Part 25

“In twenty-four hours at the latest.” — What for? “To pay the total sum of eight thousand francs.” And lower down there was even: “She shall be compelled thereto by all legal means, and notably by the executive seizure of her furniture and effects.”

What was to be done?... It was within twenty-four hours; tomorrow! Lheureux, she thought, only wanted to frighten her again; for she at once guessed all his maneuvers, the aim of his complaisance. What reassured her was the very exaggeration of the sum.

However, by dint of buying, of not paying, of borrowing, of drawing bills, then of renewing those bills, which swelled at each new deadline, she had ended by preparing for Monsieur Lheureux a capital which he awaited impatiently for his speculations.

She presented herself at his shop with an easy air.

— You know what has happened to me? It is a joke, no doubt!

— No.

— How so?

He turned away slowly, and said to her, crossing his arms:

— Did you think, my little lady, that I was going to be your supplier and banker unto the end of time, for the love of God? I must get my outlays back, let us be just!

She cried out against the debt.

— Ah! too bad! the court has acknowledged it; there is a judgment; it has been served on you! Besides, it is not I, it is Vinçart.

— Couldn’t you...

— Oh! nothing at all.

— But... however... let us reason.

And she beat about the bush; she had known nothing... it was a surprise...

— Whose fault is it? said Lheureux, bowing to her ironically. While I, now, am slaving like a negro, you are having a fine time.

— Ah! no moralizing!

— It never hurts, he replied.

She was cowardly, she entreated him; and even she laid her pretty white and slender hand upon the merchant’s knees.

— Leave off! One would say you wanted to seduce me!

— You are a wretch! she cried.

— Oh! oh! the way you go on! he resumed, laughing.

— I shall let people know who you are. I shall tell my husband...

— Well, I, I shall show your husband something!

And Lheureux drew from his safe the receipt for eighteen hundred francs, which she had given him at the time of the Vinçart discount.

— Do you think, he added, that he will not understand your little theft, that poor dear man?

She collapsed, more stunned than if struck by a club. He was walking from the window to the desk, repeating:

— Ah! I shall show him well... I shall show him well...

Then he came near her, and, in a soft voice:

— It is not amusing, I know; no one, after all, has died of it, and since it is the only means left you of returning my money...

— But where shall I find any? said Emma, wringing her arms.

— Ah bah! when one has friends like you!

And he looked at her with a gaze so penetrating and so terrible that she shuddered to her very bowels.

— I promise you, said she, I will sign...

— I have had enough of your signatures!

— I will sell again...

— Come now! he said, shrugging his shoulders, you have nothing left.

And he called through the judas opening onto the shop:

— Annette! don’t forget the three coupons for No. 14.

The servant appeared; Emma understood, and asked “what money it would take to stop all proceedings.”

— It is too late!

— But, if I brought you several thousand francs, a quarter of the sum, a third, almost all?

— Eh! no, it is useless!

He was gently pushing her toward the stairs.

— I beseech you, Monsieur Lheureux, a few days more!

She was sobbing.

— There, there! tears!

— You are driving me to despair!

— I don’t care a fig! said he, closing the door.

VII

She was stoical, the next day, when Master Hareng, the bailiff, with two witnesses, presented himself at her house to draw up the report of the seizure.

They began with Bovary’s study and did not list the phrenological head, which was considered an instrument of his profession; but in the kitchen they counted the dishes, the pots, the chairs, the candlesticks, and, in her bedroom, all the knickknacks on the shelf. They examined her dresses, the linen, the toilet set; and her existence, even in its most intimate recesses, was, like a corpse being autopsied, laid out at full length before the eyes of those three men.

Master Hareng, buttoned into a thin black coat, in a white cravat, and wearing very tight gaiters, repeated from time to time:

— You will permit, madame? you will permit?

Often he uttered exclamations:

— Charming!... very pretty!

Then he went back to writing, dipping his pen into the horn inkwell which he held in his left hand.

When they had finished with the rooms, they went up to the attic.

