Tissue of lies

Not too long ago I was reading this profile of Cindy McCain and as I read this part:

Then she told another favorite story: she was twenty-four when she met John McCain at that cocktail party in Honolulu, but she told him that she was twenty-seven. McCain claimed to be thirty-seven; he was in fact forty-two. Cindy McCain giggled as she explained that they did not fess up until their marriage announcement was published in the local newspaper. “We started our marriage on a tissue of lies,” she said with a smile, as the audience laughed.

I thought, ‘Tissue of lies.’ I know I’ve heard that somewhere before. Turns out it was Madame Bovary, which I’ve recently had reason to reread.

From that moment her existence was but one long tissue of lies, in which she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania, a pleasure carried to such an estent that if she said she had the day before walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken the left.

Well, now, isn’t that something? Cindy = Emma?

(Someone/site going by grammarphobia tries to track down the origin of tissue of lies, if you’re interested.)