“Don’t cry,” she said to him.  “Soon I shall not trouble you any more.”

“Why was it?  Who drove you to it?”

She replied.  “It had to be, my dear!”

“Weren’t you happy?  Is it my fault?  I did all I could!”

“Yes, that is true—­you are good—­you.”

And she passed her hand slowly over his hair.  The sweetness of this sensation deepened his sadness; he felt his whole being dissolving in despair at the thought that he must lose her, just when she was confessing more love for him than ever.  And he could think of nothing; he did not know, he did not dare; the urgent need for some immediate resolution gave the finishing stroke to the turmoil of his mind.

So she had done, she thought, with all the treachery; and meanness, and numberless desires that had tortured her.  She hated no one now; a twilight dimness was settling upon her thoughts, and, of all earthly noises, Emma heard none but the intermittent lamentations of this poor heart, sweet and indistinct like the echo of a symphony dying away.

“Bring me the child,” she said, raising herself on her elbow.

“You are not worse, are you?” asked Charles.

“No, no!”

The child, serious, and still half-asleep, was carried in on the servant’s arm in her long white nightgown, from which her bare feet peeped out.  She looked wonderingly at the disordered room, and half-closed her eyes, dazzled by the candles burning on the table.  They reminded her, no doubt, of the morning of New Year’s day and Mid-Lent, when thus awakened early by candle-light she came to her mother’s bed to fetch her presents, for she began saying—­

“But where is it, mamma?” And as everybody was silent, “But I can’t see my little stocking.”

Felicite held her over the bed while she still kept looking towards the mantelpiece.

“Has nurse taken it?” she asked.

And at this name, that carried her back to the memory of her adulteries and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned away her head, as at the loathing of another bitterer poison that rose to her mouth.  But Berthe remained perched on the bed.

“Oh, how big your eyes are, mamma!  How pale you are! how hot you are!”

Her mother looked at her.  “I am frightened!” cried the child, recoiling.

Emma took her hand to kiss it; the child struggled.

“That will do.  Take her away,” cried Charles, who was sobbing in the alcove.

Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed less agitated; and at every insignificant word, at every respiration a little more easy, he regained hope.  At last, when Canivet came in, he threw himself into his arms.

“Ah! it is you.  Thanks!  You are good!  But she is better.  See! look at her.”

His colleague was by no means of this opinion, and, as he said of himself, “never beating about the bush,” he prescribed, an emetic in order to empty the stomach completely.