to a higher region." They are murmured at the moment when the last
breath of the dying escapes from his lips. The priest recites, etc.

"As the death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his
prayers mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes all
seemed lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled
like a passing-bell."

After the fashion of alternating these words, the author has tried to
make for them a sort of reply. He puts upon the sidewalk a blind man who
intones a song of which the profane words are a kind of response to the
prayers for the dying.

"Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs and the
clattering of a stick; and a voice rose--a raucous voice--that sang--

"'Maids in the warmth of a summer day
Dream of love and of love alway.
The wind is strong this summer day,
Her petticoat has flown away.'"

This is the moment when Madame Bovary dies.

Thus we have here the picture: on one side the priest reciting the
prayers for the dying; on the other the hand-organ player who excites
from the dying woman

"an atrocious, frantic, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the hideous
face of the poor wretch that stood out against the eternal night like a
menace.... She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all