Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubert“The gentleman isn’t in,” answered a servant.which called forth his, the young man declared that he hadThis seemed to him a good omen. He went upstairs. been awfully bored during the whole course of his studies. TheShe was not disturbed at his approach; on the contrary, she law irritated him, other vocations attracted him, and his motherapologised for having neglected to tell him where they were never ceased worrying him in every one of her letters. As theystaying.talked they explained more and more fully the motives of their“Oh, I divined it!” said Leon.sadness, working themselves up in their progressive confidence.He pretended he had been guided towards her by chance, But they sometimes stopped short of the complete expositionby, instinct. She began to smile; and at once, to repair his of their thought, and then sought to invent a phrase that mightfolly, Leon told her that he had spent his morning in looking express it all the same. She did not confess her passion for another;he did not say that he had forgotten her.for her in all the hotels in the town one after the other.“So you have made up your mind to stay?” he added. Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls“Yes,” she said, “and I am wrong. One ought not to accustomoneself to impossible pleasures when there are a thou-rendezvous of old when she ran across the fields in the morn-after masked balls; and no doubt she did not recollect thesand demands upon one.”ing to her lover’s house. The noises of the town hardly reached“Oh, I can imagine!”them, and the room seemed small, as if on purpose to hem in“Ah! no; for you, you are a man!”their solitude more closely. Emma, in a dimity dressing-gown,But men too had had their trials, and the conversation went leant her head against the back of the old arm-chair; the yellowwall-paper formed, as it were, a golden background be-off into certain philosophical reflections. Emma expatiatedmuch on the misery of earthly affections, and the eternal isolationin which the heart remains entombed.white parting in the middle, and the tip of her ears peepinghind her, and her bare head was mirrored in the glass with theTo show off, or from a naive imitation of this melancholy out from the folds of her hair.199