Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame Bovarying baskets. He looked at it long, attentively, and he counted draw down divine aid she filled full her eyes with the splendoursthe scales of the fishes and the button-holes of the doublets, of the tabernacle. She breathed in the perfumes of the fullblownflowers in the large vases, and listened to the stillness ofwhile his thoughts wandered off towards Emma.The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individualwho took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by him-She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadlethe church, that only heightened the tumult of her heart.self. He seemed to him to be conducting himself in a monstrousfashion, to be robbing him in a sort, and almost com-“Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? Ma-came forward, hurriedly saying—mitting sacrilege.dame would like to see the curiosities of the church?”But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined “Oh, no!” cried the clerk.cloak—it was she! Leon rose and ran to meet her.“Why not?” said she. For she clung with her expiring virtueEmma was pale. She walked fast.to the Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs—anything.“Read!” she said, holding out a paper to him. “Oh, no!” Then, in order to proceed “by rule,” the beadle conductedAnd she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of them right to the entrance near the square, where, pointingthe Virgin, where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray. out with his cane a large circle of block-stones without inscriptionor carving—The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then henevertheless experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the “This,” he said majestically, “is the circumference of the beautifulbell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds.middle of a rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like anAndalusian marchioness; then he grew bored, for she seemed There was not its equal in all Europe. The workman who castnever coming to an end.it died of the joy—”Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some “Let us go on,” said Leon.sudden resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to206