“Oh my word, yes! Calm Vincart! You don’t know him; he’s more ferocious than an Arab!”

Still, Monsieur Lheureux simply had to intervene.

“Well, listen. It seems to me so far I’ve been very good to you.” And opening one of his ledgers, “Here,” he said. Then running up the page with his finger, “Let’s see! let’s see! August 3rd, two hundred francs; June 17th, one hundred and fifty; March 23rd, forty-six. In April — ”

He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.

“Not to speak of the promissory notes signed by Monsieur Bovary, one for seven hundred francs, and another for three hundred. As to your little installments, with the interest, why, there’s no end to them; one gets quite muddled over them. I’ll have nothing more to do with it.”

She wept; she even called him “her good Monsieur Lheureux.” But he always fell back upon “that rascal Vincart.” Besides, he hadn’t a single centime to his name; no one was paying him now-a-days; they were eating his coat off his back; a poor shopkeeper like him couldn’t advance money.

Emma was silent, and Monsieur Lheureux, who was biting the feathers of a quill, no doubt became uneasy at her silence, for he went on —

“Unless one of these days I have something coming in, I might — ”

“Besides,” said she, “as soon as the balance of Barneville — ”

“What!”

On hearing that Langlois had not yet paid, he seemed much surprised. Then in honied tones, he added —

“And we agree, you say?”

“Oh! to anything you like.”

On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few figures, and after declaring it would be very difficult for him, that the affair was shady, and that he was being “bled dry”, he wrote out four bills for two hundred and fifty francs each, to fall due month by month.

“Provided that Vincart will listen to me! However, it’s settled. I’m not trifling with you; I’m as straight as an arrow.”

Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not one of which, however, was in his opinion worthy of Madame.

“When I think that here’s a dress at seven sous a meter, and it’s guaranteed as being colour fast! And yet they actually swallow it! Of course you understand one doesn’t tell them what it really is!” He hoped by this confession of dishonesty to others to quite convince her of his probity to her.

Then he called her back to show her three yards of guipure that he had lately picked up “at a sale.”

“Isn’t it lovely?” said Lheureux. “It’s very much used now for the backs of arm-chairs. It’s quite the rage.”

And, more ready than a juggler, he wrapped up the guipure in some blue paper and put it in Emma’s hands.

“But at least let me know — ”

“Yes, another time,” he replied, turning on his heel.

That same evening she urged Bovary to write to his mother, to ask her to send the whole of the balance due from the father’s estate as quickly as possible. The mother-in-law replied that she had nothing more, the winding up was over, and there was due to them besides Barneville an income of six hundred francs, that she would pay them punctually.

Then Madame Bovary sent bills to two or three patients, and soon made liberal use of this method, which proved very successful. She was always careful to add a postscript: “Do not mention this to my husband; you know how proud he is. Excuse me. Yours obediently.” There were some complaints; she intercepted them.

To make money, she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old scrap iron, in effect, and she bargained rapaciously, her peasant blood standing her in good stead. Then on her trips to town she picked up nick-nacks secondhand, that, in default of anyone else, Monsieur Lheureux would certainly take off her hands. She bought ostrich feathers, Chinese porcelain, and trunks; she borrowed from Félicité, from Madame Lefrançois, from the landlady at the Croix-Rouge, from everybody, no matter where.

With the money she at last received from Barneville she paid two bills; the other fifteen hundred francs fell due. She renewed the bills, and thus it was continually.

Sometimes, it is true, she tried to make calculations, but she discovered the results so exorbitant that she could not believe them. So she would begin again, quickly become confused, give it all up, and think no more about it.

The house was certainly very dreary now. Tradesmen could be seen leaving it with furious faces. Handkerchiefs were left lying about on the stoves, and little Berthe, to the great scandal of Madame Homais, wore stockings with holes in them. If Charles timidly ventured a remark, she answered roughly that it wasn’t her fault.

What was the meaning of all these fits of temper? He blamed it all on her old nervous illness, and reproaching himself for having taken her infirmities for character defects, accused himself of being selfish, and longed to go and take her in his arms.

