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Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880

"Madame Bovary"

Moreover she no
longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she
set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which
others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all of which
made her husband open his eyes widely.
Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue from it? Yet
she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen
duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she
execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls
to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent
pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not know, but that these
must surely yield.
She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart.
Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried
only seemed to irritate her the more.
On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this
over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which
she remained without speaking, without moving.


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