Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur Bournisien, who was going across the market with the holy oil.
Homais, as was due to his principles, compared priests to ravens attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other.
Nevertheless, not shrinking from what he called his mission, he returned to Bovary’s in company with Canivet whom Monsieur Larivière, before leaving, had strongly urged to make this visit; and he would, but for his wife’s objections, have taken his two sons with him, in order to accustom them to great occasions; that this might be a lesson, an example, a solemn picture, that should remain in their heads later on.
The room when they went in was full of mournful solemnity. On the work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or six small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix between two lighted candles.
Emma, her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately wide open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets with that hideous and soft movement of the dying, that seems as if they wanted already to cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a statue and with eyes red as fire, Charles, weeping, stood facing her at the foot of the bed, while the priest, bending one knee, was muttering in a low voice.
Slowly she turned her face, and seemed filled with joy on seeing suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst of a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her first mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude that were beginning.
The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward her neck as one who is athirst, and gluing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give extreme unction. First, upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands that had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles of the feet, once so swift when she was running to satisfy her desires, and which now would walk no more.
The curé wiped his fingers, cast the oil-drenched shred of cotton into the fire, and sat down by the dying woman, to tell her that she must now mingle her sufferings with those of Jesus Christ and abandon herself to the divine mercy.
Finishing his exhortations, he tried to place in her hand a blessed candle, symbol of the celestial glory wherewith she was soon to be enveloped. Emma was too weak; she could not close her fingers, and but for Monsieur Bournisien, the taper would have fallen to the ground.
However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an expression of serenity, as if the sacrament had cured her.
The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to Bovary that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when he thought it meet for their salvation; and Charles remembered the day when, so near death, she had received the communion. Perhaps there was no need to despair, he thought.
In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a dream; then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass, and remained some time bending over it, until the big tears fell from her eyes. Then she turned away her head with a sigh and fell back upon the pillows.
Her chest soon began panting rapidly; the whole of her tongue protruded from her mouth; her eyes, as they rolled, grew paler, like the two globes of a lamp that is going out, so that one might have thought her already dead but for the fearful labouring of her ribs, shaken by violent breathing, as if the soul were struggling to free itself. Félicité knelt down before the crucifix, and the druggist himself slightly bent his knees, while Monsieur Canivet looked out vaguely at the Place. Bournisien had again begun to pray, his face bowed against the edge of the bed, his long black cassock trailing behind him in the room. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering at every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin. As the death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his prayers mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes everything seemed lost in the muffled murmur of these Latin syllables tolling like a passing-bell.
Suddenly on the pavement was heard the noise of heavy clogs, and the clatter of a stick; and a voice rose – a raucous voice – singing –
‘Maids in the warmth of a summer day
Dream of love and of love alway.’
Emma raised herself like a galvanised corpse, her hair undone, her eyes fixed, staring.
‘Where the sickle blades have been,
Nanette, gathering ears of corn,
Passes, bending down, my queen,
To the earth where they were born.’
‘The blind man!’ she cried.
And Emma began to laugh, an atrocious, frenzied, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the hideous face of the poor wretch rising like a threat against the darkness of eternity.
‘The wind was strong that summer day,
Her petticoat has flown away.’
She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew near. She was no more.
9
A death always gives birth to a kind of stupefaction, so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe in it. But when he saw that she did not move, Charles threw himself upon her, crying –
‘Farewell! farewell!’
Homais and Canivet dragged him from the room.
‘Restrain yourself!’
‘Yes,’ said he, struggling, ‘I’ll be quiet. I’ll not do anything. But leave me alone. I want to see her. She is my wife!’
And he wept.
‘Cry,’ said the chemist; ‘let nature take her course; that will solace you.’
Weaker than a child, Charles let himself be led downstairs into the sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went home. On the Place he was accosted by the blind man, who had dragged himself as far as Yonville in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic pomade, and was asking every passer-by where the druggist lived.
‘There now! as if I hadn’t got other fish to fry. Well, so much the worse; you must come later on.’
And hurriedly he entered the shop.
He had to write two letters, prepare a sedative for Bovary, invent some lie that would conceal the poisoning, and work it up into an article for the Fanal, not to mention the people waiting to get the news from him; and when the villagers had all heard his story of the arsenic which she had mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla cream, Homais returned to Bovary’s.
He found him alone (Monsieur Canivet had left), sitting in an armchair near the window, staring with an idiotic look at the flags of the floor.
‘Now,’ said the chemist, ‘you ought to fix the hour for the ceremony yourself.’
