Back to the chateau; Three thousand francs; Rodolphe's refusal; M. Homais's white powder; Emma's letter; Berthe at the bedside; The three doctors; Lunch at the druggist's; Emma dies.

SHE asked herself, as she walked along, 'What am I going to say? How shall I begin?' And as she got nearer and nearer she recognized the bushes, the trees, the reeds on the hillside, and the chateau down in the hollow. All the sensations of the old affection had come back to her again, and her poor, overladen heart began lovingly to unfold itself. A warm breeze fanned her face; the snow was melting, and fell drop by drop from the budding shoots on to the grass.

Emma entered the park, as she was wont to do, by the wicket gate; then she reached the quadrangle which was bordered by a double row of bushy lime-trees. Their long, swaying branches were murmuring in the wind. The dogs in the kennels set up a great barking, and though the din was deafening, no one appeared.

She mounted the broad, straight staircase with the wooden banisters, and found herself at the end of a corridor paved with dusty tiles, with several rooms opening out of it like a monastery or an inn. His was away down at the far end, on the left. When she came to put her hand on the door-knob, her strength suddenly left her. She had a sort of fear that he might not be there, she almost wished he might not be; and yet it was her only hope, her last chance of salvation. She stood for a moment collecting her ideas, and then, reinforcing her courage from the armoury of present necessity, she went in.

He was sitting in front of the fire, with his feet up on the chimney-piece, just starting a pipe.

'Hullo! Is that you?' he exclaimed, getting up quickly.

'Yes, it's me. Rodolphe, I want to ask your advice.'

But, for all his efforts, he could not open his mouth.

'You haven't changed, you are as charming as ever.'

'Ah!' she answered bitterly, 'those charms are sad charms, seeing that you have disdained them.'

Then he launched forth on an explanation of his conduct, making all kinds of vague excuses, since he couldn't invent any definite story.

She suffered herself to fall under the spell of his words, or rather of his voice and presence; so that, at last, she pretended to believe- perhaps she really did believe- in his alleged reason for their severance; it was a secret involving the honour, and it may have been the life, of a third party.

'Ah, well!' she said, gazing at him sadly, 'I have suffered a great deal.'

'Such is life!' he answered philosophically.

'And has life been kind to you, since our separation?' inquired Emma.

'Oh, neither kind... nor unkind.'

'Perhaps it would have been better never to have left each other.'

'Yes... perhaps!'

'You think that?' she said, drawing nearer to him.

'Oh, Rodolphe!' she sighed, 'if you only knew... I loved you so!'

It was then she took his hand, and for some moments they sat with their fingers intertwined as on that first day at the Agricultural Show. A sort of pride compelled him to struggle not to give way to his emotion. But, burying her head in his breast, she murmured,

'How could you think I could live without you? You cannot break with happiness like that. I was desperate. I thought I should die. I will tell you all about it, you will see. And you... you have shunned me!...'

For, for three years now, he had studiously avoided her, as a result of the native cowardice distinctive of the stronger sex.

'There are other women you love,' she went on, with little witching movements of her head, more wheedling than an amorous kitten. 'Come, confess it. Oh, I understand them! I can make allowances for them. You fascinated them, as you fascinated me. You are a man, if ever there was one. You have everything to make a woman love you. But we will begin all over again, won't we? We will be lovers once more! Why, I'm laughing, I'm happy!... But speak to me!...'

She was a lovely sight to behold, with a tear glistening tremblingly in her eye, like a storm-drop in a harebell's cup.

He drew her on to his knee and stroked her soft hair with the back of his hand, and in the glowing twilight a lingering ray of the sun sparkled in it like a golden arrow. She bent her head down, and at last he kissed her on the eyelids, very gently, hardly touching them with his lips.

'Why, you've been crying!' he said. 'How's that?'

