It consists of the short stories: "A Simple Heart", "Saint Julian the Hospitalier", and "Hérodias".
She also carries within her a yearning, a majestic quasi-religious sensibility which finds its apotheosis in the deification, as she dies, of her pet parrot, who floats above her deathbed, masquerading as the Holy Ghost.
Flaubert's challenge was to create the main protagonist as someone very different from the satirical characters appearing in his previous novels such as Madame Bovary.
After Julian kills a mouse who interrupted his concentration in church, his cruelty towards animals grows and culminates into his massacre of an entire valley of deer.
He almost brings the curse to fruition twice: he drops a sword while standing on a ladder near his father, and he pins his mother's white shawl against a wall with a javelin because it looked like bird's wings.
According to Flaubert, this plan entails making her husband fall in love with her daughter, Salomé, leading to him promising her whatever she wants.
John has been repeatedly insulting the royals, so the king does not think long before granting Salomé's wish.
The crowd gathered for the party waits anxiously while the executioner, Mannaeus, kills John.