“Do you think, my little lady, that I would be your supplier and banker until the end of the world, for goodness’ sake? I do have to recover what I lay out, let’s be fair.”
She protested about the debt.
“Ah, too bad! The court has upheld it. Judgment has been given, and served on you. Besides, it’s not me, it’s Vinçart.”
“Could you not …?”
“Oh, nothing at all.”
“But … still … let us be reasonable.”
And she searched out every excuse; she had had no idea … it was a surprise …
“Whose fault is it?” said Lheureux, bowing ironically to her. “While I, for my part, am working away like the devil, you’re having yourself a fine time.”
“No lectures, now!”
“It never does any harm,” he replied.
She played the coward, she implored him; and she even pressed her pretty, slender white hand upon the dealer’s lap.
“Now leave me be! Anyone would think you wanted to seduce me!”
“You’re a wretch!” she cried.
“Oh, how you do go on,” he answered with a laugh.
“I shall make it known what you are. I will tell my husband …”
“Well, and I will show him something in turn, this husband of yours.”
And Lheureux took out from his strongbox the receipt for eighteen hundred francs, that she had given him at the time of the Vinçart discount.
“Do you think,” he added, “that he won’t make out your little theft, this poor dear man?”
She sank back, felled more surely than if she had been hit by a bludgeon. He walked from the window to the desk, all the while repeating:
“Ah, I will show him all right, I will show him all right …”
Then he drew nearer to her, and in a gentle voice:
“It’s not amusing, I know; no one’s died, everything considered, and, since it’s the only way remaining for you to repay my money …”
“But where shall I ever find it?” said Emma, twisting her arms about.
“Oh fiddlesticks, when you have friends as you do!”
And he looked at her in such a shrewd and terrible manner, that she shuddered to the very core.
“I promise you,” she said, “I shall sign …”
“I’ve had enough of your signatures!”
“I will sell some more …”
“Nonsense,” he said with a shrug, “you have nothing left.”
And he shouted through the spy hole that opened onto the shop.
“Annette! Don’t forget the three off-cuts for number 14.”
The servant appeared; Emma understood and asked “what in the way of money was needed to stop all the suits.”
“It’s too late.”
“But if I brought you several thousand francs, a quarter of the amount, a third?”
“No, a waste of time.”
He pushed her gently toward the stairs.
“I entreat you, Monsieur Lheureux, just a few more days!”
She sobbed.
“Well, well. Tears.”
“You’re driving me to despair!”
“What do I care for that!” he said, closing the door.
VII
She was stoical, the next day, when Maître Hareng, the bailiff, accompanied by two witnesses, called on her to conduct the inventory for the seizure.
They started with Bovary’s consulting room and did not record the phrenological skull, which was considered a tool of his profession; but in the kitchen they counted the plates, the cooking pots, the chairs, the candlesticks, and, in her bedroom, all the knickknacks on the shelves. They scrutinized her dresses, the linen, the dressing room; and her existence, down to her most intimate secret recesses, was, like a corpse at an autopsy, laid out at full length under the gaze of these three men.
Maître Hareng, buttoned up in a thin black coat, with a white cravat, and sporting extremely taut foot straps, kept repeating from time to time:
“May I, Madame? May I?”
Often, he would exclaim:
“Charming! Most pretty!”
Then he would start writing again, dipping his quill in the horn ink pot that he held in his left hand.
When they had finished with the rooms, they went up to the attic.
She kept a desk there in which Rodolphe’s letters were locked up. It had to be opened.
“Ah, a correspondence,” said Maître Hareng with a discreet smile. “But allow me, as I must make certain that the box does not contain anything else.”
And he tilted the papers, just slightly, as if to make napoleons drop out of them. Then she was seized with indignation, on seeing that plump hand, with its flabby red fingers like slugs, settle on those pages where her heart had throbbed.
They left at last! Félicité came back. She had been sent as a lookout to divert Bovary; and they briskly installed the bailiff’s man under the roof, where he swore to stay put.
Charles appeared anxious to her during the evening. Emma kept watching him with a look full of distress, fancying she could read accusations in the lines of his face. Then, when her eyes returned to the chimneypiece protected by Chinese fire screens, to the broad curtains, to the armchairs, in short to all those things that had sweetened her life’s bitterness, she was seized by remorse, or rather by an immense regret and which, far from quelling her passion, inflamed it. Charles placidly poked the fire, his feet on the firedogs.
A moment came when the bailiff’s man, no doubt growing bored in his hiding place, made a little noise.
“Is someone walking about up there?”
“No!” she replied. “It’s an attic window left open that the wind is rattling.”
She left for Rouen, the Sunday after, in order to call on all the bankers whose names she knew. They were in the country or traveling. She would not be disheartened; and from those she did manage to meet, she requested money, protesting that she needed some, that she would pay it back. Several laughed in her face; all refused.
At two o’clock, she ran to Léon’s house, knocked on his door. It was not opened. At last he appeared.
“What brings you?”
“Am I bothering you?”
“No … but …”
And he admitted that the landlord did not like anyone entertaining “women.”
“I need to talk to you about something,” she went on.
