Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubertmurmur; and when Leon saw him by his fireside after dinner, calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felthis two hands on his stomach, his two feet on the fender, his oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches attwo cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness, the the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of thechild crawling along the carpet, and this woman with the slenderwaist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his forehead: The chemist said—marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction.“What madness!” he said to himself. “And how to reach her!” “She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn’t be misplacedAnd thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him in a sub-prefecture.”that he lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciationhe placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she liteness, the poor her charity.The housewives admired her economy, the patients her po-stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothingto obtain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became far-That dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whoseBut she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate.ther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an torment those chaste lips said nothing. She was in love withapotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure feelingsthat do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because delight in his image. The sight of his form troubled the vo-Leon, and sought solitude that she might with the more easethey are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their luptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at the soundpassion rejoices.of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, andEmma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishmentthat ended in sorrow.her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlikewalk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rosethrough life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the after he had gone to see him in the street. She concerned herselfabout his comings and goings; she watched his face; vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and soshe93