother’s
bed to fetch her presents, for she began saying—
‘But where is it, mamma?’ And as everybody was silent,
‘But I can’t see my little stocking.’
Felicite held her over the bed while she still kept looking
towards the mantelpiece.
‘Has nurse taken it?’ she asked.
And at this name, that carried her back to the memory of
her adulteries and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned
away her head, as at the loathing of another bitterer poison
that rose to her mouth. But Berthe remained perched on
the bed.
‘Oh, how big your eyes are, mamma! How pale you are!
how hot you are!’
Her mother looked at her. ‘I am frightened!’ cried the
child, recoiling.
Emma took her hand to kiss it; the child struggled.
‘That will do. Take her away,’ cried Charles, who was sob-
bing in the alcove.
Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed

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