So he reached for his key. She stopped him.
“No, over there, at our place.”
And they went up to their room, at the Hôtel de Boulogne.
She drank a big glass of water on arriving. She was very pale. She said to him:
“Léon, you are going to do something for me.”
And, shaking him by both hands, squeezing them tightly, she added:
“Listen, I need eight thousand francs.”
“But you’re mad!”
“Not yet!”
And, straightaway, recounting to him the business of the seizure, she laid bare her financial distress; for Charles was ignorant of it all: her mother-in-law hated her; Père Rouault could do nothing; but Léon, for his part, could set about finding this absolutely essential sum …
“How do you want me to …?”
“What a coward you are!”
Then he said stupidly:
“You’re overstating the mischief. Perhaps with a thousand crowns your gentleman would calm down.”
Yet another reason to do something; it was impossible not to secure three thousand francs! Moreover, Léon could pledge himself in place of her.
“Go on. Try. You must. Run …! Oh, do your best! Do your best! I will love you so much!”
He went out, came back after an hour, and said with a solemn face:
“I have called on three people … in vain.”
Then they stayed seated opposite each other, either side of the fireplace, motionless, without speaking. Emma was shrugging her shoulders as she stamped her foot. He heard her murmuring:
<
br /> “If I were in your place, I would certainly find some.”
“Where then?”
“At your office!”
And she looked at him.
A diabolical boldness escaped from her blazing eyes, and the lids narrowed in a lewd and inciting way—so much so that the young man felt himself weakening under the mute will of this woman who was counseling him to commit a crime. Then he felt frightened, and, to avoid any elucidation, he struck his forehead and cried out:
“Morel must be returning tonight! He won’t refuse me, I hope.” (This was one of his friends, the son of an extremely rich merchant.) “And I shall bring it along tomorrow,” he added.
Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with as much joy as he had imagined. Did she suspect the lie? Blushing, he went on:
“However, if you don’t see me at three o’clock, don’t wait for me, my beloved. I must be off. Farewell!”
He took her hand, but it felt completely inert. Emma no longer had the strength to feel anything.
Four o’clock rang out; and she got up to return to Yonville, obeying the impulse of habit like an automaton.
It was fine weather; one of those clear, sharp March days, when the sun gleams in an all-white sky. The Rouennais in their Sunday best were strolling with a happy air. She reached the cathedral square. They were coming out of vespers; the crowd flowed out by the three portals, like a river by the three arches of a bridge, and, in the middle, more motionless than a rock, stood the beadle.
Then she recalled that day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had entered in under this great nave which extended before her less abyssal than her love; and she continued walking, weeping under her veil, dizzy, tottering, near-swooning.
“Look out!” cried a voice coming out from a carriage gateway as it opened.
She stopped to let a black horse go by, that was pawing the ground between the shafts of a tilbury driven by a gentleman in sable fur. Now who was it? She knew him … The carriage shot forth and disappeared.
But it was him, the Vicomte! She turned around; the street was deserted. And she was so dejected, so sad, that she leaned against a wall so as not to fall.
Then she thought she had been mistaken. Besides, she had no idea. Everything was deserting her, within and without. She felt cast away, wandering at random in undefinable depths; and it was almost with joy that she glimpsed, on arriving at the Croix Rouge, that good Homais surveying the loading onto the Hirondelle of a large box full of pharmaceutical supplies; he was holding in his hand, wrapped in a silk handkerchief, six cheminots for his wife.
Madame Homais loved these heavy, turban-shaped rolls, that are eaten at Lent with salted butter: last specimen of the Gothic diet, perhaps going back to the Crusades, and with which the robust Normans filled themselves up in former times, thinking they could see upon the table, by the glimmer of yellow torches, between the jugs of aromatic wine and the gigantic hunks of pork, the heads of Saracens ready to be devoured. The apothecary’s wife crunched them as they had done, heroically, despite her terrible teeth; and, every time Monsieur Homais made the trip to town, he never failed to bring some back for her, always buying them at the main producer in rue Massacre.
“Charmed to see you!” he said, offering Emma his hand to help her up into the Hirondelle.
Then he hung the cheminots on the netting’s straps, and remained bareheaded and with arms folded, in a thoughtful and Napoleonic posture.
But, when the blind man appeared as usual at the bottom of the hill, he shouted:
“I do not understand why the authorities go on tolerating such disreputable trades! We should shut these unfortunates up, get them to do some sort of forced labor. Progress, upon my word, proceeds at a snail’s pace! We’re floundering about in complete barbarism!”
The blind man held out his hat, which tossed about alongside the door, like an unnailed portion of the upholstery.
“There we are,” said the pharmacist, “a scrofulous affection!”
And, although he knew this poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first time, murmured the words cornea, opaque cornea, sclerotic, facies, then asked him in a fatherly tone:
“Have you had this dreadful infirmity for a long time, my friend? Instead of making yourself tipsy in the tavern, you’d do better following a diet.”
He urged him to buy good wine, good beer, good roast meat. The blind man went on with his song; he seemed, anyway, almost imbecilic. At last, Monsieur Homais opened his purse.