She kept there a writing desk where Rodolphe’s letters were locked away. It had to be opened.

— Ah! a correspondence! said Master Hareng with a discreet smile. But permit me! for I must make sure the box contains nothing else.

And he tilted the papers slightly, as if to make napoleons fall out of them. Then indignation seized her, at seeing that fat hand, with fingers red and flabby like slugs, rest upon those pages where her heart had beaten.

They left at last! Félicité came back in. She had sent her out as a lookout to divert Bovary; and they quickly installed under the roofs the keeper of the seizure, who swore to stay there.

Charles, during the evening, seemed worried to her. Emma watched him with a glance full of anguish, thinking she perceived in the wrinkles of his face accusations. Then, when her eyes fell again upon the chimney piece adorned with Chinese screens, upon the wide curtains, upon the armchairs, upon all those things finally which had softened the bitterness of her life, a remorse took hold of her, or rather an immense regret which irritated her passion, far from annihilating it. Charles was poking the fire with placid composure, both feet on the firedogs.

There was a moment when the keeper, no doubt bored in his hiding place, made a little noise.

— Someone is walking up there? said Charles.

— No! she replied, it is a skylight left open that the wind is moving.

She left for Rouen, the next day, Sunday, in order to go to all the bankers whose names she knew. They were in the country or traveling. She did not lose heart; and those she could meet, she asked them for money, protesting she must have it, that she would return it. Some laughed in her face; all refused her.

At two o’clock, she ran to Léon’s, knocked against his door. It was not opened. At last he appeared.

— What brings you here?

— Am I disturbing you?

— No... but...

And he confessed that the landlord did not like “women” being received.

— I have to speak with you, she resumed.

Then he reached for his key. She stopped him.

— Oh! no, over there, at our place.

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

She drank a large glass of water on arriving. She was very pale. She said to him:

— Léon, you are going to do me a service.

And, shaking him by both hands, which she squeezed tightly, she added:

— Listen, I need eight thousand francs!

— But you are mad!

— Not yet!

And immediately, telling the story of the seizure, she set out her distress; for Charles knew nothing, her mother-in-law detested her, old Rouault could do nothing; but he, Léon, he was going to bestir himself to find this indispensable sum...

— How do you expect...

— What a coward you make! she cried.

Then he said stupidly:

— You exaggerate the evil. Perhaps with a thousand crowns your old man would calm down.

All the more reason to attempt some step; it was impossible that three thousand francs should not be found. Besides, Léon could endorse in her place.

— Go! try! it must be done! run!... Oh! try! try! I shall love you dearly!

He went out, came back at the end of an hour, and said with a solemn face:

— I have been to three people... uselessly!

Then they remained seated facing each other, at the two corners of the fireplace, motionless, without speaking. Emma shrugged her shoulders, tapping her foot. He heard her murmur:

— If I were in your place, I would find some!

— Where?

— At your office!

And she looked at him.

A hellish boldness escaped from her inflamed pupils, and her eyelids drew near in a lascivious and encouraging way; — so well that the young man felt himself weaken under the mute will of this woman who counseled him a crime. Then he grew afraid, and to avoid any explanation, he struck his forehead crying:

— Morel is to return tonight! he will not refuse me, I hope (he was a friend of his, the son of a very rich merchant), and I shall bring you that tomorrow, he added.

Emma did not seem to receive this hope with as much joy as he had imagined. Did she suspect the lie? He resumed, blushing:

— Yet, if you did not see me by three o’clock, wait for me no longer, my dear. I must be off, excuse me. Farewell.

He pressed her hand, but he felt it quite inert. Emma no longer had the strength for any feeling.

Four o’clock struck; and she rose to return to Yonville, obeying like an automaton the impulse of habits.

The weather was fine; it was one of those clear and biting March days when the sun shines in an all-white sky. Some Rouennais in their Sunday best walked about with happy faces. She arrived at the Parvis square. People were coming out of vespers; the crowd flowed out through the three portals, like a river through the three arches of a bridge, and, in the middle, more immobile than a rock, stood the verger.

