He’d espied her before, walking alone across the verdant field, braggadocios summer in full exhibition with ripening fruit hanging proudly from boughs, announcing to those with eyes to see, their vivid, short-lived presence, while insects danced from flower to flower, busy with collection of pollen to ensure winter’s survival. Through the overcast of the day, a piercing ray of sunlight shone like a spotlight upon her form, her face, as though to call further attention to this perfect artifact of God’s creation.

The sound of hoofbeats filled the air as mounted horses passed beneath him but, so enraptured by her presence, he let them pass into echo without a moment’s glance, the pervasive sweet smell of honeysuckle wafting into his room likewise aspersed to trivial insouciance. Seeking the wherewithal to muster the courage and cross the threshold of his citadel, there to venture forth to her introduction— forward though his attention might be construed—he’d have to overcome his discomfiture at any social interaction with the public at large.

She neared by happenstance, unaware of his uninvited eyes following her every move, every sway of her shoulders. Absently, she brushed away some untraceable insect buzzing by her ear, that motion signaling his enterprise, mesmerized by the semi-circular lilt of her hand accentuating her femininity. The strength of his desire protesting against the servility of his conduct, he hurried from his unexceptional parlor and found his way to the front door.

Though assaulted by terre Mère and her unassuming majesty upon emerging into the open air, his eyes adhered to the stranger’s approach thinking about nothing else. Nothing about her manner was indecorous, her hands clasped together before her at midsection height, her eyes cast downward, her lips held firm with whitened pressure. In closer proximity now, he felt mad with longing, imagining himself being dragged away against his outraged will to some debauched hôpital psychiatrique under the supervision of doctors recording his every move and gesture in detailed description, but with the image of her engraved in his memory, the padded walls would fade into irrelevancy.

“Pardon me,” he offered, his voice quaking. He’d never done anything like this before. “May I enquire your name?”

She suppressed her smile but demonstrated it sufficiently for him to note its desire to emerge from its pupa. “Emma… Emma Bovary,” she answered, her tone then taking on a supplicant stridency in its enunciation, “Please, please, will you help me get away? I am desperately unhappy in my marriage!”

Accommodating her was his greatest desire, to take her in his arms and coo everything is going to be all right. Instead, he shook his head. “I cannot, and yet I will do something more—I will detail your unhappiness for posterity to see. Maybe, by that, other women in similar circumstance can learn to avoid such pitfalls before their occurrence.”

“But, please, you do not understand!”

“All too well, I do,” he answered, turning back to his hermetic isolation and begin his journal—unhappiness is an indifferent master with many faces.

“Wait… wait!” she insisted, “I did not catch your name, sir.”

“I am nobody.”

“Your name?” she enquired, not brooking his enigmatic answer.

He bowed, hand to chest, as social formality dictated. “Gustave Flaubert, at your service, Madame Bovary.”

With that, they parted.