“Look, here’s a sou, give me back two liards: and don’t forget my recommendations, you will find them beneficial.”
Hivert took the liberty of expressing aloud some doubt as to their virtue. But the apothecary assured him that he would cure the fellow himself, with an anti-inflammatory salve of his own composition, and he gave his address:
“Monsieur Homais, near the market house, well enough known.”
“And now, for our trouble,” said Hivert, “you’re going to show us your act.”
The blind man sank down onto his knees and, with head thrown back, rolling his greenish eyes and sticking out his tongue, he rubbed his belly with both hands, while he let out a sort of muffled howl, like a famished hound. Emma, seized with disgust, flung him a five-franc piece over her shoulder. It was her entire fortune. It seemed to her glorious to cast it away thus.
The vehicle had set off again when, suddenly, Monsieur Homais leaned out beyond the carriage blind and shouted:
“Nothing farinaceous nor dairy! Wear wool next to the skin and expose the diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries!”
The sight of familiar things passing before her eyes averted Emma bit by bit from her present grief. An unbearable weariness overwhelmed her, and she arrived home stupefied, disheartened, all but asleep.
“Come what may!” she said to herself.
And then, who knows? Why might some extraordinary event not arise, at any moment? Lheureux could even die.
At nine o’clock in the morning, she was woken by the sound of voices in the square. There was a mob around the market house, reading a large bill pasted on one of the pillars, and she saw Justin who stepped up onto a spur stone and tore down the bill. But, at that moment, the village guard collared him. Monsieur Homais emerged from the pharmacy, and Mère Lefrançois seemed to be holding forth in the middle of the crowd.
“Madame! Madame!” cried out Félicité as she came in, “it’s abominable!”
And the poor girl, upset, handed her a yellow piece of paper that she had just torn from the door. Emma read in a flash that all her personal chattels were for sale.
Then they gazed at each other in silence. Servant and mistress, they had no secrets between them. At last Félicité sighed:
“If I were you, Madame, I would call on Monsieur Guillaumin.”
“You think so …?”
And this question meant:
“Knowing the house through the manservant as you do, does the master speak of me now and again?”
“Yes, go along, you’d do well to.”
She changed, put on her black dress with her hooded gown beaded with jet; and, so that no one would see her (there were always a lot of people in the square), she skirted the village, by the river path.
She arrived completely out of breath in front of the notary’s railing; the sky was overcast and there was a touch of snow.
At the sound of the bell, Théodore, in a red waistcoat, appeared on the steps; he came to let her in almost familiarly, as though for an acquaintance, and showed her into the dining room.
A large porcelain stove hummed beneath a cactus filling the niche, and, in frames of black wood, against the oak-colored wallpaper, there was Steuben’s Esmeralda, with Potiphar by Schopin. The laid table, two silver chafing dishes, the crystal doorknobs, the parquet and the furniture, all shone with a meticulous, English cleanliness; the panes were embellished, at each corner, with colored glass.
“Here’s the sort of dining room,
” thought Emma, “that I ought to have.”
The notary came in, left arm clasping his palm-patterned dressing gown against his body, while the other hand raised and briskly lowered his brown felt cap, affectedly set on the right side, where the ends of three blond locks dangled, drawn from the back of the head and around his bald skull.
After he had proffered a seat, he sat down to dine, all the while profusely apologizing for the incivility.
“Monsieur,” she said, “I beg you …”
“For what, Madame? I’m listening.”
She began to reveal her situation to him.
Maître Guillaumin knew all about it, being secretly connected with the cloth merchant, with whom he always found capital for mortgage loans that he was asked to contract.
Therefore, he knew (and better than she did) the long story of these bills, trifling at first, bearing various names as endorsers, payable at long intervals and continually renewed, up to the day when, gathering together all the protests for nonpayment, the merchant had charged his friend Vinçart to instigate the necessary proceedings in his own name, not wanting to play the tiger amongst his fellow citizens.
She mingled her account with recriminations against Lheureux, recriminations to which the notary responded from time to time with insignificant comments. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he lowered his chin into his sky-blue cravat, pricked by two diamond pins linked by a little gold chain; and he smiled a peculiar smile, insipidly sweet and ambiguous. But, perceiving that she had wet feet:
“Come nearer to the stove, now … higher … against the porcelain.”
She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary answered in a gallant tone:
“Nothing is spoiled by beauty.”
So she tried to touch his feelings, and, growing emotional herself, she recounted to him the straitness of her domestic economy, her pains, her needs. He understood this: a fashionable lady! And, without breaking off from his meal, he turned fully toward her, so that his knee lightly grazed her little boot, whose sole curved back as it steamed against the stove.
But, when she asked him for a thousand crowns, he pursed his lips, then declared himself most grieved not to have had the management of her fortune in times past, for there were a hundred extremely convenient ways, even for a married woman, to make the most of her money. It would have been possible, either in the turf pit of Grumesnil or the Havre plots, to venture some excellent speculations with a near certainty of success; and he let her be consumed with rage at the idea of the fantastic sums she would most probably have made.
Madame Bovary (Modern Library) Page 33
