Madame Bovary - Penn State University

FlaubertChapter SevenThey had often walked there to the murmur of the wavesover the moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had been!THE NEXT DAY was a dreary one for Emma. Ev-erything seemed What happy afternoons they had seen along in the shade atto her enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly the end of the garden! He read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on aover the exterior of things, and sorrow was engulfed within footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of the meadow sether soul with soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in trembling the leaves of the book and the nasturtiums of theruined castles. It was that reverie which we give to things that arbour. Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life, the onlywill not return, the lassitude that seizes you after everything possible hope of joy. Why had she not seized this happinesswas done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted when it came to her? Why not have kept hold of it with bothmovement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, hands, with both knees, when it was about to flee from her?brings on.And she cursed herself for not having loved Leon. She thirstedAs on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles for his lips. The wish took possession of her to run after andwere running in her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy,of a numb despair. Leon reappeared, taller, handsomer, I; I am yours.” But Emma recoiled beforehand at the difficul-rejoin him, throw herself into his arms and say to him, “It ismore charming, more vague. Though separated from her, he ties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by regret, becameonly the more acute.had not left her; he was there, and the walls of the houseseemed to hold his shadow.Henceforth the memory of Leon was the centre of her boredom;it burnt there more brightly than the fire travellers haveShe could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he hadwalked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. The river left on the snow of a Russian steppe. She sprang towards him,still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the slippery she pressed against him, she stirred carefully the dying embers,sought all around her anything that could revive it; banks.and107