Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert [book club recommendations txt] 📗

looked at the banknotes, and dreaming of the unlimited number of rendezvous represented by those two thousand francs, she stammered⁠—

“What! what!”

“Oh!” he went on, laughing good-naturedly, “one puts anything one likes on receipts. Don’t you think I know what household affairs are?” And he looked at her fixedly, while in his hand he held two long papers that he slid between his nails. At last, opening his pocketbook, he spread out on the table four bills to order, each for a thousand francs.

“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?”

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, Vinçart, 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 Vinçart (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 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.

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 armchairs? In my time there was a single armchair 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.

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.

“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 preoccupation.

And what an outburst the next Thursday at the hotel in their room with Léon! 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,