Chapter Six
During the journeys he made to see her, Leon had often dined at
the chemist's, and he felt obliged from politeness to invite him
in turn.
"With pleasure!" Monsieur Homais replied; "besides, I must
invigorate my mind, for I am getting rusty here. We'll go to the
theatre, to the restaurant; we'll make a night of it."
"Oh, my dear!" tenderly murmured Madame Homais, alarmed at the
vague perils he was preparing to brave.
"Well, what? Do you think I'm not sufficiently ruining my health
living here amid the continual emanations of the pharmacy? But
there! that is the way with women! They are jealous of science,
and then are opposed to our taking the most legitimate
distractions. No matter! Count upon me. One of these days I shall
turn up at Rouen, and we'll go the pace together."
The druggist would formerly have taken good care not to use such
an expression, but he was cultivating a gay Parisian style, which
he thought in the best taste; and, like his neighbour, Madame
Bovary, he questioned the clerk curiously about the customs of
the capital; he even talked slang to dazzle the bourgeois, saying
bender, crummy, dandy, macaroni, the cheese, cut my stick and
"I'll hook it," for "I am going."
So one Thursday Emma was surprised to meet Monsieur Homais in the
kitchen of the "Lion d'Or," wearing a traveller's costume, that
is to say, wrapped in an old cloak which no one knew he had,
while he carried a valise in one hand and the foot-warmer of his
establishment in the other. He had confided his intentions to no
one, for fear of causing the public anxiety by his absence.
The idea of seeing again the place where his youth had been spent
no doubt excited him, for during the whole journey he never
ceased talking, and as soon as he had arrived, he jumped quickly
out of the diligence to go in search of Leon. In vain the clerk
tried to get rid of him. Monsieur Homais dragged him off to the
large Cafe de la Normandie, which he entered majestically, not
raising his hat, thinking it very provincial to uncover in any
public place.
Emma waited for Leon three quarters of an hour. At last she ran
to his office; and, lost in all sorts of conjectures, accusing
him of indifference, and reproaching herself for her weakness,
she spent the afternoon, her face pressed against the
window-panes.
At two o'clock they were still at a table opposite each other.
The large room was emptying; the stove-pipe, in the shape of a
palm-tree, spread its gilt leaves over the white ceiling, and
near them, outside the window, in the bright sunshine, a little
fountain gurgled in a white basin, where; in the midst of
watercress and asparagus, three torpid lobsters stretched across
to some quails that lay heaped up in a pile on their sides.
Homais was enjoying himself. Although he was even more
intoxicated with the luxury than the rich fare, the Pommard wine
all the same rather excited his faculties; and when the omelette
au rhum* appeared, he began propounding immoral theories about
women. What seduced him above all else was chic. He admired an
elegant toilette in a well-furnished apartment, and as to bodily
qualities, he didn't dislike a young girl.
* In rum.
Leon watched the clock in despair. The druggist went on drinking,
eating, and talking.
"You must be very lonely," he said suddenly, "here at Rouen. To
be sure your lady-love doesn't live far away."
And the other blushed--
"Come now, be frank. Can you deny that at Yonville--"
The young man stammered something.
"At Madame Bovary's, you're not making love to--"
"To whom?"
"The servant!"
He was not joking; but vanity getting the better of all prudence,
Leon, in spite of himself protested. Besides, he only liked dark
women.
"I approve of that," said the chemist; "they have more passion."
And whispering into his friend's ear, he pointed out the symptoms
by which one could find out if a woman had passion. He even
launched into an ethnographic digression: the German was
vapourish, the French woman licentious, the Italian passionate.
"And negresses?" asked the clerk.
"They are an artistic taste!" said Homais. "Waiter! two cups of
coffee!"
"Are we going?" at last asked Leon impatiently.
"Ja!"
But before leaving he wanted to see the proprietor of the
establishment and made him a few compliments. Then the young man,
to be alone, alleged he had some business engagement.
"Ah! I will escort you," said Homais.
And all the while he was walking through the streets with him he
talked of his wife, his children; of their future, and of his
business; told him in what a decayed condition it had formerly
been, and to what a degree of perfection he had raised it.
Arrived in front of the Hotel de Boulogne, Leon left him
abruptly, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress in great
excitement. At mention of the chemist she flew into a passion.
He, however, piled up good reasons; it wasn't his fault; didn't
she know Homais--did she believe that he would prefer his
company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and, sinking on
his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous pose,
full of concupiscence and supplication.
She was standing; up, her large flashing eyes looked at him
seriously, almost terribly. Then tears obscured them, her red
eyelids were lowered, she gave him her hands, and Leon was
pressing them to his lips when a servant appeared to tell the
gentleman that he was wanted.
"You will come back?" she said.
