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Flaubert lent his manuscript of this travel journal to Louise Colet, a married woman with whom he had recently broken off an affair of several years. Colet found the detail concerning the bedbugs repugnant. In a letter, Flaubert defended himself: "You tell me Kuchiouk Hanem's bedbugs degrade her in your eyes. As for me, it was just that that I found enchanting. Their sickening odor mingled with the perfume of her body dripping with sandalwood. I want there to be a bitterness in everything, an eternal slap in the face right in the midst of our triumphs, and even desolation itself accompanying our enthusiasm. This reminds me of Jaffa, where, in entering, I breathed in simultaneously the scent of the lemon trees and that of rotting cadavers: the torn-up cemetery allowed one to see skeletons with the flesh half rotted away, while at the same time the green bows of the trees balanced over our heads their golden fruits. Don't you sense how this poetry is complete, how it is the great synthesis?" y Eric Mader-Lin. [presumably quoting from the standard English version of F's letters] http://www.necessaryprose.com/egypt.html