Then she remembered that day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had entered under that great nave which spread before her less deep than her love; and she continued on her way, weeping beneath her veil, dizzy, staggering, near to fainting.

— Look out! cried a voice coming from a carriage gate that was opening.

She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing in the shafts of a tilbury driven by a gentleman in sable fur. Who could it be? She knew him... The carriage darted off and disappeared.

But it was he, the Vicomte! She turned away: the street was deserted. And she was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she leaned against a wall so as not to fall.

Then she thought she had been mistaken. At any rate, she knew nothing of it. Everything, within her and without, was abandoning her. She felt lost, rolling at random into indefinable abysses; and it was almost with joy that she perceived, on arriving at the Red Cross, that good Homais who was watching a large box full of pharmaceutical supplies being loaded onto the Swallow. He held in his hand, in a handkerchief, six cheminots for his wife.

Madame Homais loved very much those heavy little loaves, in the shape of a turban, which one eats during Lent with salted butter: a last specimen of Gothic foods, which perhaps goes back to the century of the crusades, and with which the robust Normans formerly stuffed themselves, believing they saw upon the table, in the light of yellow torches, between the jugs of hippocras and the gigantic charcuterie, Saracen heads to devour. The apothecary’s wife crunched them like them, heroically, despite her detestable teeth; therefore, every time Monsieur Homais made a trip to the city, he never failed to bring her some, which he always took from the great maker, on the rue Massacre.

— Glad to see you! said he, offering his hand to Emma to help her up into the Swallow.

Then he hung the cheminots from the straps of the net, and remained bareheaded and arms crossed, in a pensive and Napoleonic attitude.

But, when the Blind man, as usual, appeared at the foot of the hill, he cried:

— I do not understand that the authorities still tolerate such culpable trades! They should lock up those unfortunates, and force them to some labor! Progress, upon my word, walks at a tortoise’s pace! we are floundering in full barbarism!

The Blind man held out his hat, which flapped at the edge of the door, like a pocket of the upholstery come unnailed.

— There, said the pharmacist, a scrofulous affection!

And, though he knew this poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first time, murmured the words cornea, opaque cornea, sclera, facies, then asked him in a paternal tone:

— Have you had this frightful infirmity long, my friend? Instead of getting drunk at the cabaret, you would do better to follow a regimen.

He urged him to take good wine, good beer, good roasts. The Blind man continued his song; he seemed, moreover, almost an idiot. Finally, Monsieur Homais opened his purse.

— Here, there is a sou, give me two liards back; and don’t forget my recommendations, you will be the better for them.

Hivert permitted himself aloud some doubt as to their efficacy. But the apothecary certified that he would cure him himself, with an antiphlogistic ointment of his own composition, and he gave his address:

— Monsieur Homais, near the markets, sufficiently well known.

— Well, for the trouble, said Hivert, you are going to show us the comedy.

The Blind man collapsed upon his hams, and, head thrown back, rolling his greenish eyes and sticking out his tongue, he rubbed his stomach with both hands, while he uttered a kind of hollow howl, like a hungry dog. Emma, seized with disgust, threw him over her shoulder a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune. It seemed beautiful to her to throw it thus.

The carriage had set off again, when suddenly Monsieur Homais leaned out of the little window and cried:

— No farinaceous food or dairy! Wear wool against the skin and expose the afflicted parts to the smoke of juniper berries!

The sight of familiar objects which filed past before her eyes by degrees diverted Emma from her present sorrow. An intolerable fatigue overwhelmed her, and she arrived home stupefied, discouraged, almost asleep.

— Come what may! she said to herself.

And then, who knows? why, from one moment to the next, might there not arise some extraordinary event? Lheureux himself might die.

She was, at nine o’clock in the morning, awakened by a noise of voices on the square. There was a crowd around the markets to read a large poster glued to one of the posts, and she saw Justin climb onto a boundary stone and tear the poster. But, at that moment, the rural guard laid his hand on his collar. Monsieur Homais came out of the pharmacy, and Mother Lefrançois, in the middle of the crowd, seemed to be holding forth.

