Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle
down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every
bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment,
has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises.
The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears
within him the debris of a poet.
He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast, and his
heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music,
dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.
They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession
that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick of him as he
was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of
marriage.
But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated at
the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from
corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting
all felicity in wishing for too much of it.
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