Summary: Part Three, Chapter 6
Frédéric travels and lives several years idly, having
affairs and not working. One day in March 1867,
Madame Arnoux enters his study. She has been living in Brittany.
They renew their declarations of love for each other and take a
walk, reminiscing about their past. Back home, she takes off her
hat, and Frédéric is shocked to see that her hair is white. He covers
up his shock by flattering her. He thinks she has probably come
here to give herself to him, and he is uninterested. They run out
of things to say, and she leaves.
Summary: Part Three, Chapter 7
Frédéric and Deslauriers, reunited, discuss their lives
and their friends. Madame Dambreuse has married an Englishman. Louise left
Deslauriers for a singer. Martinon is a senator, Hussonnet has earned
total control of the press and theatres, Cisy has eight children,
and Pellerin has become a photographer. Neither friend knows what
has happened to Senecal. Frédéric speculates that Madame Arnoux,
recently widowed, is in Rome with her son. Deslauriers tells Frédéric
he saw Rosanette recently in a shop, with an adopted child. She
is now fat. He reveals in his description that he had briefly been
her lover once Frédéric left her, and Frédéric pretends not to mind.
Deslauriers explains to Frédéric what “calf’s head” refers
to: in England, some independents parodied a ceremony practiced
by the Royalists by eating calves’ heads and drinking wine out of
the skulls. In France, revolutionaries had started the same secret
society.
The two friends reminisce about their past, particularly
an incident when they were much younger and went to see a woman
called La Turque, who ran a brothel. Deslauriers and Frédéric snuck
over to the brothel, but Frédéric became immediately overwhelmed
by the women, and the friends run away. They agree that this is
their happiest memory.
Analysis: Part Three, Chapters 5–7
Frédéric’s endless infatuation with Madame Arnoux leads
to the definitive end of his relationships with Rosanette, Madame
Dambreuse, and Louise. He leaves Rosanette to try to stop Madame Arnoux
from leaving and accuses her of being behind the sale of the Arnouxes’
belongings, grandly cutting all ties to her by telling her he’s
never loved anyone but Madame Arnoux. His wild claims prompt Rosanette
to tell him to go to her—and this seems to be the command Frédéric
has been waiting for. Unable to take definitive action on his own,
Frédéric now has someone else telling him to do it; but it is too
late, since Madame Arnoux is already gone. Frédéric, foolishly believing
that Madame Dambreuse will never find out about his attempt to save
Madame Arnoux, is blindsided by Madame Dambreuse’s cruelty in facilitating
the sale of the Arnouxes’ belongings, and he leaves her too. Alone
now, he makes a last-ditch effort to win Louise, but he is too late.
His love for Madame Arnoux has finally cost him every other woman
in his life.
Madame Arnoux’s final visit to Frédéric marks the end
of their strange affair and reveals the limits of Frédéric’s feelings
for her. Frédéric has always managed to rekindle his love for her
whenever she crossed his path; when she visits him after several
years of absence, he feels great delight and easily extols his happiness
and love once more. However, her white hair kills any possibility
of continued romantic feelings. Her drastically changed physical
appearance is a revelation: although he loves Madame Arnoux, he
loves the Madame Arnoux who existed many years ago. This aging,
struggling, unhappy woman no longer interests him; in fact, he thinks that
becoming her lover will be annoying. He continues declaring his
love, but he is speaking to a memory, not the actual woman before
him. All along, he has believed Madame Arnoux to be beyond human,
almost a religious figure, and his easy dismissal of her demonstrates
that he wants her on a pedestal, as a dream, not as a woman in all
her flawed, real, aging, human glory.
