Gustave Flaubert

Il­lus­tri­ous

A man, at least, is free; he may travel over pas­sions and over coun­tries, over­come obstacles, taste of the most faraway pleas­ures. But a wo­man is al­ways hampered. At once in­ert and flex­ible, she has against her the weak­ness of the flesh and legal de­pend­ence. Her will, like the veil of her bon­net, held by a string, flut­ters in every wind; there is al­ways some de­sire that draws her, some con­ven­tion­al­ity that re­strains.

For his philo­soph­ical con­vic­tions did not in­ter­fere with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of sen­ti­ment; he could make dis­tinc­tions, make al­low­ances for ima­gin­a­tion and fan­at­icism. In this tragedy, for ex­ample, he found fault with the ideas, but ad­mired the style; he de­tested the con­cep­tion, but ap­plauded all the de­tails, and loathed the char­ac­ters while he grew en­thu­si­astic over their dia­logue.

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.