Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubert“If I can,” he answered.Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he justHad they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last tookwere full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselvesto find trivial phrases, they felt the same languor steal-He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at theup his hat and went out.ing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, beginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the groundcontinuous, dominating that of their voices. Surprised with under the pines and watched the sky through his fingers.wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speakingof the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village,“How bored I am!” he said to himself, “how bored I am!”tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their with Homais for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master.The latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by thisintoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understoodnothing of mental refinements, although he affectedeven know.In one place the ground had been trodden down by the a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had impressedcattle; they had to step on large green stones put here and the clerk.there in the mud.As to the chemist’s spouse, she was the best wife inShe often stopped a moment to look where to place her Normandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father,foot, and tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her mother, her cousins, weeping for other’s woes, letting everythinggo in her household, and detesting corsets; but soher form bent forward with a look of indecision, she wouldlaugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of water.slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common inWhen they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that althoughopened the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared. she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms83