stle
Vaubyessard do you know what most attracted this young woman, what
struck her most forcibly? It is always the same thing--the Duke of
Laverdiere, as a lover--"as they say, of Marie-Antoinette, between the
Messrs. de Coigny and de Lauzun." "Emma's eyes turned upon him of their
own accord, as upon something extraordinary and august; he had lived at
Court and slept in the bed of queens!" Can it be said that this is only
an historic parenthesis? Sad and useless parenthesis! History can
authorise suspicions, but has not the right to establish them as
fact. History has spoken of the necklace in all romances; history has
spoken of a thousand things; but these are only suspicions and, I
repeat, I know not by what authority these suspicions should be
established as facts. And, since Marie-Antoinette died with the dignity
of a sovereign and the calmness of a Christian, her life-blood should
efface faults of which there are the strongest suspicions. M. Flaubert
was in need of a striking example in the painting of his heroine, but
Heaven knows why he has taken this one to express, all at once, the
perverse instincts and the ambition of Madame Bovary!

Madame Bovary dances very well, and here she is waltzing:

"They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them
was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like
a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress
caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled; he looked down at
her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They
started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging
her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where,
panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his
breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to
her seat. She leant back against the wall and covered her eyes with her
hands."

I know well that the waltz is more or less like this, but that makes it
no more moral!

Take Madame Bovary in her most simple acts, and we have always the same
stroke of the brush, on every page. Even Justin, the neighbouring
chemist's boy, undergoes some astonishment when he is initiated into the
secrets of this woman's toilette. He carries his voluptuous admiration
as far as the kitchen.

"With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily
watched all these women's clothes spread out about h