Near the end of Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, in the translation by Geoffrey Wall, there is a line, describing Charles’s inability to cope with the loss of his wife: “If his eye chanced upon the work-basket, a stray ribbon or even a pin left in a crack in the table, he fell into a dream…” (on page 321, Part Three, Chapter 11).
I wonder if Wall is a Beatles fan. The translation by Francis Steegmuller reads these items merely “would send [Charles] brooding…”
