Madame Bovary dances very well, and here she is waltzing: 

“They began slowly, then went more rapidly.  They turned; all around them was turning—­the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot.  On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma’s dress caught against his trousers.  Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his.  A torpor seized her; she stopped.  They started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where, panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast.  And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to her seat.  She leant back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands.”

I know well that the waltz is more or less like this, but that makes it no more moral!

Take Madame Bovary in her most simple acts, and we have always the same stroke of the brush, on every page.  Even Justin, the neighbouring chemist’s boy, undergoes some astonishment when he is initiated into the secrets of this woman’s toilette.  He carries his voluptuous admiration as far as the kitchen.

“With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily watched all these women’s clothes spread out about him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running-strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.

“What is that for?” asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes.

“‘Why, haven’t you ever seen anything?’ Felicite answered laughing.  ’As if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn’t wear the same.’”

The husband also asks, in the presence of this fresh-smelling woman, whether the odour comes from the skin or from the chemise.

“Every evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odourous her chemise.”

Enough of quotations in detail!  You know now the physiognomy of Madame Bovary in repose, when she is inciting no one, when she does not sin, when she is still completely innocent, and when, on her return from a rendezvous, she is by the side of her husband, whom she detests; you know now the general colour of the picture, the general physiognomy of Madame Bovary.  The author has taken the greatest care, employed all the prestige of his style in painting the portrait of this woman.  Has he tried to show her on the side of intelligence?  Never.  From the side of the heart?  Not at all.  On the part of mind?  No.  From the side of physical beauty?  Not even that.  Oh!  I know very well that the portrait of Madame Bovary after the adultery is most brilliant; but the picture is above all lascivious, the post is voluptuous, the beauty a beauty of provocation.