Madame Bovary

“Has it ever happened to you,” Léon went on, “to come across some vague idea of one’s own in a book, some dim im­age that comes back to you from afar, and as the com­pletest ex­pres­sion of your own slight­est sen­ti­ment

in a stammering voice

As op­posed to the ma­ter­nal ideas, he had a cer­tain virile idea of child­hood on which he sought to mould his son

Lively once, ex­pans­ive and af­fec­tion­ate, in grow­ing older she had be­come (after the fash­ion of wine that, ex­posed to air, turns to vin­egar) ill-tempered, grumbling, ir­rit­able

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.

He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob­nailed boots

She con­stantly com­plained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of foot­steps made her ill; when people left her, solitude be­came odi­ous to her; if they came back, it was doubt­less to see her die.

But his wife was mas­ter; he had to say this and not say that in com­pany, to fast every Fri­day, dress as she liked, har­ass at her bid­ding those pa­tients who did not pay.

To at­tain her ends Ma­dame Bo­vary had to oust them all, and she even suc­ceeded in very clev­erly baff­ling the in­trigues of a port-butcher backed up by the priests.

She found him one—the widow of a bailiff at Dieppe—who was forty-five and had an in­come of twelve hun­dred francs. Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as the spring has buds, Ma­dame Dubuc had no lack of suit­ors.