"Yes."
"But when?"
"Immediately."
"It's a trick," said the chemist, when he saw Leon. "I wanted to
interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you. Let's go
and have a glass of garus at Bridoux'."
Leon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the druggist
joked him about quill-drivers and the law.
"Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil prevents
you? Be a man! Let's go to Bridoux'. You'll see his dog. It's
very interesting."
And as the clerk still insisted--
"I'll go with you. I'll read a paper while I wait for you, or
turn over the leaves of a 'Code.'"
Leon, bewildered by Emma's anger, Monsieur Homais' chatter, and,
perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was undecided, and, as
it were, fascinated by the chemist, who kept repeating--
"Let's go to Bridoux'. It's just by here, in the Rue Malpalu."
Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through that
indefinable feeling that drags us into the most distasteful acts,
he allowed himself to be led off to Bridoux', whom they found in
his small yard, superintending three workmen, who panted as they
turned the large wheel of a machine for making seltzer-water.
Homais gave them some good advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took
some garus. Twenty times Leon tried to escape, but the other
seized him by the arm saying--
"Presently! I'm coming! We'll go to the 'Fanal de Rouen' to see
the fellows there. I'll introduce you to Thornassin."
At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight to the
hotel. Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of
anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their
rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to rake up
other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of
heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious
too, and cowardly.
Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had, no
doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love
always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch
our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.
They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside
their love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of
flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a
waning passion striving to keep itself alive by all external
aids. She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on
her next journey. Then she confessed to herself that she felt
nothing extraordinary. This disappointment quickly gave way to a
new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed, more eager than
ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her
corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake. She
went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see once more that the door was
closed, then, pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one
movement, she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.
Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those
quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms,
something vague and dreary that seemed to Leon to glide between
them subtly as if to separate them.
He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she
must have passed, he thought, through every experience of
suffering and of pleasure. What had once charmed now frightened
him a little. Besides, he rebelled against his absorption, daily
more marked, by her personality. He begrudged Emma this constant
victory. He even strove not to love her; then, when he heard the
creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like drunkards at the
sight of strong drinks.
She did not fail, in truth, to lavish all sorts of attentions
upon him, from the delicacies of food to the coquettries of dress
and languishing looks. She brought roses to her breast from
Yonville, which she threw into his face; was anxious about his
health, gave him advice as to his conduct; and, in order the more
surely to keep her hold on him, hoping perhaps that heaven would
take her part, she tied a medal of the Virgin round his neck. She
inquired like a virtuous mother about his companions. She said to
him--
"Don't see them; don't go out; think only of ourselves; love me!"
She would have liked to be able to watch over his life; and the
idea occurred to her of having him followed in the streets. Near
the hotel there was always a kind of loafer who accosted
travellers, and who would not refuse. But her pride revolted at
this.
"Bah! so much the worse. Let him deceive me! What does it matter
to me? As If I cared for him!"
One day, when they had parted early and she was returning alone
along the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; then she
sat down on a form in the shade of the elm-trees. How calm that
time had been! How she longed for the ineffable sentiments of
love that she had tried to figure to herself out of books! The
first month of her marriage, her rides in the wood, the viscount
that waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all repassed before her eyes.
And Leon suddenly appeared to her as far off as the others.
"Yet I love him," she said to herself.
No matter! She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came
this insufficiency in life--this instantaneous turning to decay
of everything on which she leant? But if there were somewhere a
being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of
exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in an angel's form, a
lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to
heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how
impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it;
everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every
joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left
upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater
delight.
A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were
heard from the convent-clock. Four o'clock! And it seemed to her
that she had been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity
of passions may be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small
space.
Emma lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no more about money
matters than an archduchess.
Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund and bald, came to
her house, saying he had been sent by Monsieur Vincart of Rouen.
He took out the pins that held together the side-pockets of his
long green overcoat, stuck them into his sleeve, and politely
handed her a paper.
It was a bill for seven hundred francs, signed by her, and which
Lheureux, in spite of all his professions, had paid away to
Vincart. She sent her servant for him. He could not come. Then
the stranger, who had remained standing, casting right and left
curious glances, that his thick, fair eyebrows hid, asked with a
naive air--
"What answer am I to take Monsieur Vincart?"
"Oh," said Emma, "tell him that I haven't it. I will send next
week; he must wait; yes, till next week."
And the fellow went without another word.
But the next day at twelve o'clock she received a summons, and
the sight of the stamped paper, on which appeared several times
in large letters, "Maitre Hareng, bailiff at Buchy," so
frightened her that she rushed in hot haste to the linendraper's.
She found him in his shop, doing up a parcel.
"Your obedient!" he said; "I am at your service."
