Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubert“It really grieves me, on my word! to see you depriving Emma grew rather confused in her calculations, and heryourself all at once of such a big sum as that.”ears tingled as if gold pieces, bursting from their bags, rang allThen she looked at the bank-notes, and dreaming of the round her on the floor. At last Lheureux explained that heunlimited number of rendezvous represented by those two had a very good friend, Vincart, a broker at Rouen, who wouldthousand francs, she stammered—discount these four bills. Then he himself would hand over“What! what!”to madame the remainder after the actual debt was paid.“Oh!” he went on, laughing good-naturedly, “one puts anythingone likes on receipts. Don’t you think I know what teen hundred, for the friend Vincart (which was only fair)But instead of two thousand francs he brought only eigh-household affairs are?” And he looked at her fixedly, while in had deducted two hundred francs for commission and discount.Then he carelessly asked for a receipt.his hand he held two long papers that he slid between hisnails. At last, opening his pocket-book, he spread out on the “You understand—in business—sometimes. And with thetable four bills to order, each for a thousand francs. date, if you please, with the date.”“Sign these,” he said, “and keep it all!”A horizon of realisable whims opened out before Emma. SheShe cried out, scandalised.was prudent enough to lay by a thousand crowns, with which“But if I give you the surplus,” replied Monsieur Lheureux the first three bills were paid when they fell due; but the fourth,impudently, “is that not helping you?”by chance, came to the house on a Thursday, and Charles, quiteAnd taking a pen he wrote at the bottom of the account, upset, patiently awaited his wife’s return for an explanation.“Received of Madame Bovary four thousand francs.”If she had not told him about this bill, it was only to spare“Now who can trouble you, since in six months you’ll draw him such domestic worries; she sat on his knees, caressed him,the arrears for your cottage, and I don’t make the last bill due cooed to him, gave him a long enumeration of all the indispensablethings that had been got on till after you’ve been paid?”credit.233