Page 435 - madame-bovary

They sat opposite one another, with protruding stom-
achs, puffed-up faces, and frowning looks, after so much
disagreement uniting at last in the same human weakness,
and they moved no more than the corpse by their side, that
seemed to be sleeping.
Charles coming in did not wake them. It was the last
time; he came to bid her farewell.
The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of
bluish vapour blended at the window-sash with the fog
that was coming in. There were few stars, and the night was
warm. The wax of the candles fell in great drops upon the
sheets of the bed. Charles watched them burn, tiring his
eyes against the glare of their yellow flame.
The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as
moonlight. Emma was lost beneath it; and it seemed to him
that, spreading beyond her own self, she blended confused-
ly with everything around her— the silence, the night, the
passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground.
Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on
a bench against the thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the
streets, on the threshold of their house, in the yard at Ber-
taux. He again heard the laughter of the happy boys beneath
the apple-trees: the room was filled with the perfume of her
hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a noise like elec-
tricity. The dress was still the same.
For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her atti-
tudes, her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit
of despair followed another, and even others, inexhaustible
as the waves of an overflowing sea.

Madame Bovary