Madame Bovary - Penn State University

FlaubertA giddiness seemed to her to detach itself from this mass of streets. She walked with downcast eyes, close to the walls,existence, and her heart swelled as if the hundred and twenty and smiling with pleasure under her lowered black veil.thousand souls that palpitated there had all at once sent into For fear of being seen, she did not usually take the mostit the vapour of the passions she fancied theirs. Her love grew direct road. She plunged into dark alleys, and, all perspiring,in the presence of this vastness, and expanded with tumult to reached the bottom of the Rue Nationale, near the fountainthe vague murmurings that rose towards her. She poured it that stands there. It, is the quarter for theatres, public-houses,out upon the square, on the walks, on the streets, and the old and whores. Often a cart would pass near her, bearing someNorman city outspread before her eyes as an enormous capital,as a Babylon into which she was entering. She leant with the flagstones between green shrubs. It all smelt of absinthe,shaking scenery. Waiters in aprons were sprinkling sand onboth hands against the window, drinking in the breeze; the cigars, and oysters.three horses galloped, the stones grated in the mud, the diligencerocked, and Hivert, from afar, hailed the carts on the hair that escaped from beneath his hat.She turned down a street; she recognised him by his curlingroad, while the bourgeois who had spent the night at the Leon walked along the pavement. She followed him to theGuillaume woods came quietly down the hill in their little hotel. He went up, opened the door, entered—What an embrace!family carriages.They stopped at the barrier; Emma undid her overshoes, Then, after the kisses, the words gushed forth. They toldput on other gloves, rearranged her shawl, and some twenty each other the sorrows of the week, the presentiments, thepaces farther she got down from the “Hirondelle.”anxiety for the letters; but now everything was forgotten; theyThe town was then awakening. Shop-boys in caps were gazed into each other’s faces with voluptuous laughs, and tendernames.cleaning up the shop-fronts, and women with baskets againsttheir hips, at intervals uttered sonorous cries at the corners of The bed was large, of mahogany, in the shape of a boat.225