Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubert“But—”But she felt an icy cold creeping from her feet to her heart.“Oh, leave me!”“Ah! it is beginning,” she murmured.She lay down full length on her bed. A bitter taste that she “What did you say?”felt in her mouth awakened her. She saw Charles, and again She turned her head from side to side with a gentle movementfull of agony, while constantly opening her mouth as ifclosed her eyes.She was studying herself curiously, to see if she were not something very heavy were weighing upon her tongue. Atsuffering. But no! nothing as yet. She heard the ticking of the eight o’clock the vomiting began again.clock, the crackling of the fire, and Charles breathing as he Charles noticed that at the bottom of the basin there was astood upright by her bed.sort of white sediment sticking to the sides of the porcelain.“Ahl it is but a little thing, death!” she thought. “I shall fall “This is extraordinary—very singular,” he repeated.asleep and all will be over.”But she said in a firm voice, “No, you are mistaken.”She drank a mouthful of water and turned to the wall. The Then gently, and almost as caressing her, he passed his handfrightful taste of ink continued.over her stomach. She uttered a sharp cry. He fell back terrorstricken.“I am thirsty; oh! so thirsty,” she sighed.“What is it?” said Charles, who was handing her a glass. Then she began to groan, faintly at first. Her shoulders were“It is nothing! Open the window; I am choking.” shaken by a strong shuddering, and she was growing palerShe was seized with a sickness so sudden that she had hardly than the sheets in which her clenched fingers buried themselves.Her unequal pulse was now almost imperceptible.time to draw out her handkerchief from under the pillow.“Take it away,” she said quickly; “throw it away.”Drops of sweat oozed from her bluish face, that seemed asHe spoke to her; she did not answer. She lay motionless, if rigid in the exhalations of a metallic vapour. Her teeth chattered,her dilated eyes looked vaguely about her, and to afraid that the slightest movement might make her vomit.all269