‘Now who can trouble you, since in six months you’ll draw the arrears of your cottage, and I don’t make the last bill due till after you’ve been paid?’

Emma grew rather confused in her calculations, and her ears tingled as if gold pieces, bursting from their bags, rang all round her on the floor. At last Lheureux explained that he had a very good friend, Vinçart, a broker at Rouen, who would discount these four bills. Then he himself would hand over to madame the remainder after the actual debt was paid.

But instead of two thousand francs he brought only eighteen hundred, for the friend Vinçart (‘as was only fair’) had deducted two hundred francs for commission and discount. Then he carelessly asked for a receipt.

‘You understand – in business – sometimes. And with the date, if you please, with the date.’

A horizon of realisable whims opened out before Emma. She was prudent enough to lay by a thousand crowns, with which the first three bills were paid when they fell due; but the fourth, by chance, came to the house on a Thursday, and Charles, greatly upset, patiently awaited his wife’s return for an explanation.

If she had not told him about this bill, it was only to spare him such domestic worries; she sat on his knees, caressed him, cooed to him, gave a long enumeration of all the indispensable things that had been got on credit.

‘Really, you must confess, considering the quantity, it isn’t too dear.’

Charles, at his wits’ end, soon had recourse to the eternal Lheureux, who swore he would arrange matters if the doctor would sign him two bills, one of which was for seven hundred francs, payable in three months. In order to arrange for this he wrote his mother a pathetic letter. Instead of sending a reply she came herself; and when Emma wanted to know whether he had got anything out of her, ‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘but she wants to see the account.’ The next morning at daybreak Emma ran to Lheureux to beg him to make out another account for not more than a thousand francs, for to show the one for four thousand it would be necessary to say that she had paid two-thirds, and confess, consequently, the sale of the estate – a negotiation admirably carried out by the shopkeeper, and which, in fact, was only actually known later on.

Despite the low price of each article, Madame Bovary senior, of course, thought the expenditure extravagant.

‘Couldn’t you do without a carpet? Why have recovered the armchairs? In my time there was a single armchair in a house, for elderly persons, – at any rate it was so at my mother’s, who was a good woman, I can tell you. Everybody can’t be rich! No fortune can hold out against waste! I should be ashamed to coddle myself as you do! And yet I am old. I need looking after. And there! there! fitting up gowns! fallals! What! silk for lining at two francs, when you can get jaconet for ten sous, or even eight, that would do well enough!’

Emma, lying on a lounge, replied as quietly as possible – ‘Ah! Madame, enough! enough!’

The other went on lecturing her, predicting they would end in the workhouse. But it was Bovary’s fault. Luckily he had promised to destroy that power of attorney.

‘What?’

‘Ah! he swore he would,’ went on the good woman.

Emma opened the window, called Charles, and the poor fellow was obliged to confess the promise torn from him by his mother.

Emma disappeared, then came back quickly, and majestically handed her a thick piece of paper.

‘Thank you,’ said the old woman. And she threw the power of attorney into the fire.

Emma began to laugh, a strident, piercing, continuous laugh; she had an attack of the hysterics.

‘Oh, my God!’ cried Charles. ‘Ah! you really are wrong! You come here and make scenes with her!’

His mother, shrugging her shoulders, declared it was ‘all put on.’

But Charles, rebelling for the first time, took his wife’s part, so that Madame Bovary, senior, said she would leave. She went the very next day, and on the threshold, as he was trying to detain her, she replied – ‘No, no! You love her better than me, and you are right. It is natural. For the rest, so much the worse! You will see. Good day – for I am not likely to come soon again, as you say, to make scenes.’

Charles nevertheless was very crestfallen before Emma, who did not hide the resentment she still felt at his want of confidence, and it needed many prayers before she would consent to have another power of attorney. He even accompanied her to Monsieur Guillaumin to have a second one, just like the other, drawn up.

‘I understand,’ said the notary; ‘a man of science can’t be worried with the practical details of life.’

And Charles felt relieved by this comfortable reflection, which gave his weakness the flattering appearance of higher preoccupation.

And what an outburst the next Thursday at the hotel in their room with Léon! She laughed, cried, sang, sent for sherbets, wanted to smoke cigarettes, seemed to him wild and extravagant but adorable, superb.

He did not know what refashioning of her whole being drove her more and more to plunge into the pleasures of life. She was becoming irritable, greedy, voluptuous; and she walked about the streets with him carrying her head high, without fear, so she said, of compromising herself. At times, however, Emma shuddered at the sudden thought of meeting Rodolphe, for it seemed to her that, although they were separated forever, she was not completely free from her subjugation to him.

One night she did not return to Yonville at all. Charles lost his head with anxiety, and little Berthe would not go to bed without her mamma, and sobbed as if to break her heart. Justin had gone out searching the road at random. Monsieur Homais even had left his pharmacy.

At last, at eleven o’clock, able to bear it no longer, Charles harnessed his chaise, jumped in, whipped up his horse, and reached the Croix-Rouge about two o’clock in the morning. No one there! He thought that the clerk had perhaps seen her; but where did he live? Happily, Charles remembered his employer’s address, and rushed off there.

Day was breaking; he could distinguish the plaques over the door, and knocked. Someone, without opening the door, shouted out the required information, adding a few insults to those who disturb people in the middle of the night.

The house inhabited by the clerk had neither bell, knocker, nor porter. Charles knocked loudly at the shutters with his hands. A policeman happened to pass by. Then he was frightened, and went away.

‘I am mad,’ he said; ‘no doubt they kept her to dinner at Monsieur Lormeaux’s.’ But the Lormeaux no longer lived at Rouen.

‘She probably stayed to look after Madame Dubreuil. Why, Madame Dubreuil has been dead these ten months! Where can she be?’

An idea occurred to him. At a café he asked for a Directory, and hurriedly looked for the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived at No. 74 Rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers.

As he was turning into the street, Emma herself appeared at the other end of it. He threw himself upon her rather than embraced her, crying – ‘What kept you yesterday?’

‘I was not well.’

‘What was it? Where? How?’

She passed her hand over her forehead and answered, ‘At Mademoiselle Lempereur’s.’

‘I was sure of it! I was going there.’

‘Oh, it isn’t worth while,’ said Emma. ‘She went out just now; but in future don’t worry. I don’t feel free, you see, if I think that the least delay upsets you like this.’

This was a sort of permission that she gave herself, so as to get perfect freedom in her escapades. And she profited by it freely and fully. When seized with the desire to see Léon, she set out upon any pretext; and as he was not expecting her on that day, she went to fetch him at his office.

It was a great joy at first, but soon he no longer concealed the truth, which was, that his master complained very much about these interruptions.

‘Pshaw! come along,’ she said.

And he slipped out.

She wanted him to dress all in black, and grow a pointed beard, to look like the portraits of Louis XIII. She wanted to see his lodgings; thought them poor. He blushed at them, but she did not notice this, then advised him to buy some curtains like hers, and as he objected to the expense – ‘Ah, ha! you have an eye for your sixpences!’ she said laughing.

Each time Léon had to tell her everything that he had done since their last meeting. She asked him for some verses – some verses ‘for herself’, a ‘love-poem’ in her honour. But he never succeeded in getting a rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying a sonnet in a ‘Keepsake’. This was less from vanity than from the one desire of pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profundity and dissimulation?

6

During the journeys he made to see her, Léon 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 have a fling together.’