Madame Bovary - Penn State University

FlaubertChapter Thirteenagainst the other, had effaced each other. Finally, he read someof her letters; they were full of explanations relating to theirNO SOONER WAS RODOLPHE at home than he sat down quickly journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business notes. Heat his bureau under the stag’s head that hung as a trophy on wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In orderto find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe dis-the wall. But when he had the pen between his fingers, hecould think of nothing, so that, resting on his elbows, he turbed all the others, and mechanically began rummagingbegan to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded into a amidst this mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets,garters, a black mask, pins, and hair—hair! dark andfar-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenlyplaced a distance between them.fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box, broke whenTo get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboardat the bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writingit was opened.usually kept his letters from women, and from it came an and the style of the letters, as varied as their orthography. Theyodour of dry dust and withered roses. First he saw a handkerchiefwith pale little spots. It was a handkerchief of hers. Once that asked for love, others that asked for money. A word re-were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were somewhen they were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten called faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice;it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature given sometimes, however, he remembered nothing at all.him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts,her languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from cramped each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniformlooking at this image and recalling the memory of its original,Emma’s features little by little grew confused in his re-the mixed-up letters, he amused himself for some momentslevel of love that equalised them all. So taking handfuls ofmembrance, as if the living and the painted face, rubbing one with letting them fall in cascades from his right into his left173