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‘Sign these,’ he said, ‘and keep it all!’

She cried out, scandalised.

‘But if I give you the surplus,’ replied Monsieur

Lheureux impudently, ‘is that not helping you?’

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And taking a pen he wrote at the bottom of the

account, ‘Received of Madame Bovary four thousand

francs.’

‘Now who can trouble you, since in six months you’ll

draw the arrears for 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, Vincart, 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 Vincart (which 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

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on a Thursday, and Charles, quite 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 him 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 wit’s 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.

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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 arm-chairs? In my time there was a single

arm-chair 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 for

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.

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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 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.

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‘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 pre-occupation.

And what an outburst the next Thursday at the hotel in

their room with Leon! 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 recreation 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 enough to break

her heart. Justin had gone out searching the road at

random. Monsieur Homais even had left his pharmacy.

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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, and he could distinguish the

escutcheons 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’.’ 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 cafe he asked for a

Directory, and hurriedly looked for the name of

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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 for the future don’t worry. I do not feel free,

you see, if I know 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, fully. When she was seized with the desire to

see Leon, 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 delight 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.

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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! ah! you care for your money,’ she said laughing.

Each time Leon 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 honour

of her. 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 profanity and

dissimulation?

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CHAPTER SIX

During the journeys he made to see her, Leon 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 go the pace together.’

The druggist would formerly have taken good care not

to use such an expression, but he was cultivating a gay

Parisian style, which he thought in the best taste; and, like

his neighbour, Madame Bovary, he questioned the clerk

curiously about the customs of the capital; he even talked

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slang to dazzle the bourgeois, saying bender, crummy,

dandy, macaroni, the cheese, cut my stick and ‘I’ll hook

it,’ for ‘I am going.’

So one Thursday Emma was surprised to meet

Monsieur Homais in the kitchen of the ‘Lion d’Or,’

wearing a traveller’s costume, that is to say, wrapped in an

old cloak which no one knew he had, while he carried a

valise in one hand and the foot-warmer of his

establishment in the other. He had confided his intentions

to no one, for fear of causing the public anxiety by his

absence.

The idea of seeing again the place where his youth had

been spent no doubt excited him, for during the whole

journey he never ceased talking, and as soon as he had

arrived, he jumped quickly out of the diligence to go in

search of Leon. In vain the clerk tried to get rid of him.

Monsieur Homais dragged him off to the large Cafe de la

Normandie, which he entered majestically, not raising his

hat, thinking it very provincial to uncover in any public

place.

Emma waited for Leon three quarters of an hour. At

last she ran to his office; and, lost in all sorts of conjectures,

accusing him of indifference, and reproaching herself for

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her weakness, she spent the afternoon, her face pressed

against the window-panes.

At two o’clock they were still at a table opposite each

other. The large room was emptying; the stove-pipe, in

the shape of a palm-tree, spread its gilt leaves over the

white ceiling, and near them, outside the window, in the

bright sunshine, a little fountain gurgled in a white basin,

where; in the midst of watercress and asparagus, three

torpid lobsters stretched across to some quails that lay

heaped up in a pile on their sides.

Homais was enjoying himself. Although he was even

more intoxicated with the luxury than the rich fare, the

Pommard wine all the same rather excited his faculties;

and when the omelette au rhum* appeared, he began

propounding immoral theories about women. What

seduced him above all else was chic. He admired an

elegant toilette in a well-furnished apartment, and as to

bodily qualities, he didn’t dislike a young girl.

* In rum.

Leon watched the clock in despair. The druggist went

on drinking, eating, and talking.

‘You must be very lonely,’ he said suddenly, ‘here at

Rouen. To be sure your lady-love doesn’t live far away.’

And the other blushed—

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‘Come now, be frank. Can you deny that at Yonville—

‘

The young man stammered something.

‘At Madame Bovary’s, you’re not making love to—‘

‘To whom?’

‘The servant!’

He was not joking; but vanity getting the better of all

prudence, Leon, in spite of himself protested. Besides, he

only liked dark women.

‘I approve of that,’ said the chemist; ‘they have more