Gustave Flaubert

She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris.

But with that su­per­ior crit­ical judg­ment that be­longs to him who, in no mat­ter what cir­cum­stance, holds back, Rodol­phe saw other de­lights to be got out of this love

Never had Ma­dame Bo­vary been so beau­ti­ful as at this period; she had that in­defin­able beauty that res­ults from joy, from en­thu­si­asm, from suc­cess, and that is only the har­mony of tem­pera­ment with cir­cum­stances.

For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his pa­tients; he no longer went to bed; he was con­stantly feel­ing her pulse, put­ting on sin­ap­isms and cold-wa­ter com­presses. He sent Justin as far as Neufchâtel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again. He called Mon­sieur Canivet into con­sulta­tion; he sent for Dr. Larivière, his old mas­ter, from Rouen; he was in des­pair.

About the middle of Octo­ber she could sit up in bed sup­por­ted by pil­lows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her strength re­turned to her; she got up for a few hours of an af­ter­noon, and one day, when she felt bet­ter, he tried to take her, lean­ing on his arm, for a walk round the garden.

He re­proached him­self with for­get­ting Emma, as if, all his thoughts be­long­ing to this wo­man, it was rob­bing her of some­thing not to be con­stantly think­ing of her.

Thus con­sider the greater part of Voltaire’s tra­gedies; they are clev­erly strewn with philo­soph­ical re­flec­tions, that made them a vast school of mor­als and dip­lomacy for the people.”

Self-pos­ses­sion de­pends on its en­vir­on­ment. We don’t speak on the first floor as on the fourth; and the wealthy wo­man seems to have, about her, to guard her vir­tue, all her bank­notes, like a cuir­ass in the lin­ing of her cor­set.

He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob­nailed boots

But he wiped his face with one hand and con­tin­ued mo­tion­less, his eyes lowered.

In the even­ing, at pre­par­a­tion, he pulled out his pens from his desk, ar­ranged his small be­long­ings, and care­fully ruled his pa­per.