She began to sob convulsively. Rodolphe thought it was her pent-up passion, bursting its bonds; and, since she uttered no word, he, interpreting her silence as a final index of womanly modesty, exclaimed,

'Ah, forgive me! You are the only woman that has any charm for me. I've been a fool and a brute. I love you, and I shall love you always. What is it, then? Tell me!' And he sank down on his knees.

'Well, then... I am ruined, Rodolphe! I want you to lend me three thousand francs!'

'But... but...' he stammered, gradually rising to his feet, his features taking on an expression of extreme gravity.

'You know,' she went on hurriedly, 'my husband had entrusted all our money to a notary. He disappeared. We had to borrow; the patients did not pay their bills. Besides, his father's estate has not yet been settled up. We shall have money coming in later on, but now, unless we can put our hands on three thousand francs, we shall be sold up. It's now, this very moment, that we want it, and, counting on your friendship, I have come to you.'

'Ah!' thought Rodolphe, who had suddenly gone very pale, 'so that's her little game, is it?'

After a moment or two he replied, very calmly,

'I haven't got it, dear lady.'

That was no lie. If he had had it he would have given it to her; and that, despite the fact that it is no joke to perform such noble deeds, since of all the blasts that ever fall on the plant of love, a pecuniary request is the most freezing and most devastating.

She stood a few minutes looking at him.

'You haven't got it?

She said it several times over.

'You haven't got it! I might have spared myself this crowning humiliation. You never loved me. You are no better than the rest of them.'

She was betraying herself now, cutting the ground from under her feet.

Rodolphe interrupted her, saying that he was short of money himself.

'Ah, I'm sorry for you!' said Emma. 'Yes, I am really pained.'

And then, letting her gaze linger on a sporting gun inlaid with damascene work that was gleaming on the rack, she said,

'Yes, but when people are as poor as you are, they don't have silver on the butt-ends of their guns. They don't buy clocks inlaid with tortoiseshell,' she continued, pointing to his Boulle timepiece; 'nor silver-gilt whistles for their whips'- she touched them- 'nor seals for their watch-chains. Oh, no, there's nothing you haven't got, including even a liqueur-stand in your bedroom. For you like yourself a lot; you live well; you've got a fine house and farms and woods. You ride to hounds, you run up to Paris.... Why, if it were only a thing like that,' she said, picking up his cuff-links from the chimney-piece- the very smallest of these stupid gew-gaws you could get money on!... Oh, I don't want them! Keep them!'

She flung the links across the room, and the gold chain snapped as they struck the wall.

'I would have given you everything, sold all I had; I would have slaved for you with my hands; I would have begged in the streets, just for a smile, for a glance; just to hear you say "Thank you". And you sit there calmly, in your arm-chair, as if you had not made me suffer enough already. Had it not been for you, I tell you, my life might have been a happy one. What compelled you to do it? Was it a wager? And yet you loved me, you used to tell me. And just now even... Oh, why didn't you tell me to go? It would have been better. My hands are warm with your kisses, and here just now, on this carpet, you fell on your knees and swore you would love me for ever. You made me believe it was true. For two whole years you led me on through the loveliest and sweetest of dreamlands. Ha! Do you remember? When we were planning to go away together? All the places we were going to? Do you remember? Oh, your letter, that letter of yours- it tore my heart to shreds!... And now, when I come back to him, to him who is rich, happy, free; come back to implore a boon that almost anyone would grant, come to him on my knees, bringing him all my love, he thrusts me aside because it would cost him- three thousand francs!'

'I haven't got it, I tell you,' answered Rodolphe, with that utter calmness which is the protective resource of passive indignation.

She went out. The walls were quaking, and the ceiling seemed as if it would fall on her and crush her. She went back again, down the long drive, stumbling over the heaps of dead leaves that were being blown about by the wind. At last she reached the gate. She tore her nails on the catch in her frenzy to get it open. Then, a hundred paces farther on, all out of breath and nearly falling, she came to a halt. And, turning round, she looked once more on the chateau, cold and silent, with the park, the gardens, the three courts, and all the windows of the facade.

