Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame Bovary“Bah! so much the worse. Let him deceive me! What does yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, andit matter to me? As If I cared for him!”the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainableOne day, when they had parted early and she was returning desire for a greater delight.alone along the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokesthen she sat down on a form in the shade of the elm-trees. were heard from the convent-clock. Four o’clock! And itHow calm that time had been! How she longed for the ineffablesentiments of love that she had tried to figure to herself nity. But an infinity of passions may be contained in a minute,seemed to her that she had been there on that form an eter-out of books! The first month of her marriage, her rides in like a crowd in a small space.the wood, the viscount that waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all Emma lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no morerepassed before her eyes. And Leon suddenly appeared to her about money matters than an archduchess.as far off as the others.Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund and bald,“Yet I love him,” she said to herself.came to her house, saying he had been sent by MonsieurNo matter! She was not happy—she never had been. Whence Vincart of Rouen. He took out the pins that held togethercame this insufficiency in life—this instantaneous turning to the side-pockets of his long green overcoat, stuck them intodecay of everything on which she leant? But if there were his sleeve, and politely handed her a paper.somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full It was a bill for seven hundred francs, signed by her, andat once of exaltation and refinement, a poet’s heart in an angel’s which Lheureux, in spite of all his professions, had paid awayform, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac to Vincart. She sent her servant for him. He could not come.epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find Then the stranger, who had remained standing, casting righthim? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the and left curious glances, that his thick, fair eyebrows hid, askedtrouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a with a naive air—242