imagined to himself she had gone on a long journey, far away, for a long time. But when he thought of her lying there, and that all was over, that they would lay her in the earth, he was seized with a fierce, gloomy, despairful rage. At times he thought he felt nothing more, and he enjoyed this lull in his pain, whilst at the same time he reproached himself for being a wretch.
The sharp noise of an iron-ferruled stick was heard on the stones, striking them at irregular intervals. It came from the end of the church, and stopped short at the lower aisles. A man in a coarse brown jacket knelt down painfully. It was Hippolyte, the stable-boy at the Lion d’Or. He had put on his new leg.
One of the choristers went round the nave making a collection, and the coppers chinked one after the other on the silver plate.
“Oh, make haste! I am in pain!” cried Bovary, angrily throwing him a five-franc piece. The churchman thanked him with a deep bow.
They sang, they knelt, they stood up; it was endless! He remembered that once, in the early times, they had been to mass together, and they had sat down on the other side, on the right, by the wall. The bell began again. There was a great moving of chairs; the bearers slipped their three staves under the coffin, and everyone left the church.
Then Justin appeared at the door of the shop. He suddenly went in again, pale, staggering.
People were at the windows to see the procession pass. Charles at the head walked erect. He affected a brave air, and saluted with a nod those who, coming out from the lanes or from their doors, stood amidst the crowd.
The six men, three on either side, walked slowly, panting a little. The priests, the choristers, and the two choirboys recited the “De profundis,”