Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubert“Speak to us,” said Charles; “collect yourself; it is your “Extraordinary!” continued the chemist. “But it might beCharles, who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your that the apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natureslittle girl! Oh, kiss her!”are so sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a veryThe child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to fine question to study both in its pathological and physiologicalrelation. The priests know the importance of it, they whoher neck. But turning away her head, Emma said in a brokenvoice “No, no! no one!”have introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. It is toShe fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies—a thing, moreover,very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are morestretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, herhands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smellstreams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon of burnt hartshorn, of new bread—”the pillow.“Take care; you’ll wake her!” said Bovary in a low voice.Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the “And not only,” the druggist went on, “are human beingschemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is subject to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are notbecoming on the serious occasions of life.ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the“Do not be uneasy,” he said, touching his elbow; “I think Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called catmint, on the feline race; and,the paroxysm is past.”on the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity I“Yes, she is resting a little now,” answered Charles, watchingher sleep. “Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!” established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls intocan answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at presentThen Homais asked how the accident had come about. convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. HeCharles answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while often even makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-houseat Guillaume Wood. Would anyone believe that she was eating some apricots.a179