“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.
She was stoical the next day when Maitre Hareng, the
bailiff, with two assistants, presented himself 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 nick-nacks on the whatnot. They examined
her dresses, the linen, the dressing-room; and her
whole existence to its most intimate details, was,
like a corpse on whom a post-mortem is made, outspread
before the eyes of these three men.
