Madame Bovary

people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly

la-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch c

r that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a ha

tion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris.

ies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothin

ellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose s

ill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have some tasty dish-piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves, served

ng room two small pencil sketches by her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against

more at his ease. He told her, one after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he fi

is face and whitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore thick boots that had two long creases over the instep runnin

the sugar, and the candles disappeared as "at a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the butcher when he

nt upon what was hers, and she watched her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him

yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of

in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melanchol

g anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbur

s in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far as the beeches of Banneville, near th

round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, wander

n the grass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshad

his one. He might have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the lights of the ba

e went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows; the music master with his violin

wned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke

which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swi

e branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform, and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out against a background of gold. A fear too

raordinary fell upon her life; she was invited

ng the dog-days he had suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry trees did not thrive at Vauby

rt, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-b

the lamps in the park were being li