"
"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?" continued
Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man.
"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on
the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I
go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset."
"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but
especially by the side of the sea."
"Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon.
"And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the
mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of
which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?"
"It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. "A cousin
of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could
not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the
waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of
incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices,
and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open.
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