Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubertdining in his old house. She recalled to him as remembrances did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuadedher troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with herself without difficulty that Charles’s passion was nothingEmma’s negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not very exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embracedreasonable to adore her so exclusively.her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits,and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotonyCharles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother,and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of dinner.of the one infallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of theother irreproachable. When Madam Bovary had gone, he tried lungs, had given madame a little Italian greyhound; she tooktimidly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of the her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order to bemore anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes the eternalEmma proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and garden and the dusty road. She went as far as the beeches ofsent him off to his patients.Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an angleAnd yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she of the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetationwanted to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in of the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you.the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by She began by looking round her to see if nothing hadheart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; changed since last she had been there. She found again in thebut she found herself as calm after as before, and Charles same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettlesseemed no more amorous and no more moved.growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen alongWhen she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rottingaway on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless atwithout getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understandingwhat she did not experience as of believing anything that first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round39