She stood in a sort of stupor, like one lost, with nothing to recall her to herself, or to the world, save the throbbing of her arteries, which seemed to besiege her ears like a deafening music and to fill the region round about. The ground beneath her feet was softer than a wave, and the furrows looked to her like vast brown billows, rolling on and on into the distance. All the stored-up contents of her brain, all her memories, all her ideas burst forth in a single flash, like the myriad stars in a blaze of fireworks. Her father, Lheureux's office, their room, another region altogether, passed before her eyes. She felt as if she were going mad, a panic seized her, and then, somehow, she retained control of herself- confusedly, it is true, for she never so much as thought of the cause of her horrible distress of mind, that is to say, of the money. It was her love that pierced her heart, and she felt as if her soul were ebbing from her through the memory of it, even as the wounded in their death agony feel their life's blood ebbing from them through their unstanched wounds.

Night was falling, the homing rooks were on the wing.

Of a sudden it seemed to her as if the sky were hung with globes of fire that burst like angry bullets and flattened themselves and fell slowly earthward, turning and turning, amid the branches of the trees, to bury themselves in the snow. And in the centre of each of them she saw the countenance of Rodolphe. Their numbers multiplied, they were drawing closer together, they were piercing her. Then it all vanished. She saw the lights in the houses, glimmering in the distance, through the mist.

And now all the horror flooded in on her again, she saw it all like an abyss. She was panting frantically. Then, in a transport of heroism that made her almost glad at heart, she went running down the hill, sped across the cattle plank, hastened along the footpath, through the market place and arrived outside the chemist's shop.

There was no one there. She was just going in, but someone might come at the sound of the shop bell; so, slipping through the gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she reached the door of the kitchen. There was a candle burning inside, standing on the top of the stove. Justin in his shirt-sleeves was carrying out a dish.

'Ah, they're at dinner! Now wait!'

He came back. She tapped on the window. He came out.

'The key! The key of upstairs! Where the...'

'What?'

And he stood looking at her, amazed at the paleness of her face, which stood out deathly white against the murky background of the night. She seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful and majestic. Without realizing what it was she wanted, he had a presentiment that it was something terrible.

But then she went on again, in a low voice, a voice that was sweet and melting,

'I want it. Give it to me.'

The walls were thin, and you could hear the clatter of the knives and forks in the dining-room.

She pretended that she wanted some stuff to kill the rats that kept her awake at night.

'I should have to tell Master.'

'No! Stop where you are!'

Then, as if it were a matter of no importance, she said carelessly,

'Don't bother, I'll tell him in a minute. Go on, show me a light.'

She entered the passage, where the laboratory door was. On the wall there hung a key labelled 'lumber-room'.

'Justin!' shouted the apothecary, who was getting impatient.

'Come along up,' she whispered.

And he followed her.

The key turned in the lock, and she went straight over and reached up to the third shelf, so accurately did her memory guide her. She seized the blue jar, pulled out the bung, plunged in her hand and, drawing it out full of a white powder, began to eat it then and there.

'Stop!' cried the lad, flinging himself upon her.

'Be quiet, they'll come!'

He was frantic, he wanted to shout for someone.

'Say nothing. The blame would all fall on your master.'

Then she came away with a sudden peace in her heart, almost as serene as though she had had a duty to do- and had done it.

When Charles, overwhelmed at the news of the distraint, came back to the house, Emma had just left it. He cried, he wept, he went off into a faint, but she did not return. Where could she be? He sent Felicite to the Homais', the Tuvaches', Lheureux's, the 'Lion d'Or', everywhere- and, whenever his anguish lifted for a moment, he saw his reputation ruined, his money gone, Berthe's future shattered. How? Why? Not a word. He waited till six o'clock in the evening. Then, unable to stand it any longer, and concluding she must have set out for Rouen, he went out along the road, covered about a mile and a half, saw no one, waited about, and then came back again.

She had come home.

