Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Part IIIChapter OneMONSIEUR LEON, while studying law, had gone pretty often trodden the asphalt of the boulevards. By the side of ato the dancing-rooms, where he was even a great success Parisienne in her laces, in the drawing-room of some illustriousamongst the grisettes, who thought he had a distinguishedphysician, a person driving his carriage and wearing manyair. He was the best-mannered of the students; he wore his orders, the poor clerk would no doubt have trembled like ahair neither too long nor too short, didn’t spend all his quarter’s child; but here, at Rouen, on the harbour, with the wife ofmoney on the first day of the month, and kept on good terms this small doctor he felt at his ease, sure beforehand he wouldwith his professors. As for excesses, he had always abstained shine. Self-possession depends on its environment. We don’tfrom them, as much from cowardice as from refinement. speak on the first floor as on the fourth; and the wealthyOften when he stayed in his room to read, or else when woman seems to have, about her, to guard her virtue, all hersitting of an evening under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg, banknotes, like a cuirass in the lining of her corset.he let his Code fall to the ground, and the memory of Emma On leaving the Bovarys the night before, Leon had followedcame back to him. But gradually this feeling grew weaker, them through the streets at a distance; then having seen themand other desires gathered over it, although it still persisted stop at the “Croix-Rouge,” he turned on his heel, and spentthrough them all. For Leon did not lose all hope; there was the night meditating a plan.for him, as it were, a vague promise floating in the future, So the next day about five o’clock he walked into the kitchenlike a golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree. of the inn, with a choking sensation in his throat, pale cheeks,Then, seeing her again after three years of absence his pas-and that resolution of cowards that stops at nothing.198Madame Bovarysion reawakened. He must, he thought, at last make up hismind to possess her. Moreover, his timidity had worn off bycontact with his gay companions, and he returned to the provincesdespising everyone who had not with varnished shoes