so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something
subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, 'I have a lover!
a lover!' delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to
her. So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of
happiness of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels
where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium."
Thus, from this first fault, this first fall, she glorified adultery,
she sang the song of adultery, its poesy and its delights. This,
gentlemen, to me is much more dangerous and immoral than the fall
itself! Gentlemen, all pales before this glorification of adultery, even
the rendezvous at night some time after:
"To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She
jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a
mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild
with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled
him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up
a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But
Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too.
"'Come, now, Emma,' he said, 'it is time.'
"'Yes, I am coming,' she answered.
"Then, as the candles dazzled him, he turned to the wall and fell
asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed.
"Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm
around her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden."
"It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly
Leon had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never
thought of him now.
"The cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips
seemed to them deeper; their eyes, that they could hardly see, larger;
and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their
souls sonorous crystalline, and reverberating in multiplied vibrations."
Gentlemen, do you know of language anywhere in the world more
expressive? Have you ever seen a more lascivious picture? Listen
further:
"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. Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure and
her ever-young illusions had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun
make flow
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