'What was the matter?... Why?... Tell me all about it.'

She sat down at her writing-desk and wrote a letter, which she slowly sealed, adding the date and the hour. Then she said, in a solemn tone:

'You will read that to-morrow. Until then, I beg you, do not ask me a single question!... No, not one!'

'But...'

'Oh, leave me!'

And she lay down at full length on her bed. She felt a bitter taste in her mouth, and it woke her up. She caught sight of Charles, and shut her eyes again.

She kept her senses alert, wondering whether she had any pain. But no! Nothing yet. She could hear the clock ticking, the fire flickering. Charles was standing by the bed, and she heard the sound of his breathing.

'Ah, it's nothing very much- dying!' she thought. 'I shall just drop off to sleep, and it will all be over.'

She gulped down a draught of water and turned her face to the wall.

But there was still that horrible taste of ink.

'I'm thirsty... oh, I'm so dreadfully thirsty!' she sighed.

'What can it be?' said Charles, bringing her a glass of water.

'It's nothing.... Open the window.... I can't breathe.'

And she began to vomit so suddenly that she hardly had time to snatch her handkerchief from under her pillow.

'Take it away!' she said quickly. 'Throw it somewhere.'

He questioned her. She made no answer. She kept perfectly still, for fear the slightest movement should cause her to be sick. And she was beginning to feel an icy coldness, creeping up from her feet to her heart.

'Ah, it's beginning now!' she whispered.

'What's that you say?'

She kept swaying her head, gently, from side to side, in a state of anguish, continually opening and shutting her jaws, as if she had something very heavy on her tongue. At eight o'clock the vomiting began again.

Charles, examining the basin, noticed a sort of whitish slime that clung to the bottom.

'That's extraordinary, that's very odd!' he observed.

'No, no, you're wrong,' she said in a strong voice.

Then very lightly, almost as if he were caressing her, he passed his hand over her stomach. She gave a piercing shriek. He started back, scared out of his wits.

Then she began to moan, weakly at first. Her shoulders were shuddering convulsively, and she was growing paler than the sheet she was grasping with her clenched hands. Her pulse was irregular and, by this time, almost imperceptible.

There were drops of sweat on her livid face, that seemed as though it were petrified in the exhalation of some metallic vapour. Her teeth were chattering, her eyes were dilated and staring vaguely about her, and every question she answered with a shake of the head. She even smiled two or three times. Gradually her groans grew louder. Once she tried to stifle a shriek; she pretended she was getting better and would be getting up. But she was taken with convulsions again.

'Oh, God, it's frightful!'

He flung himself on his knees at her bedside.

'Tell me, what have you been eating? For God's sake, speak!' and as he looked at her there was a tenderness in his eyes she had never seen in them before.

'Oh, well, look over there... there!' she said in failing tones.

He sprang to the writing-table, broke the seal of the letter, and read aloud. 'Let no one be accused...' He stopped, passed his hand across his eyes and then read on.

'What!... help ! Oh, God, help !'

And all he could say was the word 'Poisoned, poisoned!'

Felicite rushed off to Homais, who shouted it aloud in the Square; Madame Lefrancois heard him at the 'Lion d'Or'; some of the folks got up to tell their neighbours, and all night long the village was in a ferment.

Bewildered, stammering, his legs almost giving way under him, Charles kept wandering about the room, floundering against the furniture, tearing his hair, and never had the chemist believed it possible to see so appalling a scene.

He went back home to write to Monsieur Canivet and Dr. Lariviere. His head was in a whirl, and he made more than fifteen abortive attempts. Hippolyte went off to Neufchatel, and Justin spurred on Bovary's horse so vigorously that he left it foundered and half dead on the hill of Bois-Guillaume.

Charles tried to turn up his 'Dictionary of Medicine'; but he couldn't see- the letters kept dancing about.

'Be calm!' said the apothecary. 'The thing is to administer some powerful antidote. What is the poison?'

