and Mme Arnoux from leaving. Mme Dambreuse meanwhile discovers his motive for borrowing the money. Frédéric returns to his childhood home, hoping to find Louise there, but discovers that she has given up on him and married Deslauriers instead. Frédéric returns to Paris. Many years later, he briefly meets Mme Arnoux again, swearing his eternal love for her. After another interlude, he encounters Deslauriers and the novel ends the way it began, with the pair swapping stories of the past. Characters The characters of Sentimental Education are marked by capriciousness and self-interest. Frédéric, the main character, is originally infatuated with Madame Arnoux, but throughout the novel falls in and out of love with her. Furthermore, he is unable to decide on a profession and instead lives on his uncle's inheritance. Other characters, such as Mr. Arnoux, are as capricious with business as Frédéric is with love. Without their materialism and "instinctive worship of power", almost the entire cast would be completely rootless. Such was Flaubert's judgment of his times, and the continuing applicability of that cynicism goes a long way in explaining the novel's enduring appeal. Sequence of appearances Frédéric Moreau, the "hero", a young man from provincial France, who begins and ends as a member of the middle class. Jacques Arnoux, publisher, faience manufacturer; also a speculator and a womanizer, "ill nearly all the time and [looks] like an old man" towards the end of the novel, and eventually dies a year before the novel's end. Mme Marie (Angèle) Arnoux, his wife, mother of two children, platonic affair with Frédéric, moves to Rome by the end of the novel. Always virtuous and honorable, completely devoted to her two children. Marthe Arnoux, their daughter M. Roque, land-owner and M. Dambreuse's unsavoury agent; father of Louise Roque. Louise (Elisabeth-Olympe-Louise) Roque, his red-headed daughter, a country-girl; is passionately in love with Frédéric for a time, marries Deslauriers, leaves him for a singer. Charles Deslauriers, Frédéric's close friend. Extremely ambitious but unable to realize his ambitions, he has a jealous, competitive and somewhat parasitical relationship with the more prosperous Frédéric. He is a law student and, after several different positions, he finishes as novel. M. Dambreuse, banker, aristocratic politician, timeserver, financier. Dead in the third part of the novel. Mme Dambreuse, his much-younger, very determined, exquisite wife, with whom Frédéric has an affair and almost marries; after Frédéric breaks with her, toward the