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

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.

VII

She was stoical the next day when Maître 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 knicknacks 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 postmortem is made, outspread before the eyes of these three men.

Maître Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a white choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to time⁠—“Allow me, madame. You allow me?” Often he uttered exclamations. “Charming! very pretty.” Then he began writing again, dipping his pen into the horn inkstand in his left hand.

When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She kept a desk there in which Rodolphe’s letters were locked. It had to be opened.

“Ah! a correspondence,” said Maître Hareng, with a discreet smile. “But allow me, for I must make sure the box contains nothing else.” And he tipped up the papers lightly, as if to shake out napoleons. Then she grew angered to see this coarse hand, with fingers red and pulpy like slugs, touching these pages against which her heart had beaten.

They went at last. Félicité came back. Emma had sent her out to watch for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly installed the man in possession under the roof, where he swore he would remain.

During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched him with a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in every line of his face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the chimneypiece ornamented with Chinese screens, over the large curtains, the armchairs, all those things, in a word, that had, softened the bitterness of her life, remorse seized her or rather an immense regret, that, far from crushing, irritated her passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on the firedogs.

Once the man, no doubt bored in his hiding-place, made a slight noise.

“Is anyone walking upstairs?” said Charles.

“No,” she replied; “it is a window that has been left open, and is rattling in the wind.”

The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the brokers whose names she knew. They were at their country-places or on journeys. She was not discouraged; and those whom she did manage to see she asked for money, declaring she must have some, and that she would pay it back. Some laughed in her face; all refused.

At two o’clock she hurried to Léon, and knocked at the door. No one answered. At length he appeared.

“What brings you here?”

“Do I disturb you?”

“No; but⁠—” And he admitted that his landlord didn’t like his having “women” there.

“I must speak to you,” she went on.

Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.

“No, no! Down there, in our home!”

And they went to their room at the Hôtel de Boulogne.

On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She said to him⁠—

“Léon, you will do me a service?”

And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added⁠—

“Listen, I want eight thousand francs.”

“But you are mad!”

“Not yet.”

And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she explained her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it; her mother-in-law detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but he, Léon, he would set about finding this indispensable sum.

“How on earth can I?”

“What a coward you are!” she cried.

Then he said stupidly, “You are exaggerating the difficulty. Perhaps, with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be stopped.”

All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible that they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Léon, could be security instead of her.

“Go, try, try! I will love you so!”

He went out, and came back at the end of an hour, saying, with solemn face⁠—

“I have been to three people with no success.”

Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney corners, motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as she stamped her feet. He heard her murmuring⁠—

“If I were in your place I should soon get some.”

“But where?”

“At your office.” And she looked at him.

An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their lids drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look, so that the young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute will of this woman who was urging him to a crime. Then he was afraid, and to avoid any explanation he smote his forehead, crying⁠—

“Morel is to come back tonight; he will not refuse me, I hope” (this was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant); “and I will bring it you tomorrow,” he added.

Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had expected. Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing⁠—

“However, if you don’t see me by three o’clock do not wait for me, my darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!”

He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no strength left for any sentiment.

Four o’clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville, mechanically obeying the force of old habits.

The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and sharp, when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen folk, in Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She reached the Place du Parvis. People were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed out through the three