Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame Bovary“Well, listen. It seems to me so far I’ve been very good to “Besides,” said she, “as soon as the balance of Barneville—”you.” And opening one of his ledgers, “See,” he said. Then “What!”running up the page with his finger, “Let’s see! let’s see! August3d, two hundred francs; June 17th, a hundred and fifty; much surprised. Then in a honied voice—And on hearing that Langlois had not yet paid he seemedMarch 23d, forty-six. In April—”“And we agree, you say?”He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.“Oh! to anything you like.”“Not to speak of the bills signed by Monsieur Bovary, one On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few figures,for seven hundred francs, and another for three hundred. As and declaring it would be very difficult for him, that the affairto your little installments, with the interest, why, there’s no was shady, and that he was being bled, he wrote out four bills forend to ‘em; one gets quite muddled over ‘em. I’ll have nothingmore to do with it.”“Provided that Vincart will listen to me! However, it’stwo hundred and fifty francs each, to fall due month by month.She wept; she even called him “her good Monsieur settled. I don’t play the fool; I’m straight enough.”Lheureux.” But he always fell back upon “that rascal Vincart.” Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not oneBesides, he hadn’t a brass farthing; no one was paying him of which, however, was in his opinion worthy of madame.now-a-days; they were eating his coat off his back; a poor “When I think that there’s a dress at threepence-halfpenny ashopkeeper like him couldn’t advance money.yard, and warranted fast colours! And yet they actually swallowit! Of course you understand one doesn’t tell them whatEmma was silent, and Monsieur Lheureux, who was bitingthe feathers of a quill, no doubt became uneasy at her silence, it really is!” He hoped by this confession of dishonesty tofor he went on—others to quite convince her of his probity to her.“Unless one of these days I have something coming in, I Then he called her back to show her three yards of guipuremight—”that he had lately picked up “at a sale.”244