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

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

in a stammering voice

She cor­rup­ted him from bey­ond the grave.

From that mo­ment her ex­ist­ence was but one long tis­sue of lies, in which she en­vel­oped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania, a pleas­ure car­ried to such an ex­tent that if she said she had the day be­fore walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken the left

But what then, made her so un­happy? What was the ex­traordin­ary cata­strophe that had trans­formed her? And she raised her head, look­ing round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suf­fer.

“Ah! al­ways busy at what? Read­ing nov­els, bad books, works against re­li­gion, and in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Anyone who has no re­li­gion al­ways ends by turn­ing out badly.”

In her life’s isol­a­tion she centered on the child’s head all her shattered, broken little van­it­ies.

see­ing that she was hasten­ing to of­fer her­self to that which but a while ago had so angered her, not in the least con­scious of her pros­ti­tu­tion.

For this was how they would have wished to be, each set­ting up an ideal to which