Charles showed him the letter. It was arsenic.

'Very well, then,' said Homais, 'what we've got to do is to make an analysis.'

For he knew that in every poisoning case an analysis had to be made. Charles, who did not know what he meant, said,

'Ah, yes! Go on! Go on! Save her.'

Then he went back to her, and, sinking down on the carpet, knelt there with his head against the edge of the bed, sobbing.

'Don't cry,' she said, 'I shan't be here to worry you much longer.'

'Why did you do it? Who made you do it?'

And she replied,

'It had to be, dear.'

'Weren't you happy? Was it my fault? I did everything I could.'

'Yes... that is true.... You are kind, so kind.'

And she passed her fingers through his hair, slowly. The sweetness of this sensation made his cup of sadness overflow. He felt as if his whole being were falling in ruin at the idea of losing her just when she was confessing more love for him than she had ever shown before. And there wasn't a clue. He knew nothing, he dared do nothing, the need for doing something, and doing it at once, having utterly paralysed him.

She had finished at last, she thought, with all things treacherous and base, with all the lusts of the flesh that had tortured her. She hated no one, now. A vague twilight was lowering upon her spirit, and, of all earthly sounds, Emma heard only the intermittent lamentation of that poor heart of hers, a lamentation soft and indistinct, like the last echo of a symphony dying away in the distance.

'Bring the little one to me,' she said, raising herself on her elbow.

'You're not feeling worse, are you?' asked Charles.

'No! no!'

The child came in on her nurse's arm, in her long nightdress, her little naked feet peeping out at the bottom. She looked thoughtful and not yet out of dreamland. She opened big, wondering eyes when she saw the disordered room, and the light of the candles stuck about on the furniture dazzled her and made her blink. They must have made her think of those New Year's mornings when, roused from her sleep like this, by candlelight, she used to come into her mother's bed to get her presents, for she said,

'But, Mummy, where is it?'

And, as no one spoke, she said again,

'But I can't see my little shoe anywhere!'

And while Felicite was holding her over the bed, the child was still looking at the fireplace.

'Has Mere Rollet taken it away?'

At the sound of this name, which brought back the memory of her sins and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned away her head, as though her gorge had risen at the taste of a poison more virulent and more bitter than that other. All this while, Berthe was sitting on the edge of the bed.

'Oh, Mummy, how big your eyes are! How white you are! And your face is all wet!'

Her mother was gazing at her.

'I'm frightened!' cried the little one, shrinking away.

Emma took her hand and tried to kiss it; she struggled to free herself.

'Enough! Take her away!' cried Charles, who was sobbing in a corner of the room.

After that the symptoms ceased a little. She seemed easier; and every little, insignificant word she uttered, every breath that seemed a little calmer, gave him fresh hope. At last, when Canivet came into the room, he flung himself, weeping, into his arms.

'Ah, you've come! How good of you to come! But see! She's going on better now. Look at her! Do you see?'

His confrere did not share this view at all, and, not being given to dilly-dallying- he said so himself- he at once prescribed an emetic, in order to give the stomach a thorough clean out.

A minute or two later she was bringing up blood. Her lips were drawn, her limbs contracted, her body covered all over with brown patches, and her pulse flickered away beneath the fingers like a taut wire, or like a harp-string, stretched to breaking point.

Then she began to scream. Her shrieks were dreadful to hear. She cried out upon the poison, she cursed it, she implored it to make haste and, with her rigid arms, thrust away everything that Charles, whose agony exceeded hers, endeavoured to make her drink. He was standing bolt upright, his handkerchief to his lips, making a rattling noise in his throat, crying, choking with sobs that shook him from head to foot. Felicite was rushing distractedly about the room. Homais, motionless, was heaving deep sighs, and Monsieur Canivet, though he did not lose his nerve through it all, was nevertheless beginning to feel uneasy.

'The devil... but... we've purged her, and when the cause ceases...'

'The effect must also cease,' interposed Homais. 'That's as plain as a pikestaff!'

