Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubert“No, no!” she answered; “he is her lover!”walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like this woman,“Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous,who came on before said, ‘I love Lucie and she loves me!’ without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself.Besides, he went off with her father arm in arm. For he certainlyis her father, isn’t he—the ugly little man with a cock’s marriage and the disillusions of adultery, she could have an-Ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling offeather in his hat?”chored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue,Despite Emma’s explanations, as soon as the recitative duet tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she wouldbegan in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinationsto his master Ashton, Charles, seeing the false trothness,no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire.never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiringthat is to deceive Lucie, thought it was a love-gift sent by She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated.So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determinedEdgar. He confessed, moreover, that he did not understandthe story because of the music, which interfered very much now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plasticwith the words.fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled“What does it matter?” said Emma. “Do be quiet!” internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage“Yes, but you know,” he went on, leaning against her shoulder,“I like to understand things.”His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and imme-under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak.“Be quiet! be quiet!” she cried impatiently.diately the instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar,Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of flashing with fury, dominated all the others with his clearerorange blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of voice; Ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deepher gown. Emma dreamed of her marriage day; she saw herselfat home again amid the corn in the little path as they modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass ofnotes; Lucie uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur at one side, histhe193