“And I! Oh, I too have suffered! Often I went out; I went away. I dragged myself along the quays, seeking distraction amid the din of the crowd without being able to banish the heaviness that weighed upon me. In an engraver’s shop on the boulevard there is an Italian print of one of the Muses. She is draped in a tunic, and she is looking at the moon, with forget-me-nots in her flowing hair. Something drove me there continually; I stayed there hours together.” Then in a trembling voice, “She resembled you a little.”

Madame Bovary turned away her head that he might not see the irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips.

“Often,” he went on, “I wrote you letters that I tore up.”

She did not answer. He continued⁠—

“I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought I recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the carriages through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil like yours.”