Page 82 - madame-bovary

Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the
postilions.
Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open
dressing gown that showed between the shawl facings of her
bodice a pleated chamisette with three gold buttons. Her
belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small
garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that
fell over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book,
writing case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had
no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself
in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between
the lines, let it drop on her knees. She longed to travel or to
go back to her convent. She wished at the same time to die
and to live in Paris.
Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate
omelettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp
beds, received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his face,
listened to death-rattles, examined basins, turned over a
good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he found a blaz-
ing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed
woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no
one could say whence the perfume came, or if it were not
her skin that made odorous her chemise.
She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was
some new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles,
a flounce that she altered on her gown, or an extraordi-
nary name for some very simple dish that the servant had
spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last
mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch

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