— Madame! madame! cried Félicité, coming in, it is an abomination!

And the poor girl, moved, held out to her a yellow paper which she had just torn from the door. Emma read at a glance that all her furniture was to be sold.

Then they looked at each other silently. They had, the servant and the mistress, no secret from each other. Finally Félicité sighed:

— If I were you, madame, I would go to Monsieur Guillaumin’s.

— You think?

And this question meant:

— You who know the house through the servant, has the master sometimes spoken of me?

— Yes, go there, you will do well.

She dressed, put on her black gown with her jet-bead bonnet; and, so that she might not be seen (there was always a great deal of people on the square), she took, outside the village, the path along the water’s edge.

She arrived quite out of breath before the notary’s gate; the sky was gloomy and a little snow was falling.

At the sound of the bell, Théodore, in a red waistcoat, appeared on the steps; he came to open for her almost familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and ushered her into the dining room.

A large porcelain stove hummed under a cactus which filled the niche, and, in black wooden frames, against the oak-paper hangings, there were the Esméralda of Steuben, with the Potiphar’s Wife of Schopin. The table was laid, two silver warming dishes, the door knobs in crystal, the parquet and the furniture, all shone with a meticulous English cleanliness; the windowpanes were decorated, at each corner, with colored glass.

— Here is a dining room, thought Emma, such as I should need one.

The notary came in, pressing his left arm against his body in his palm-pattern dressing gown, while he quickly took off and put back with the other hand his brown velvet cap, pretentiously set on the right side, where the ends of three blond locks, taken from the occiput, curved around his bald skull.

After he had offered a seat, he sat down to his breakfast, all the while excusing himself much for the impoliteness.

— Monsieur, said she, I would ask you...

— For what, madame? I am listening.

She began to set out her situation to him.

Master Guillaumin knew it, being secretly linked with the draper, at whose shop he always found capital for the mortgage loans he was asked to arrange.

Therefore, he knew (and better than she) the long history of those bills, small at first, bearing as endorsers various names, spaced at long maturities and continually renewed, until the day when, gathering all the protests, the draper had charged his friend Vinçart to make in his own name the necessary proceedings, not wishing to pass for a tiger among his fellow citizens.

She interlaced her account with recriminations against Lheureux, recriminations to which the notary replied from time to time with an insignificant word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he lowered his chin into his sky-blue cravat, pinned by two diamond pins joined by a little gold chain; and he smiled a singular smile, in a mawkish and ambiguous fashion. But, noticing that she had damp feet:

— Come nearer the stove... higher... against the porcelain.

She was afraid of soiling it. The notary resumed in a gallant tone:

— Fine things spoil nothing.

Then she tried to move him, and, moving herself, she came to tell him of the straitness of her household, its pullings-this-way-and-that, its needs. He understood that: an elegant woman! and, without ceasing to eat, he had turned completely toward her, so well that he brushed with his knee her boot, whose sole curled up all the while smoking against the stove.

But, when she asked him for a thousand crowns, he pursed his lips, then declared himself very sorry not to have had formerly the management of her fortune, for there were a hundred very convenient means, even for a lady, of making her money profitable. One might have, either in the peat bogs of Grumesnil or the lands of Le Havre, risked almost surely excellent speculations; and he let her devour herself with rage at the thought of the fantastic sums she would certainly have gained.

— How comes it, he resumed, that you did not come to me?

— I do not quite know, said she.

— Why, eh?... Did I then frighten you so? It is I, on the contrary, who should complain! We scarcely know each other! Yet I am very devoted to you; you no longer doubt it, I hope?

He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a voracious kiss, then kept it on his knee; and he played with her fingers delicately, all the while telling her a thousand soft nothings.

