Summary

Portrait of Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary — Part III/Chapter XI (1886)

One day when, wandering aimlessly about the house, he had gone up to the attic, he felt a pellet of fine paper under his slipper. He opened it and read: "Courage, Emma, courage. I would not bring misery into your life." It was Rodolphe's letter, fallen to the ground between the boxes, where it had remained, and that the wind from the dormer window had just blown towards the door. And Charles stood, motionless and staring, in the very same place where, long ago, Emma, in despair, and paler even than he, had thought of dying.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary — Part III/Chapter XI (1886)

He walked round it with folded arms, meditating on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men.
From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on his investigations slowly, Charles had not yet opened the secret drawer of a rosewood desk which Emma had generally used. One day, however, he sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All Leon's letters were there. There could be no doubt this time. He devoured them to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the furniture, all the drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary — Part III/Chapter XI (1886)

He remembered Rodolphe's attentions, his sudden, disappearance, his constrained air when they had met two or three times since. But the respectful tone of the letter deceived him.
"Perhaps they loved one another platonically," he said to himself.
Besides, Charles was not of those who go to the bottom of things; he shrank from the proofs, and his vague jealousy was lost in the immensity of his woe.
Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly must have coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him for this
Source: Wikisource

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