But Lheureux, all the same, went on with his work, helped by a
young girl of about thirteen, somewhat hunch-backed, who was at
once his clerk and his servant.
Then, his clogs clattering on the shop-boards, he went up in
front of Madame Bovary to the first door, and introduced her into
a narrow closet, where, in a large bureau in sapon-wood, lay some
ledgers, protected by a horizontal padlocked iron bar. Against
the wall, under some remnants of calico, one glimpsed a safe, but
of such dimensions that it must contain something besides bills
and money. Monsieur Lheureux, in fact, went in for pawnbroking,
and it was there that he had put Madame Bovary's gold chain,
together with the earrings of poor old Tellier, who, at last
forced to sell out, had bought a meagre store of grocery at
Quincampoix, where he was dying of catarrh amongst his candles,
that were less yellow than his face.
Lheureux sat down in a large cane arm-chair, saying: "What news?"
"See!"
And she showed him the paper.
"Well how can I help it?"
Then she grew angry, reminding him of the promise he had given
not to pay away her bills. He acknowledged it.
"But I was pressed myself; the knife was at my own throat."
"And what will happen now?" she went on.
"Oh, it's very simple; a judgment and then a distraint--that's
about it!"
Emma kept down a desire to strike him, and asked gently if there
was no way of quieting Monsieur Vincart.
"I dare say! Quiet Vincart! You don't know him; he's more
ferocious than an Arab!"
Still Monsieur Lheureux must interfere.
"Well, listen. It seems to me so far I've been very good to you."
And opening one of his ledgers, "See," he said. Then running up
the page with his finger, "Let's see! let's see! August 3d, two
hundred francs; June 17th, a hundred and fifty; March 23d,
forty-six. In April--"
He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.
"Not to speak of the bills 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
'em; one gets quite muddled over 'em. 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 brass farthing; 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!"
And on hearing that Langlois had not yet paid he seemed much
surprised. Then in a honied voice--
"And we agree, you say?"
"Oh! to anything you like."
On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few figures,
and declaring it would be very difficult for him, that the affair
was shady, and that he was being bled, 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 don't play the fool; I'm straight enough."
Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not one of
which, however, was in his opinion worthy of madame.
"When I think that there's a dress at threepence-halfpenny a
yard, and warranted fast colours! 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 is 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 as quickly as possible the whole of the balance due
from the father's estate. 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 in accounts to two or three patients, and
she made large use of this method, which was 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 get money she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the
old odds and ends, and she bargained rapaciously, her peasant
blood standing her in good stead. Then on her journey 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 Felicite, from Madame Lefrancois, 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 a calculation, but she
discovered things so exorbitant that she could not believe them
possible. Then she recommenced, soon got confused, gave it all
up, and thought no more about it.
The house was very dreary now. Tradesmen were seen leaving it
with angry faces. Handkerchiefs were 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? She explained
everything through her old nervous illness, and reproaching
himself with having taken her infirmities for faults, accused
himself of egotism, and longed to go and take her in his arms.
"Ah, no!" he said to himself; "I should worry her."
And he did not stir.
After dinner he walked about alone in the garden; he took 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 did not spoil the garden much, all
choked now with long weeds. They owed Lestiboudois for so many
days. Then the child grew cold and asked for her mother.
"Call the servant," said Charles. "You know, dearie, 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, which no one entered. She stayed there
all day long, torpid, half dressed, and from time to time burning
Turkish pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian's
shop. In order not to have at night this sleeping man stretched
at her side, by dint of manoeuvring, she at last succeeded in
banishing him to the second floor, while she read till morning
extravagant books, full of pictures of orgies and thrilling
situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried out, and Charles
hurried to her.
"Oh, go away!" she would say.
Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever by that inner
flame to which adultery added fuel, panting, tremulous, all
desire, she threw open her window, breathed in the cold air,
shook loose in the wind her masses of hair, too heavy, and,
gazing upon the stars, longed for some princely love. She thought
of him, of Leon. She would then have given anything for a single
one of those meetings that surfeited 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 her bag (they
were old Roualt's wedding present), begging him to pawn them at
once for her, and Leon obeyed, though the proceeding annoyed him.
He was afraid of compromising himself.
Then, on, reflection, he began to think his mistress's ways were
growing odd, and that they were perhaps not wrong in wishing to
separate him from her.
In fact 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 at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of
families the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster,
who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Lawyer
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 Leon swore he would not see Emma again, and he reproached
himself with not having kept his word, considering all the worry
and lectures this woman might still draw down upon him, without
reckoning the jokes made by his companions as they sat round the
stove in the morning. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it
was time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted
sentiments, and poetry; 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 sultanas; every notary bears
within him the debris of a poet.
He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast,
and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain
amount of music, dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he
no longer noted.