'But save her life!' cried Bovary.

And so, paying no attention to the apothecary, who was hazarding the hypothesis that it was perhaps 'a salutary paroxysm', Canivet was preparing to give her a dose of morphia, when the crack of a whip was heard. The windows shook, and a post-chaise, nearly lifted off its wheels by three horses plastered with mud to the ears, swung suddenly round the corner by the market-house. It was Dr. Lariviere. If a god had appeared on the scene, it could not have caused greater commotion. Bovary lifted up his hands, Canivet stopped short, and Homais had removed his Turkish cap well before the doctor came in.

Dr. Lariviere came of that great school of surgeons of which Bichat was the founder; he belonged to a generation, now no more, of enlightened medical men, who, cherishing their art with a fanatical devotion, practised it with lofty zeal and unfailing sagacity. The whole hospital quaked when he thundered in his wrath, and his pupils carried their veneration to the point of imitating his sartorial peculiarities, so that you would find young fellows who had only just set up in practice in the towns and villages round about, affecting the long merino cardigan and loose black coat distinctive of the master they revered. He himself used to wear his wristbands unbuttoned so that they came down a little over his muscular hands- very beautiful hands they were- hands that were never cased in gloves, so they might ever be the readier to immerse themselves in suffering. Disdaining all academic distinctions, orders and decorations, friendly and hospitable, open-handed, a father to the poor, a virtuous man unconscious of his virtue, he might almost have passed for a saint if his intellectual penetration had not made him feared like a demon. His glance, that was keener than his scalpel, pierced down into the depths of your soul, and made short work of any lie that might be lurking there embedded in make-believe and false timidity. And so he went among his people, invested with that sweet, austere stateliness of mien which the consciousness of a great talent, the possession of ample means and forty years of a laborious and stainless life, all combined to bestow.

As soon as he was inside the door he lowered his eyebrows, seeing Emma's cadaverous face, as she lay stretched on her back, gaping. Then, while appearing to be listening to what Dr. Canivet was telling him, he rubbed the tip of his nose with his forefinger and said, 'Quite so, quite so,' but raised his shoulders with a slow, significant gesture. Bovary saw him, and they looked one another in the face, and though the doctor was accustomed to every aspect of human suffering, he could not restrain a tear.

He wanted to manoeuvre Canivet into the next room, but Charles followed.

'She's very bad, isn't she? Do you think if we tried poulticing her...? Oh, what 'can' we do? Think of something; you have saved so many!'

Charles had both his arms about him, looking at him with a terrified, supplicating gaze, nearly fainting on his breast.

'Come, old man, you must try to bear it! There's nothing more to be done.'

And Dr. Lariviere turned away.

'You're going?'

'I'm coming back.'

He went out as though to give orders to the coachman, and Monsieur Canivet followed at his heels, for he too was in no wise eager to have Emma dying in his arms.

The chemist joined them in the market place. He had an innate and invincible attachment for celebrities. Therefore he implored Dr. Lariviere to do him the signal honour of taking luncheon at his house.

They sent off post-haste to the 'Lion d'Or' for pigeons, to the butcher's for every cutlet he had in his shop, to the Tuvaches' for cream, to Lestiboudois for eggs, and the apothecary himself personally assisted in the preparations, while Madame Homais, lacing up the strings of her blouse, remarked,

'You must please excuse us, Monsieur, for out in these benighted parts, unless we know the day before...'

'The best wine-glasses!' hissed Homais in her ear.

'If we lived in the Town we could at least always rely on getting some stuffed trotters...'

'Be quiet!... Come along, Doctor, sit you down!'

He considered it fitting, after the first few mouthfuls, to give a few details of the catastrophe.

'To begin with, we had a sensation of dryness in the pharynx, then excruciating pains in the epigastrium, superpurgation, coma.'

'But how did she come to poison herself?'

'That I cannot say, Doctor. Nor am I at all clear how she contrived to possess herself of this arsenious acid.'

