Page 54 - madame-bovary

days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the
deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad re-
flections on life, she asked to be buried later on in the same
grave. The goodman thought she must be ill, and came to
see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at
a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by
mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine
meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of
dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins
ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discours-
ing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess
it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel
herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than
wrinkles on her brow.
The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, per-
ceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault
seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so
lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they
had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs,
and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the
body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly
reined horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from
her teeth. This nature, positive in the midst of its enthusi-
asms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers,
and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its
passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith
as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her
constitution. When her father took her from school, no one
was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought