Then, as winter set in, Flaubert's writing came more quickly. Conditions were ideal. Luxuriously secluded in the big old family house at Croisset on the banks for the river Seine, Flaubert enjoyed a maternal space that gave him ordinariness, predictability and routine. He needed (* something solid beneath his feet,*) this man who spent his best hours alone, (* trafficking in the bizarre merchandise that he smuggled through from the darker places of his own mind.*) Croisset in winter: thick fog, perfect silence, (* perfect emptiness.*..) The (..* rich nothingness *) of the scene of writing is often ritually invoked in Flaubert's letters. `(* It's like being inside an enormous milk-white tomb,*)' he said. `The only sound in here is the ticking of the clock and the crackling of the fire. ...'
{NB: quoted part is translated from the French} The Novel --------- p.54: [A man called Pellerin says:] `...; but without ideas, there is no grandeur, and without grandeur there is no beauty! Olympus is a mountain. The proudest of all monuments will always be the pyramids. Exuberance is better than taste, the desert is better than a pavement, and a savage is better than a barber!'
Frédéric watched Madame Arnoux as he listened to these words. (* They sank into his mind like metals into a furnace, adding to his passion and filling him with love.*)
He was sitting three places below her on the same side of the table. p.56:
He [Frédéric] had stopped in the middle of the Pont-Neuf, and, bare-headed, with his coat open, he breathed in the air. At the same time, he felt (* something inexhaustible welling up from the depths of his being, a surge of tenderness *) which made him giddy, like the motion of the waves under his eyes. A church clock struck once, slowly, (* like a voice calling out to him.*)
Then he was (* seized by one of those tremblings of the soul *) in which you (* feel yourself transported into a higher world.*) An [p.57:] extraordinary talent, object unknown, had been bestowed upon him. He asked himself in all seriousness whether he was to be a great painter or a great poet; and he decided in favour of painting, for the demands of this profession would bring him closer to Madame Arnoux. p.62: The quiet of this spacious room ... (* filled him at first with a sense *) of intellectual well-being. But then his eyes, leaving his work, would roam over the scalloped mouldings of the wall ...; (* like a traveller lost in the middle of a forest, where every path brings him back to the same spot, behind every thought he invariably came upon the memory of Madame Arnoux.*)
p.70:
The news of Arnoux's departure had (* filled him with joy.*) He could go to the house when he liked, without fear of being interrupted during a call. The certainty of absolute security would make him more resolute. Above all, he would not be far away and parted from Her {capital in original}. (* Something stronger than an iron chain bound him to Paris:*) (* an inner voice cried out to him *) to stay. p.77:
All the same he dreamt of the happiness of living with her, chatting to her, of passing his hand slowly through her hair, or of kneeling before her with both arms round her waist, gazing into her eyes and (* drinking in her soul.*) To bring this about he would have to (* conquer Fate;*) and so, incapable of action, cursing God, and accusing himself of cowardice, (* he paced restlessly about inside his desire, like a prisoner in his dungeon.*) (* A perpetual anguish stifled him.*) He would remain motionless for hours at a time, or else he would burst into tears; ... p.114: [On a coach trip]
`So, I shall see her today,' he thought, `this very day, quite soon now!'
But gradually (* his hopes and memories, Nogent, the rue de Choiseul, Madame Arnoux, his mother, all merged together in his mind.*)
A dull rattle of planks woke him up. They were crossing the Pont de Charenton; it was Paris.