“Ah, no!” he would say to himself; “I should only upset her.”

And he would not stir.

After dinner he walked about alone in the garden; he would take little Berthe on his knees, and unfolding his medical journal, tried to teach her to read. But the child, who never had any lessons, soon looked up with large, sad eyes and began to cry. Then he comforted her; went to fetch water in her can to make rivers on the sand path, or broke off branches from the privet hedges to plant trees in the beds. This could not spoil the garden much, all choked as it was now with tall grasses. They owed Lestiboudois for so many days’ pay. Then the child would grow cold and ask for her mother.

“Call the servant,” said Charles. “You know, dearest, that mamma does not like to be disturbed.”

Autumn was setting in, and the leaves were already falling, as they did two years ago when she was ill. Where would it all end? And he walked up and down, his hands behind his back.

Madame was in her room. No one went up there. She remained there all day long, listless, half-dressed, and from time to time burning pastilles of incense which she had bought at Rouen in the shop of an Algerian. In order not to have that man lying there, stretched by her side all night, she at last succeeded, through grimaces and sour looks, in banishing him to the second floor, while she read lurid books till morning, full of orgies and scenes of bloodshed. Often, seized with fear, she would cry out, and Charles would come running down.

“Oh, go away!” she would say.

Or at other times, burning more hotly than ever with that secret flame which adultery had fueled, panting, tremulous, all desire, she would throw open her window, breathe in the cold air, shake loose in the wind her mane of too heavy hair, and, gazing up at the stars, long for princely loves. She thought of him then, of Léon. She would have given anything at such moments for a single one of those meetings that had satiated her.

These were her gala days. She wanted them to be sumptuous, and when he alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit liberally, which happened pretty well every time. He tried to make her understand that they would be quite as comfortable somewhere else, in a smaller hotel, but she always found some objection.

One day she drew six small silver-gilt spoons from out of her bag (they were old Rouault’s wedding gift) and begged him to pawn them for her, at once. Léon obeyed, though he did not like doing it. He was afraid of compromising himself.

And afterwards, upon reflection, he began to think his mistress’s ways were growing very strange, and that people were perhaps not wrong in wishing to separate him from her.

Indeed, someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her that he was “ruining himself with a married woman,” and the good lady having immediately conjured up the eternal bogey of family life, that vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Maître Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in the affair. He kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open his eyes, to warn him of the abyss into which he was falling. Such an intrigue would damage him later on, when he set up for himself. He implored him to break with her, and, if he would not make this sacrifice in his own interest, to do it at least for his, Dubocage’s sake.

At last, Léon swore he would not see Emma again, and he reproached himself for not having kept his word before, considering all this woman might still draw down upon him in the way of trouble and talk, not counting jokes at his expense as his companions sat round the stove in the mornings. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle down. So he gave up the flute, high-flown sentiments, and the imagination; for every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of a sultan’s concubines; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.

He grew bored now when Emma suddenly burst into sobs on his breast, and, like people who can only stand a certain amount of music, his heart grew drowsy with indifference at the din raised by a love whose delicacies he no longer cared to note.

They knew one another too well for those surprises of possession that increase its joy a hundred-fold. She was as sick of him as he was weary of her. Emma was rediscovering in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.

But how to get rid of him? And then, even though she might feel humiliated by the debasement of this happiness, she clung to it from habit or from depravity, and each day hungered after it the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Léon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind to it herself.

She nonetheless went on writing him love letters, based on the notion that a woman ought to write to her lover.

But while writing, she envisaged another man, a phantom fashioned from her most ardent memories, the most beautiful things she had read, her strongest desires, one who became so real to her in the end, so tangible, that she would tremble at him, marveling, without, however, ever being able to imagine anything about him clearly, so lost was he, like a god, beneath the abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in that azure land where silk ladders hang from balconies under the breath of flowers, in the light of the moon. She felt him near her; he was coming, and would carry her right away in a kiss.

Then she would fall back exhausted, for these transports of vague love wearied her even more than excessive debauchery.

