ers grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed
forth in all the plentitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled
expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared,
while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the
fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black
down. One would have thought that an artist apt in conception had
arranged the curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass,
negligently and with the changing chances of their adultery that unbound
them every day. Her voice now took more mellow inflections, her figure
also; something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of
her gown and from the line of her foot. Charles, as when they were first
married, thought her delicious and quite irresistible."

Up to this time this woman's beauty had consisted of her grace, her
elegance, and her clothes; finally she is shown to you without a veil
and you can say whether adultery has embellished her or not.

"'Take me away,' she cried, 'carry me off! Oh, I entreat you!'

"And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the
unexpected consent it breathed forth in a kiss."

Here is a portrait, gentlemen, which M. Flaubert knows well how to draw.
How the eyes of this woman enlarge! Something ravishing expands around
her, and then her fall! Her beauty has never been so brilliant as the
next day after her fall and the days following. What the author shows
you is the poetry of adultery, and I ask you again whether these
lascivious pages do not express a profound immorality!

I come now to the second situation, which is the religious
reaction. Madame Bovary is very ill, is at death's door. She is brought
back to life, and her convalescence is made remarkable by a little
religious awakening.

"It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He
inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion in a
coaxing little gossip that was not without its charm. The mere thought
of his cassock comforted her."

Finally, she goes to communion. I do not like much to meet these holy
things in a romance; but at least, when one speaks of them, he need not
travesty them by his language. Is there in this adulterous woman going
to communion anything of the repentant faith of a Magdalene? No, no; she
is always the same passionate woman, seeking illusions and seeking them
even among the most august and ho