United States or Georgia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Ah!" she said to herself, "he carried a knife in his pocket like a peasant." The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville. In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour's, and when Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things.
Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long run have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure. Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was not the man to respect anything.
He loves to paint temptations, especially the temptations to which Madame Bovary succumbed. Well, I find a model of its kind in the lines to follow, from the Artiste, for the month of January, signed Gustave Flaubert, upon the temptation of Saint Anthony.
The young beaux were strutting about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or applegreen cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow gloves.
What it comes to, I take it, is that though Madame Bovary, the novel, is a kind of drama since there is the interaction of this woman confronted by these facts it is a drama chosen for the sake of the picture in it, for the impression it gives of the manner in which certain lives are lived.
For this Flaubert was prosecuted, on the charge of offending against public morals, but was acquitted after the remarkable defense offered by Maître Senard. Flaubert's fame dates from Madame Bovary, which was much discussed by press and public. Many, including his friend, Maxime Ducamp, condemned it, but Sainte-Beuve gave it his decisive and courageous approval.
And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was compromising herself."
Having gone through every degree of humiliation, Madame Bovary turned to Rodolphe; she was not successful; Rodolphe did not have 3000 francs. There remained to her but one course: to beg her husband's pardon? No. To explain the matter to him? No, for this husband would be generous enough to pardon her, and that was a humiliation which she could not accept: she must poison herself.
And as we have insulted no one, expressed no thought or sentiment that could be injurious to a husband, so we have insulted no ecclesiastic. I have only a word to say beyond this. Do you wish to read books in which ecclesiastics play a deplorable rôle? If you wish to read of priests who are the shame of the clergy, seek them elsewhere, for you will not find them in Madame Bovary.
You could speak of him at the "Trois Freres," at the "Barbe d'Or," or at the "Grand Sauvage"; all these gentlemen knew him as well as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered collars from the box. Madame Bovary examined them.
Word Of The Day