QUOTE : So Gustave Flaubert was playing as he composed Madame Bovary, groaning under the crushing weight of words; and the game plays out further in these pages, albeit according to a different set of rules. Charles Bovary, the poor man from whom everything was stripped away, love, his beloved, his possessions, and even his memory—for, as he is forced to realize, he has lived in error—was treated by Gustave Flaubert as a quantité négligeable.