At that moment Justin, bringing in a pile of plates, began to shake all over.

'What's the matter with you?' said the chemist.

At this question the young man let the whole lot fall with a terrific crash.

'Fool!' cried Homais. 'Clumsy lout! Idiotic ass!'

But, suddenly regaining his self-control, he proceeded,

'I considered it advisable to make an analysis and 'primo', I carefully introduced, by means of a tube...'

'You would have done better,' answered the surgeon, 'to introduce your fingers down her throat.'

Confrere Canivet lay low, for he had just been privately but severely taken to task about his emetic, so that our celebrated friend, who had strutted about and talked so glibly at the time of the club-foot operation, was singularly subdued today. He smiled a never-ending smile, an approving, assenting, obsequious smile.

Homais played the Amphitryon in immense style, and the idea of Bovary's bereavement gave him a vague sense of satisfaction, since it led him to contrast it with the superior happiness of his own lot. Then, too, the doctor's being there delighted him beyond measure. He showed off his learning, he discoursed with torrential volubility about cantharides, the upas, the manchineel and vipers.

'Why, do you know, I've even heard of people becoming intoxicated and rendered completely incapable by smoked sausages that had been submitted to excessive fumigation. Anyhow, the statement was made in a very able report, drawn up by one of our most eminent chemists, one of our leading men, the famous Cadet de Gassicourt!'

Madame Homais reappeared, carrying one of those top-heavy coffee contrivances that you heat with spirits of wine; for Homais insisted on having the coffee made in the dining-room. More than that, he had roasted, ground and blended it with his own hands.

''Saccharum', Doctor,' said he, passing the sugar.

Then he had all his children brought down, for he wanted to have the surgeon's opinion on their constitutions.

At last Monsieur Lariviere was on the point of starting, when Madame Homais said she would like to consult him about her husband. He dropped off to sleep every night after dinner, and this made his blood so thick.

'Oh, no, it's not his 'blood' that's thick!'

And, smiling at this little quip that passed unnoticed, the doctor opened the door. But the shop was crammed full of people, and he had much ado to extricate himself from Monsieur Tuvache, who was afraid his wife was in for some sort of lung trouble because she spat in the fire so much. Next came Monsieur Binet, who was sometimes troubled with fits of ravenous hunger; and Madame Caron, who was a martyr to pins and needles; Lheureux, who had attacks of giddiness; Lestiboudois, with his rheumatism; Madame Lefrancois, with her heartburn. At last the three horses dashed off, and the general opinion was that he hadn't been at all obliging.

Public attention was now diverted by the appearance of Monsieur Bournisien, who was proceeding through the market with the Holy Oils.

Homais, as his principles demanded, likened priests to carrion-crows which are attracted by the smell of dead bodies. The sight of an ecclesiastic was personally distasteful to him, for the cassock made him think of the winding-sheet, so that his loathing of the one was somewhat inspired by his terror of the other.

Nevertheless, he did not recoil from what he called his mission, and went back to Bovary's along with Canivet, who had been strongly urged by Monsieur Lariviere, before he started, to take this step. Indeed, had it not been for the protests of his wife, Homais would have brought his two sons with him in order to accustom them to scenes of suffering, so that it might be a lesson to them, an example, a solemn picture for them to bear in memory in after years.

They found the room, as they entered, full of an atmosphere of mournful solemnity. Upon the work-table, covered with a white napkin, were five or six little balls of cotton wool in a silver dish, and near them stood a large crucifix between a pair of tall, lighted candles.

Emma was lying with her chin sunk on her breast; her eyes were staring and her poor hands twitching at the sheets, in the ghastly, submissive way that dying people have, as though they were trying, prematurely, to draw the winding-sheet about them. Pale as a statue, with eyes like burning coals, Charles, not weeping now, was standing facing her at the foot of the bed, while the priest, resting on one knee, was murmuring his prayers.

