im, the dimity
petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with
running-strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.

"What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the
crinoline or the hooks and eyes.

"'Why, haven't you ever seen anything?' Felicite answered laughing. 'As
if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn't wear the same.'"

The husband also asks, in the presence of this fresh-smelling woman,
whether the odour comes from the skin or from the chemise.

"Every evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs,
and a well-dressed woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no
one could say whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that
made odourous her chemise."

Enough of quotations in detail! You know now the physiognomy of Madame
Bovary in repose, when she is inciting no one, when she does not sin,
when she is still completely innocent, and when, on her return from a
rendezvous, she is by the side of her husband, whom she detests; you
know now the general colour of the picture, the general physiognomy of
Madame Bovary. The author has taken the greatest care, employed all the
prestige of his style in painting the portrait of this woman. Has he
tried to show her on the side of intelligence? Never. From the side of
the heart? Not at all. On the part of mind? No. From the side of
physical beauty? Not even that. Oh! I know very well that the portrait
of Madame Bovary after the adultery is most brilliant; but the picture
is above all lascivious, the post is voluptuous, the beauty a beauty of
provocation.

I come now to the four important quotations; I shall make but four; I
hold to my outline: I have said that the first would be the love for
Rodolphe, the second the religious reaction, the third the love for
Leon, the fourth her death.

Here is the first. Madame Bovary is near her fall, nearly ready to
succumb.

"Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tendernesses to
adulterous desires. She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she
might have a better right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him."

What was it that seduced Rodolphe and prepared him? The opening of
Madame Bovary's dress which had burst in places along the seams of the
corsage. Rodolphe took his servant to Bovary's house, to bleed him. The
servant was very ill, and Madame Bovary held the basin.

"Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. W