She now felt constant aches and pains all over her. Often Emma received summonses, officially stamped documents that she barely looked at. She would have liked not to live, or to be always asleep.

On Mid-Lent Day she did not return to Yonville, but in the evening went to a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a wig with a tail, and a three-cornered hat cocked on one side of her head. She danced all night to the wild notes of the trombones; people gathered round her, and in the morning she found herself on the steps of the theatre together with five or six masqueraders, stevedores and sailors, Léon’s comrades, who were talking about having supper.

The cafés in the neighbourhood were all full. They discovered one on the harbour, a very mediocre restaurant, whose proprietor showed them to a little room on the fourth floor.

The men were whispering in a corner, probably conferring about expenses. There were a clerk, two medical students, and a shop assistant — what company for her! As for the women, Emma quickly realized from the shrill ring of their voices that almost all of them belonged to the lowest class. She felt frightened then, pushed back her chair, and lowered her eyes.

The others began to eat; she ate nothing. Her brow was on fire, her eyes smarting, and her skin ice-cold. Inside her head she could feel the ball-room floor still rebounding beneath the rhythmical throb of a thousand dancing feet. Then the smell of the punch, the smoke of the cigars, made her dizzy. She fainted, and they carried her to the window.

It was daybreak, and a broad stain of reddish purple expanded on the pale horizon over the St. Catherine hills. The livid river was shivering in the wind; no one was on the bridges; the street lamps were going out.

She revived, however, and began thinking of Berthe asleep far off in the maid’s room. Then a cart filled with long strips of iron passed by, and made a deafening metallic vibration against the walls of the houses.

Abruptly, she slipped away, threw off her costume, told Léon she must return, and at last was alone at the Hôtel de Boulogne. Everything, including herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished she could fly off like a bird, escape somewhere and grow young again, far, far away in regions of immaculate purity.

She went out, crossed the Boulevard, the Place Cauchoise, and the Faubourg, as far as an open street that overlooked some gardens. She walked rapidly, the fresh air restoring her calm; and, little by little, the faces in the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the chandeliers, the supper, those women, all disappeared like mists that blew away. Then, reaching the Croix-Rouge, she threw herself on the bed in her little room on the second floor, hung with pictures of the Tour de Nesle. At four o’clock Hivert awoke her.

When she reached home, Félicité showed her a grey sheet of paper behind the clock. She read —

“In accordance with the written instrument in execution of a judgment ...”

What judgment? In fact, the evening before another paper had been delivered that she had not yet seen, and she was stunned by these words —

“By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame Bovary.” Then, skipping several lines, she read, “Within twenty-four hours, without fail — ” But what? “To pay the sum of eight thousand francs.” And further down there was even — “She will be constrained thereto by every form of law, and notably by the seizure of her furniture and effects.”

What was to be done? In twenty-four hours — tomorrow! Lheureux, she thought, wanted to frighten her again; for she suddenly saw through all his schemes, the motives behind his seeming kindnesses. What reassured her was the very magnitude of the sum.

Yet, by dint of buying and not paying, of borrowing, and signing promissory notes, and of renewing these which then augmented at each due date, she had ended by amassing a capital for Monsieur Lheureux which he was impatiently awaiting for his speculations.

She presented herself at his shop with a casual air.

“You know what has happened to me? No doubt it’s a joke!”

“How so?”

He turned away slowly, and, folding his arms, said to her —

“My good lady, did you think I should go on to all eternity being your purveyor and banker, for the love of God? Now be just. I must get back what I’ve laid out. Now be just.”

She cried out against the debt.

“Ah! so much the worse. The court has admitted it. There’s a judgment. You were notified. Besides, it isn’t my fault. It’s Vincart’s.”

“Could you not — ?” “Not a thing!”

“But still, now, let’s talk it over.”

And she began casting about for excuses; she had known nothing about it; it was a surprise.

“Whose fault is that?” said Lheureux, bowing ironically. “While I’m slaving like a Negro, you go gallivanting about.”

“Ah! No moralizing!”

“It never does any harm,” he replied.

