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 candlelight 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.”

Félicité 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.