above all else awake deep suffer from mistake for
sit down error drowsy think of while wed
She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a 1 of destiny, born into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, or 2 by any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to a little clerk at the Ministry of Public Instruction.
She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but her unhappiness seemed to be 3 than one might expect. She seemed to feel that she had fallen from her proper station in life as a woman of wealth, beauty, grace, and charm. She valued these 4 in life, yet she could not attain them. She cared nothing for caste or rank but only for a natural fineness, an instinct 5 what is elegant, and a suppleness of wit. These would have made her the equal of the greatest ladies of the land. If only she could attain them...
She suffered, feeling born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries. She 6 the poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her despairing regrets and distracted dreams. She thought of silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of two great footmen in knee breaches sleeping in big armchairs, made 7 by the heavy warmth of the hot-air stove. She thought of long salons fitted up with ancient silk, of delicate furniture carrying priceless curiosities, and of coquettish perfumed boudoirs made for talks at five o’clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire.
When she 8 to dinner before the round table covered with a tablecloth three days old, opposite her husband, who declared with an enchanted air, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu! I don’t know anything better than that," she 9 best dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry which peopled the walls with ancient personages with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvelous plates, and of the whispered gallantries which you listened to with a sphinx-like smile 10 you were eating the pink flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail.