THANK YOU VERY MUCH to all the readers, new and old, familiar and unfamiliar, who have sent donations and kind letters in response to my fundraising campaign, my first fundraising drive in 14 months. I appreciate your generosity more than I can say and I understand, of course, that some readers simply cannot give anything.

I am nearing the final days of this blitz. As it is, in this final week, I have raised 60 percent of my goal! [Updated figures below.] But …. I have 40 percent more to go. That means if 400 people sent in ten dollars, or two hundred people sent in twenty dollars, or one hundred wonderful, generous, enlightened and courageous people sent in forty whole dollars, I would be done!!! This blog would survive, much to the dismay of those who hate it.

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In the meantime, dear friends, I must be realistic. I must plan the imminent death of this blog (in its current form).

I assure you this death will be beautiful and dignified. The curtains will be drawn. A caring or at least competent doctor will be in attendance. The time having passed when food is of any use, steadfast friends will gather near the bed. Enemies will shop for fireworks, but in the room itself, not in the world beyond, there will be true grief and little consolation.

It will be perhaps like the death (in the book, not the movies) of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, sinner that she was. Allow me to quote at length, even if it makes some weep and others cheer, “Hurray!” or “Go for it!”

The room when they went in was full of mournful solemnity. On the work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or six small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix between two lighted candles.

Emma, her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately wide open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets with that hideous and soft movement of the dying, that seems as if they wanted already to cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a statue and with eyes red as fire, Charles, not weeping, stood opposite her at the foot of the bed, while the priest, bending one knee, was muttering words in a low voice.

She turned her face slowly, and seemed filled with joy on seeing suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst of a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her first mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude that were beginning.

The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward her neck as one who is athirst, and glueing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give extreme unction. First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands that had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles of the feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that would now walk no more.

The cure wiped his fingers, threw the bit of cotton dipped in oil into the fire, and came and sat down by the dying woman, to tell her that she must now blend her sufferings with those of Jesus Christ and abandon herself to the divine mercy.

Finishing his exhortations, he tried to place in her hand a blessed candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was soon to be surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her fingers, and the taper, but for Monsieur Bournisien would have fallen to the ground.

However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an expression of serenity as if the sacrament had cured her.

The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to Bovary that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when he thought it meet for their salvation; and Charles remembered the day when, so near death, she had received the communion. Perhaps there was no need to despair, he thought.

In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a dream; then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass, and remained some time bending over it, until the big tears fell from her eyes. Then she turned away her head with a sigh and fell back upon the pillows.

Her chest soon began panting rapidly; the whole of her tongue protruded from her mouth; her eyes, as they rolled, grew paler, like the two globes of a lamp that is going out, so that one might have thought her already dead but for the fearful labouring of her ribs, shaken by violent breathing, as if the soul were struggling to free itself. Felicite knelt down before the crucifix, and the druggist himself slightly bent his knees, while Monsieur Canivet looked out vaguely at the Place. Bournisien had again begun to pray, his face bowed against the edge of the bed, his long black cassock trailing behind him in the room. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering at every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin. 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.

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 always”

Emma raised herself like a galvanised corpse, her hair undone, her eyes fixed, staring.

“Where the sickle blades have been, Nannette, gathering ears of corn, Passes bending down, my queen, To the earth where they were born.”

“The blind man!” she cried. And Emma began to laugh, 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.

“The wind is strong this summer day, Her petticoat has flown away.”

She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew near. She was dead.

It will be similar — except for the stuff about uttering lies and crying out in lewdness. Not this blog.

I hate to burden you with thoughts of mortality, especially on a Monday, but please send in your donation, however small, dear reader. Please help to prevent this lovely, but gruesome death.

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