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Despite the crowd's silence, Monsieur Lieuvain's voice didn't carry too well in the open air. What came was fragmentary bits of sentences interrupted here and there by the scraping of chairs; then all at once from behind there would resound the prolonged lowing of an ox, and lambs bleated to one another on the street corners. For the cowherds and shepherds had driven their animals in that close, and from time to time a cow would bellow as her tongue tore off some bit of foliage hanging down over her muzzle.
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Francis Steegmuller, New York, Random House, 1957, p.165.
TIME: 1840's
PLACE: Binet, France
CIRCUMSTANCE: the crowd overpowers a weak speaker's attempt to proselytise at an agricultural festival.
Often a faint rustling and fluttering of wings would come from under the bushes: or there would be a cry, at once raucous and sweet, of crows flying off among the oaks.
All was silent; a soft sweetness seemed to be seeping from the trees; she felt her heart beating again, and her blood flowed in her flesh like a river of milk. Then from far off, beyond the woods in the distant hills, she heard a vague, long, drawn-out cry - a sound that lingered; and she listened silently as it mingled like a strain of music with the last vibrations of her quivering nerves.
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Francis Steegmuller, New York, Random House, 1957, p.181-182, 179.
TIME: 1840's
PLACE: Yonville, France
CIRCUMSTANCE: the aural circumstances surrounding a lover's meeting in the woods.
Charles began to stride up and down the room. The floor creaked under his heavy boots.
.... he was listening to the screams that continued to come from the hotel. One followed after another; each was a long, drawn-out succession of tones, and they were interspersed with short, shrill shrieks.
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Francis Steegmuller, New York, Random House, 1957, p. 208-209.
TIME: 1840's
PLACE: Yonville, France
CIRCUMSTANCE: Charles waits anxiously, while listening to the frightful sounds, for the removal of a boy's leg.
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