‘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 strongbox the receipt for eighteen hundred francs that she had given him when Vinçart had discounted the bills.
‘Do you think,’ he added, ‘that he won’t understand your little theft, the poor dear man?’
She collapsed, more overcome than if felled by the blow of a poleaxe. 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.
7
She was stoical the next day when Maître Hareng, the bailiff, presented himself, with two assistants, at her house to draw up the inventory for the distraint.
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 knick-knacks on the what-not. They examined her dresses, the linen, the dressing-room; and her whole existence, to its most intimate details, was outspread before the eyes of these three men like a corpse in an autopsy.
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. 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 allow me, for I must make sure the box contains nothing else.’ And he tipped up the papers lightly, as if to shake out napoleons. Then she felt anger at the sight of this coarse hand, with its red fingers, pulpy like slugs, touching those pages against which her heart had beaten.
They went at last. Félicité came back. Emma had sent her out to watch for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly installed the man in possession under the roof, where he swore he would remain.
During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched him with a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in every line of his face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the chimney-piece ornamented with Chinese screens, over the large curtains, the armchairs, all those things, in a word, that had softened the bitterness of her life, remorse seized her or rather an immense regret, that, far from crushing, irritated her passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on the firedogs.
Once the man, no doubt bored in his hiding-place, made a slight noise.
‘Is anyone walking upstairs?’ said Charles.
‘No,’ she replied; ‘it is a window left open, and 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?’
‘No; but – ’ And he admitted that his landlord didn’t like his having ‘women’ there.
‘I must speak to you,’ she went on.
