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When the cloth was removed, Bovary did not get up, nor did Emma; and as she contemplated him, the monotony of the spectacle gradually drove all compassion from her heart. He seemed to her puny, weak, worthless, in fact a poor man in every way. How could she get rid of him? What an interminable even…

Nothing really obliged her to leave; but she had given her word that she would return that evening. Besides, Charles was waiting for her; and already she felt in her heart that craven docility that is, for many women, at once the punishment for their adultery, and the price they pay to redeem it.

Then, when he saw her again after an absence of three years, his passion reawakened. He must at last resolve, he thought, to attempt to possess her. What was more, his shyness had worn away from contact with wild companions, and he returned to the provinces scornful of all who had not stepped with …

One day at the height of her illness, when she believed she was dying, she had asked to be given Communion; and as her room was prepared for the sacrament, as the chest of drawers crowded with syrups was transformed into an altar and Félicité scattered dahlia flowers over the floor, Emma felt some …

Then Homais asked how this accident had happened. Charles answered that she had been stricken suddenly while eating apricots.

“Extraordinary! …” said the pharmacist. “Why, it’s quite possible that the apricots brought on the syncope! Some people are so naturally impressionable when coming into c…