Junta’s Reviews > Madame Bovary > Status Update

He quoted Latin, he was so exasperated. He would have quoted Chinese or Greenlandese, if he had known those two languages; for he was undergoing one of those crises by which the whole mind gives up hints of what it conceals, like the ocean, which, in a storm, parts from the sea-wrack of its shore to the sand of its unfathomable depths.

On the contrary, ought not a man to know everything, excel in numerous activities, initiate you in the forces of passion, in the refinements of life, in all the mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, desired nothing. He believed her happy; and she resented him for this stolid calm, this serene dullness, for the very happiness that she gave him.

If Charles had wanted it, however, if he had suspected something, if his gaze, just once, had come to meet her thoughts, it seemed to her that a sudden plenteousness would have detached itself from her heart, as the fruit of an espalier falls when a hand is laid upon it. But, as the intimacy of their life pressed them closer to each other, an indifference grew inside that loosened her from him.

Used to flat views, she was drawn, contrariwise, to the uneven. She liked the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it was thinly scattered among ruins. She had to be able to derive a kind of personal advantage from things; and she rejected as useless all that did not immediately contribute to her heart's consummation,being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic,seeking emotions and not landscapes.

Charles, from time to time, opened his eyes; then, his mind wearying and sleep returning of its own accord, he soon slipped into a kind of slumber where, his recent feelings merging with his memories, he perceived himself in duplicate, both student and married man, lying in his bed as he had been just now, crossing an operating room as in the past. The hot smell of the poultices blended in his head with the fresh...