Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubertwill, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug with velvet “Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I oftenstripes he had received from her. For this was how they would saw them again as of yore, when on the summer morningshave wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were the sun beat down upon your blinds, and I saw your two barenow adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill arms passing out amongst the flowers.”that always thins out the sentiment.“Poor friend!” she said, holding out her hand to him.But at this invention of the rug she asked, “But why?” Leon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken“Why?” He hesitated. “Because I loved you so!” And congratulatinghimself at having surmounted the difficulty, Leon “At that time you were to me I know not what incompre-a deep breath—watched her face out of the corner of his eyes.hensible force that took captive my life. Once, for instance, IIt was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds went to see you; but you, no doubt, do not remember it.”across. The mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed “I do,” she said; “go on.”to be lifted from her blue eyes; her whole face shone. He “You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out,waited. At last she replied—standing on the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with“I always suspected it.”small blue flowers; and without any invitation from you, inThen they went over all the trifling events of that far-off spite of myself, I went with you. Every moment, however, Iexistence, whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up grew more and more conscious of my folly, and I went onin one word. They recalled the arbour with clematis, the walking by you, not daring to follow you completely, anddresses she had worn, the furniture of her room, the whole of unwilling to leave you. When you went into a shop, I waitedher house.in the street, and I watched you through the window taking“And our poor cactuses, where are they?”off your gloves and counting the change on the counter. Then“The cold killed them this winter.”you rang at Madame Tuvache’s; you were let in, and I stood201