She became craven; she implored him; she even pressed her pretty white and slender hand against the shopkeeper’s knee. “Leave me alone. One would think your were trying to seduce me!”

“You are a wretch!” she cried.

“Oh, oh! How you do go on!” he replied, laughing.

“I’ll tell everyone what you are. I’ll tell my husband.”

“Very good! Me too. I have something to show your husband as well.”

And Lheureux drew out the receipt for eighteen hundred francs from his safe that she had given him when Vincart had discounted the bills.

“Do you think,” he added, “that he won’t understand your little theft, the poor dear man?”

She collapsed then, more stunned than if she had been felled by a sledgehammer. He was walking back and forth, from the window to the desk, repeating continuously —

“Ah! I’ll show him! I’ll show him!” Then he approached her, and said, in a soft voice —

“It isn’t pleasant, I know; but, after all, no bones are broken, and, since that is the only way that is left for you paying back my money — ”

“But where am I to get any?” said Emma, wringing her hands.

“Bah! when one has friends like you!”

And he gave her a look so keen, and so terrible, that she shuddered to the depths of her being.

“I promise you,” she said, “I’ll sign — ”

“I’ve enough of your signatures.”

“I’ll sell — ”

“Get along!” he said, shrugging his shoulders; “you’ve nothing left.”

And he called down through the peep-hole that opened into the shop below —

“Annette, don’t forget the three remnants of No. 14.”

The servant appeared. Emma understood, and asked how much money would be wanted to put a stop to the proceedings.

“It is too late.”

“But if I brought you several thousand francs — a quarter of the sum — a third — perhaps the whole?”

“No; it’s no use!”

And he pushed her gently towards the staircase.

“I implore you, Monsieur Lheureux, just a few days more!” She was sobbing.

“There now! Tears too!”

“You are driving me to despair!”

“I really don’t care,” he said, shutting the door.

Chapter Seven

She was stoical the next day when Maître Hareng, the bailiff, with two witnesses, presented himself at her house to draw up the inventory of the goods to be seized.

They began with Bovary’s consulting-room, and did not write down the phrenological head, which was considered an “instrument of his profession”; but in the kitchen they counted the plates, the saucepans, the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all the nick-nacks on the cabinet. They examined her dresses, the linen, the dressing-room; and exposed her whole existence to its most intimate recesses; her life was like a corpse being autopsied, spread out full length before the eyes of these three men.

Maître Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a white choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to time — “Allow me, Madame. If you allow me?” Often he uttered exclamations. “Charming! very pretty.” Then he began writing again, dipping his pen into the horn inkstand in his left hand.

When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She kept a desk there in which Rodolphe’s letters were locked. It had to be opened.

“Ah! A correspondence,” said Maître Hareng, with a discreet smile. “But if you allow me, I must make sure the box contains nothing else.” And he tipped up the papers lightly, as if to shake out napoleons. Then she grew indignant at the sight of this coarse hand, with red fingers, pulpy as slugs, touching those pages where her very heart had beaten.

They left at last. Félicité came back. Emma had sent her out to watch for Bovary in order to fend him off, and they hurriedly installed the bailiff's guard under the roof, where he swore he would remain.

During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched him in anguish, fancying that she saw accusations in every line of his face. Then, when her eyes rested on the mantlepiece ornamented with Chinese screens, on the ample curtains, the armchairs, all those things, in a word, that had sweetened the bitterness of her life, remorse seized her or rather an immense regret, which instead of killing, actually irritated her passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on the fire-dogs.

Once the guard, no doubt growing bored in his hiding-place, made a slight noise.

“Is someone walking around up there?” said Charles.

“No,” she replied; “it’s a window that’s been left open, and it’s rattling in the wind.”

The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the brokers whose names she knew. They were at their country-places or on journeys. She was not discouraged; and those whom she did manage to see she asked for money, declaring she must have some, and that she would pay it back. Some laughed in her face; all refused.

At two o’clock she hurried to Léon, and knocked at the door. No one answered. At length he appeared.

“What brings you here?”

“Do I disturb you?”