‘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 Vinçart.
‘I dare say! Quieting Vinçart! You don’t know him; he’s fiercer than an Arab!’
Still, Monsieur Lheureux must step in.
‘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 3rd, two hundred francs; June 17th, a hundred and fifty; March 23rd, 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 instalments, 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 dear Monsieur Lheureux.’ But he always fell back upon ‘that rascal Vinçart.’ Besides, he hadn’t a brass farthing; no one was paying him nowadays; they were eating the 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 honeyed 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 Vinçart 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-half-penny 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 armchairs. 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 bargained rapaciously, her peasant blood standing her in good stead. Then on her journey to town she picked up knick-knacks second-hand, which failing 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 went endlessly on.
True, sometimes she tried to reckon things up, she tried to make a calculation, but she discovered them so exorbitant that she was incredulous. Then she started again, soon got confused, gave it all up, and put it out of her mind.
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? He 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 your nurse,’ said Charles. ‘You know, dear, 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 orgiastic pictures and outrageous situations. Often, seized with fear, she would cry 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 burdensome masses of hair, and, gazing upon the stars, longed for some princely love. She thought of him, of Léon. 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 nearly always happened 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.