His insipid voice murmured like a flowing brook; a spark sprang from his pupil through the glitter of his spectacles, and his hands advanced into Emma’s sleeve, to feel her arm. She felt against her cheek the breath of a panting respiration. This man embarrassed her horribly.

She sprang up and said to him:

— Monsieur, I am waiting!

— For what? said the notary, who suddenly became extremely pale.

— That money.

— But...

Then, yielding to the irruption of too strong a desire:

— Well, yes...

He dragged himself on his knees toward her, regardless of his dressing gown.

— I beg you, stay! I love you!

He seized her by the waist. A flood of purple quickly mounted to Madame Bovary’s face. She drew back with a terrible air, crying:

— You shamelessly take advantage of my distress, Monsieur! I am to be pitied, but not for sale!

And she went out.

The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on her pretty tapestry slippers. They were a gift of love. This sight at last consoled him. Besides, he was thinking that an adventure of that sort would have carried him too far.

— What a wretch! what a boor!... what infamy! she said to herself, fleeing with a nervous foot beneath the aspens of the road. The disappointment of failure reinforced the indignation of her outraged modesty; it seemed to her that Providence was hounding her; and, exalting herself with pride, never had she had so much esteem for herself nor so much contempt for others. Something bellicose transported her. She would have liked to beat men, spit in their faces, crush them all; and she continued to walk rapidly straight ahead, pale, trembling, enraged, peering with a tearful eye at the empty horizon, and as if delighting in the hatred that stifled her.

When she caught sight of her house, a numbness seized her. She could not advance; yet it must be; besides, where to flee?

Félicité was waiting for her at the door.

— Well?

— No! said Emma.

And, for a quarter of an hour, the two of them considered the various persons of Yonville perhaps disposed to help her. But, each time Félicité named someone, Emma replied:

— Is that possible! They will not wish to!

— And Monsieur who is about to come home!

— I know it well... Leave me alone.

She had tried everything. There was nothing more to do now; and, when Charles appeared, she was then going to say to him:

— Go away. This carpet where you walk is no longer ours. Of your house, you have not a stick of furniture, a pin, a straw, and it is I who have ruined you, poor man!

Then it would be a great sob, then he would weep abundantly, and, at last, the surprise past, he would forgive.

— Yes, she murmured, grinding her teeth, he will forgive me, he who would not have enough of a million to offer me so that I might excuse him for having known me! Never! never!

This idea of Bovary’s superiority over her exasperated her. Then, whether she confessed or did not confess, presently, soon, tomorrow, he would learn none the less of the catastrophe; therefore, she must await this horrible scene and submit to the weight of his magnanimity. The wish came to her to return to Lheureux’s: what would be the use? to write to her father; it was too late; and perhaps she was now regretting not having yielded to the other, when she heard the trot of a horse in the lane. It was he, he was opening the gate, he was paler than the plaster wall. Springing up the stairs, she slipped quickly out by the square; and the mayor’s wife, who was chatting before the church with Lestiboudois, saw her enter the tax collector’s.

She ran to tell Madame Caron. These two ladies went up into the attic; and, hidden by linen spread upon poles, posted themselves conveniently to see all the interior of Binet’s.

He was alone, in his garret, busy imitating, in wood, one of those indescribable ivory works, composed of crescents, of spheres hollowed one within another, the whole straight as an obelisk and serving nothing; and he was beginning the last piece, he was nearing the goal! In the half-light of the workshop, the blond dust flew from his tool, like a plume of sparks under the irons of a galloping horse; the two wheels turned, rumbled, Binet smiled, chin lowered, nostrils open, and seemed at last lost in one of those complete happinesses, belonging no doubt only to mediocre occupations, which amuse the intelligence by easy difficulties, and satisfy it in a realization beyond which there is nothing to dream.

— Ah! there she is! said Madame Tuvache.

But it was hardly possible, because of the lathe, to hear what she said.

Finally, these ladies thought they distinguished the word francs, and Mother Tuvache whispered low:

— She is begging him, to obtain a delay on her taxes.

— Seems like it! the other resumed.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”