They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of
possession that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick
of him as he was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all
the platitudes of marriage.
But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated
at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or
from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more,
exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She
accused Leon 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 none the less went on writing him love letters, in virtue of
the notion that a woman must write to her lover.
But whilst she wrote it was another man she saw, a phantom
fashioned out of her most ardent memories, of her finest reading,
her strongest lusts, and at last he became so real, so tangible,
that she palpitated wondering, without, however, the power to
imagine 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 fell back exhausted, for these transports of vague love
wearied her more than great debauchery.
She now felt constant ache all over her. Often she even received
summonses, stamped paper that she barely looked at. She would
have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.
On Mid-Lent she did not return to Yonville, but in the evening
went to a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a
club wig, and three-cornered hat cocked on one side. She danced
all night to the wild tones 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 masks, debardeuses* and
sailors, Leon's comrades, who were talking about having supper.
* People dressed as longshoremen.
The neighbouring cafes were full. They caught sight of one on the
harbour, a very indifferent restaurant, whose proprietor showed
them to a little room on the fourth floor.
The men were whispering in a corner, no doubt consorting about
expenses. There were a clerk, two medical students, and a
shopman--what company for her! As to the women, Emma soon
perceived from the tone of their voices that they must almost
belong to the lowest class. Then she was frightened, pushed back
her chair, and cast down her eyes.
The others began to eat; she ate nothing. Her head was on fire,
her eyes smarted, and her skin was ice-cold. In her head she
seemed to feel the floor of the ball-room rebounding again
beneath the rhythmical pulsation of the thousands of dancing
feet. And now the smell of the punch, the smoke of the cigars,
made her giddy. She fainted, and they carried her to the window.
Day was breaking, and a great stain of purple colour broadened
out in the pale horizon over the St. Catherine hills. The livid
river was shivering in the wind; there was no one on the bridges;
the street lamps were going out.
She revived, and began thinking of Berthe asleep yonder in the
servant'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.
She slipped away suddenly, threw off her costume, told Leon she
must get back, and at last was alone at the Hotel de Boulogne.
Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished
that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away
to regions of purity, and there grow young again.
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 calming her; and, little by
little, the faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the
lights, the supper, those women, all disappeared like mists
fading away. Then, reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she threw herself
on the bed in her little room on the second floor, where there
were pictures of the "Tour de Nesle." At four o'clock Hivert
awoke her.
When she got home, Felicite showed her behind the clock a grey
paper. She read--
"In virtue of the seizure in execution of a judgment."
What judgment? As a matter of fact, the evening before another
paper had been brought 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 there was even at the bottom, "She will be
constrained thereto by every form of law, and notably by a writ
of distraint on her furniture and effects."
What was to be done? In twenty-four hours--tomorrow. Lheureux,
she thought, wanted to frighten her again; for she saw through
all his devices, the object of his kindnesses. What reassured her
was the very magnitude of the sum.
However, by dint of buying and not paying, of borrowing, signing
bills, and renewing these bills that grew at each new falling-in,
she had ended by preparing a capital for Monsieur Lheureux which
he was impatiently awaiting for his speculations.
She presented herself at his place with an offhand 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. It's been notified to you. Besides, it isn't my fault.
It's Vincart's."
"Could you not--?"
"Oh, nothing whatever."
"But still, now talk it over."
And she began beating about the bush; she had known nothing about
it; it was a surprise.
"Whose fault is that?" said Lheureux, bowing ironically. "While
I'm slaving like a nigger, you go gallivanting about."
"Ah! no lecturing."
"It never does any harm," he replied.
She turned coward; she implored him; she even pressed her pretty
white and slender hand against the shopkeeper's knee.
"There, that'll do! Anyone'd think you wanted to seduce me!"
"You are a wretch!" she cried.
"Oh, oh! go it! go it!"
"I will show you up. I shall tell my husband."
"All right! I too. I'll show your husband something."
And Lheureux drew from his strong box the receipt for eighteen
hundred francs that she had given him when Vincart had discounted
the bills.
"Do you think," he added, "that he'll not understand your little
theft, the poor dear man?"
She collapsed, more overcome than if felled by the blow of a
pole-axe. He was walking up and down from the window to the
bureau, repeating all the while--
"Ah! I'll show him! I'll show him!" Then he approached her, and
in a soft voice said--
"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 looked at her in so keen, so terrible a fashion, that she
shuddered to her very heart.
"I promise you," she said, "to sign--"
"I've enough of your signatures."
"I will sell something."
"Get along!" he said, shrugging his shoulders; "you've not got
anything."
And he called through the peep-hole that looked down into the
shop--
"Annette, don't forget the three coupons 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! tears now!"
"You are driving me to despair!"
"What do I care?" said he, shutting the door.
