Gustave Flaubert ... would have described her as being mad as a wet hen.

She [Constance] was thinking of Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, and a stylist like Gustave Flaubert, with his flair for the mot juste, would have described her as being mad as a wet hen.

P.G. Wodehouse, A Pelican at Blandings (1969), 116