Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubertshe seemed to feel the floor of the ball-room rebounding again some gardens. She walked rapidly; the fresh air calming her;beneath the rhythmical pulsation of the thousands of dancingfeet. And now the smell of the punch, the smoke of the quadrilles, the lights, the supper, those women, all disappearedand, little by little, the faces of the crowd, the masks, thecigars, made her giddy. She fainted, and they carried her to like mists fading away. Then, reaching the “Croix-Rouge,”the window.she threw herself on the bed in her little room on the secondDay was breaking, and a great stain of purple colour broadenedout in the pale horizon over the St. Catherine hills. The four o’clock Hivert awoke her.floor, where there were pictures of the “Tour de Nesle.” Atlivid river was shivering in the wind; there was no one on the When she got home, Felicite showed her behind the clockbridges; the street lamps were going out.a grey paper. She read—She revived, and began thinking of Berthe asleep yonder in “In virtue of the seizure in execution of a judgment.”the servant’s room. Then a cart filled with long strips of iron What judgment? As a matter of fact, the evening beforepassed by, and made a deafening metallic vibration against another paper had been brought that she had not yet seen,the walls of the houses.and she was stunned by these words—She slipped away suddenly, threw off her costume, told Leon “By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame Bovary.”she must get back, and at last was alone at the Hotel de Then, skipping several lines, she read, “Within twenty-fourBoulogne. Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to hours, without fail—” But what? “To pay the sum of eighther. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly thousand francs.” And there was even at the bottom, “Shesomewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow will be constrained thereto by every form of law, and notablyyoung again.by a writ of distraint on her furniture and effects.”She went out, crossed the Boulevard, the Place Cauchoise, What was to be done? In twenty-four hours—tomorrow.and the Faubourg, as far as an open street that overlooked Lheureux, she thought, wanted to frighten her again; for she249