Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame Bovary“How so?” she asked.ing the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing“What!” said he. “Do you not know that there are souls everything to this being. There is no need for explanations;constantly tormented? They need by turns to dream and to they understand one another. They have seen each other inact, the purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus dreams!”they fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies.” (And he looked at her.) “In fine, here it is, this treasure soThen she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one stillvoyaged over strange lands, and went on—doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one“We have not even this distraction, we poor women!” went out iron darkness into light.”“A sad distraction, for happiness isn’t found in it.”And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word.“But is it ever found?” she asked.He passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness.Then he let it fall on Emma’s. She took hers away.“Yes; one day it comes,” he answered.“And this is what you have understood,” said the councillor.who is so blind, so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged“And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only“You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers in the prejudices of another age as still to misunderstand theof a work that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of spirit of agricultural populations. Where, indeed, is to be foundprogress and morality, you have understood, I say, that politicalstorms are even more redoubtable than atmospheric dis-public welfare, more intelligence, in a word? And, gentlemen,more patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to theturbances!”I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of“It comes one day,” repeated Rodolphe, “one day suddenly, idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligencethat applies itself above all else to useful objects, thusand when one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands;it is as if a voice cried, ‘It is here!’ You feel the need of confid-contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration124