She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.

She now felt an incessant and universal numbness.

Well," he said, "don't you know that there are souls forever in torment? They must have alternate dream and action, the purest passions and the most violent satisfactions, and that way one stumbles into all sorts of whims, of follies.

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast; and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.

Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?

His eagerness had turned into a routine; he embraced her at the same time every day. It was a habit like any other, a favourite pudding after the monotony of dinner.

But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart.