is always the same passionate woman, seeking illusions and seeking them
even among the most august and holy things.

"One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself
dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the
preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the
night-table covered with sirups into an altar, and while Félicité was
strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing over
her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all
feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was
beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would
be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into
vapour."

In what tongue does one pray to God in language addressed to a lover in
the outpourings of adultery? Without doubt they will tell us it is local
colour, and excuse it on the ground that a vapourous, romantic woman
does nothing, even in religion, like anybody else. There is no local
colour which can excuse this mixture! Voluptuous one day, religious the
next, there is no woman, even in other countries, under the sky of Spain
or Italy, who murmurs to God the adulterous caresses which she gives her
lover. You can appreciate this language, gentlemen, and you will not
excuse adulterous words being introduced in any way into the sanctuary
of the Divinity!

This is the second situation. I now come to the third, which is a series
of adulteries.

After the religious transition, Madame Bovary is again ready to
fall. She goes to the theatre at Rouen. The play is _Lucia di