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

Lheureux sat down in a large cane armchair, saying: “What news?”

“See!”

And she showed him the paper.

“Well how can I help it?”

Then she grew angry, reminding him of the promise he had given not to pay away her bills. He acknowledged it.

“But I was pressed myself; the knife was at my own throat.”

“And what will happen now?” she went on.

“Oh, it’s very simple; a judgment and then a distraint⁠—that’s about it!”

Emma kept down a desire to strike him, and asked gently if there was no way of quieting Monsieur Vinçart.

“I dare say! Quiet Vinçart! You don’t know him; he’s more ferocious than an Arab!”

Still Monsieur Lheureux must interfere.

“Well, listen. It seems to me so far I’ve been very good to you.” And opening one of his ledgers, “See,” he said. Then running up the page with his finger, “Let’s see! let’s see! August 3rd, two hundred francs; June 17th, a hundred and fifty; March 23nd, forty-six. In April⁠—”

He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.

“Not to speak of the bills signed by Monsieur Bovary, one for seven hundred francs, and another for three hundred. As to your little installments, with the interest, why, there’s no end to ’em; one gets quite muddled over ’em. I’ll have nothing more to do with it.”

She wept; she even called him “her good Monsieur Lheureux.” But he always fell back upon “that rascal Vinçart.” Besides, he hadn’t a brass farthing; no one was paying him nowadays; they were eating his coat off his back; a poor shopkeeper like him couldn’t advance money.

Emma was silent, and Monsieur Lheureux, who was biting the feathers of a quill, no doubt became uneasy at her silence, for he went on⁠—

“Unless one of these days I have something coming in, I might⁠—”

“Besides,” said she, “as soon as the balance of Barneville⁠—”

“What!”

And on hearing that Langlois had not yet paid he seemed much surprised. Then in a honied voice⁠—

“And we agree, you say?”

“Oh! to anything you like.”

On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few figures, and declaring it would be very difficult for him, that the affair was shady, and that he was being bled, he wrote out four bills for two hundred and fifty francs each, to fall due month by month.

“Provided that Vinçart will listen to me! However, it’s settled. I don’t play the fool; I’m straight enough.”

Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not one of which, however, was in his opinion worthy of madame.

“When I think that there’s a dress at threepence-halfpenny a yard, and warranted fast colours! And yet they actually swallow it! Of course you understand one doesn’t tell them what it really is!” He hoped by this confession of dishonesty to others to quite convince her of his probity to her.

Then he called her back to show her three yards of guipure that he had lately picked up “at a sale.”

“Isn’t it lovely?” said Lheureux. “It is very much used now for the backs of armchairs. It’s quite the rage.”

And, more ready than a juggler, he wrapped up the guipure in some blue paper and put it in Emma’s hands.

“But at least let me know⁠—”

“Yes, another time,” he replied, turning on his heel.

That same evening she urged Bovary to write to his mother, to ask her to send as quickly as possible the whole of the balance due from the father’s estate. The mother-in-law replied that she had nothing more, the winding up was over, and there was due to them besides Barneville an income of six hundred francs, that she would pay them punctually.

Then Madame Bovary sent in accounts to two or three patients, and she made large use of this method, which was very successful. She was always careful to add a postscript: “Do not mention this to my husband; you know how proud he is. Excuse me. Yours obediently.” There were some complaints; she intercepted them.

To get money she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old odds and ends, and she bargained rapaciously, her peasant blood standing her in good stead. Then on her journey to town she picked up knicknacks secondhand, that, in default of anyone else, Monsieur Lheureux would certainly take off her hands. She bought ostrich feathers, Chinese porcelain, and trunks; she borrowed from Félicité, from Madame Lefrançois, from the landlady at the Croix-Rouge, from everybody, no matter where.

With the money she at last received from Barneville she paid two bills; the other fifteen hundred francs fell due. She renewed the bills, and thus it was continually.

Sometimes, it is true, she tried to make a calculation, but she discovered things so exorbitant that she could not believe them possible. Then she recommenced, soon got confused, gave it all up, and thought no more about it.

The house was very dreary now. Tradesmen were seen leaving it with angry faces. Handkerchiefs were lying about on the stoves, and little Berthe, to the great scandal of Madame Homais, wore stockings with holes in them. If Charles timidly ventured a remark, she answered roughly that it wasn’t her fault.

What was the meaning of all these fits of temper? He explained everything through her old nervous illness, and reproaching himself with having taken her infirmities for faults, accused himself of egotism, and longed to go and take her in his arms.

“Ah, no!” he said to himself; “I should worry her.”

And he did not stir.

After dinner he walked about alone in the garden; he took little Berthe on his knees, and unfolding his medical journal, tried to teach her to read. But the child, who never had any lessons, soon looked up with large, sad eyes and began to cry. Then he comforted her; went to fetch water in her can to make rivers on the sand path, or broke off branches from the privet hedges to plant trees in the beds. This did not spoil the garden much, all choked now with long weeds. They owed Lestiboudois for so