Slowly she turned her head, and, of a sudden, as her eyes lighted on the violet stole, an expression of joy irradiated her countenance. A strange peace descended upon her, and she doubtless experienced, yet again, those mystical exaltations she had known as a child, and glimpsed the glories of the world to come.

The priest rose from his knees to take the crucifix; and then she stretched forth her neck like one athirst and, gluing her lips to the body of the God-Man, she fastened thereon, with all her failing strength, the most passionate kiss of love she had ever in her life bestowed. Then he recited the 'Misereatur' and the 'Indulgentiam', dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began the unctions, anointing her, first on the eyes which had gazed so covetously on the luxuries of the world; then, on the nostrils that had delighted in the breeze's soft caress and in all love-laden perfumes; then, on the mouth, the gateway of her lies, that had moaned in the moments of triumphant passion and cried aloud in the delirium of the senses; then, on the hands which had loved all things gentle to the touch; and, lastly, on the soles of the feet that, aforetime, had sped so swiftly to the appeasement of her desires, and now would stir no more.

The 'cure' wiped his fingers, and threw the wads of cotton wool into the fire. Then he came back and sat by the bedside of the dying woman, warning her that it now behoved her to unite her sufferings with Christ's and surrender herself to the divine mercy.

At the conclusion of his exhortations, he tried to put a consecrated taper in her hands as a symbol of the heavenly glories which would soon encompass her. Emma had not strength enough in her fingers to hold it, and had not Monsieur Bournisien been at hand to catch it, the taper would have fallen to the floor.

However, she was not so pale now, and her countenance had assumed an expression of serenity, as though the Sacrament had made her whole again.

The priest by no means omitted to draw attention to this phenomenon. He even went so far as to explain to Bovary that the Lord occasionally prolonged people's lives when He deemed it would conduce to their salvation; and Charles recalled a day when she was at death's door like this, and had had the Sacrament administered to her.

'Perhaps, after all, we ought not to despair,' thought he.

And indeed she looked all round about her, slowly, like one waking from a dream; then, in quite a strong voice, she asked for her mirror, and remained looking into it for some time, until great tears began to trickle from her eyes. Then she sighed, turned away her head, and sank down again on the pillow.

And immediately her breathing became very rapid. The full length of her tongue protruded from her mouth. Her wandering eyes began to grow pale, like a pair of lamp globes in which the light was waning, so that you would have thought her already dead, but for the terrible heaving of her sides, shaken by some raging tempest, as though the soul were leaping and straining to be free. Felicite knelt down before the crucifix, and even the apothecary bent his hams a little, while Monsieur Canivet stood gazing out vaguely on to the Square. Bournisien had begun to pray again, his face bowed down upon the edge of the bed, his long black soutane trailing out behind him across the floor. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched towards Emma. He had taken her hands, and was pressing them in his, trembling at her every heart-beat, as a man might start at the sound of a collapsing ruin. As the death-rattle grew more insistent, the priest redoubled the speed of his orisons; they mingled with Bovary's choking sobs, and sometimes all seemed drowned in the low murmur of the Latin syllables, which sounded like the tinkling of a passing bell.

Suddenly there was a noise of heavy clogs on the pavement outside and the scraping of a stick, and a voice, a raucous voice, began to sing,

Now skies are bright, the summer's here,

A maiden thinks upon her dear.

Emma sat bolt upright like a corpse suddenly galvanized into life, her hair dishevelled, her eyes fixed in a glassy stare, gaping with horror.

And to gather up with care

What the weary reaper leaves,

My Nanette goes gleaning there,

Down among the golden sheaves.

'The blind man!' she cried, and broke out into a laugh- a ghastly, frantic, despairing laugh- thinking she saw the hideous features of the wretched being, rising up to strike terror to her soul, on the very threshold of eternal night.

She stooped low, the wind blew high,

What a sight for mortal eye!

She fell back in a paroxysm on to the mattress. They hurried to her side. Emma was no more.

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