“Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances.  Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure and her ever-young illusions had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers 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 holy things.