Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubertminarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit,virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam tremblingin the water, where, standing out in relief like white more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow.and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with noexcoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceivedwith great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouaultabout.And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been soEmma’s head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, theypassed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs,and to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the bodythe Boulevards.and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reinedWhen her mother died she cried much the first few days. horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth.She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, This nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that hadand, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music forlife, she asked to be buried later on in the same grave. The the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus,rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritatedgoodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emmawas secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. Whenrare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see herlet herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened go. The Lady Superior even thought that she had latterly beento harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the fallingof the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in lookingsomewhat irreverent to the community.the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and35