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... she felt a ringing in her ears as though gold pieces were bursting out of their bags and dropping to the floor all around her...
...Only the pulsing of her veins told her that she was alive: she thought she heard it outside herself, like some deafening music filling the countryside.
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Francis Steegmuller, New York, Random House, 1957, p.310, 355.
TIME: 1840's
PLACE: Rouen, France.
CIRCUMSTANCE:Auditory hallucination accompanying nervous collapse.
... she heard only the intermittent lament of this poor man beside her, gentle and indistinct, like the last echo of an ever-fainter symphony.
... as the death-rattle grew louder, the priest speeded his prayers: they mingled with Bovary's stifled sobs, and at moments everything seemed drowned by the monotonous flow of Latin syllables that sounded like the tolling of a bell.
Emma began to laugh - a horrible, frantic, desparate laugh ... She had ceased to exist.
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Francis Steegmuller, New York, Random House, 1957, p.361, 369.
TIME: 1840's
PLACE: Rouen, France.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Emma lies dying while her husband sits beside her.
...he enjoyed the rooster.crowing on the wall... he enjoyed hearing Mademoiselle Emma's little sabots on the newly washed flagstones on the kitchen floor. With their high heels they made... a quick, sharp, tapping sound against the leather of her shoes.
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Francis Steegmuller, New York, Random House, 1957, p.19-20.
TIME: 1835.
PLACE: Les Bertaux, a farm near Rouen, France.
CIRCUMSTANCE: more pleasant sounds heard by Charles on his visits to the farm.
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