Then she looked at the bank-notes, and dreaming of the unlimited number

of rendezvous represented by those two thousand francs, she stammered-"What! what!"

"Oh!" he went on, laughing good-naturedly, "one puts anything one likes

on receipts. Don't you think I know what household affairs are?" And he

looked at her fixedly, while in his hand he held two long papers that he

slid between his nails. At last, opening his pocket-book, he spread out

on the table four bills to order, each for a thousand francs.

"Sign these," he said, "and keep it all!"

She cried out, scandalised.

"But if I give you the surplus," replied Monsieur Lheureux impudently,

"is that not helping you?"

And taking a pen he wrote at the bottom of the account, "Received of

Madame Bovary four thousand francs."

"Now who can trouble you, since in six months you'll draw the arrears

for your cottage, and I don't make the last bill due till after you've

been paid?"

Emma grew rather confused in her calculations, and her ears tingled

as if gold pieces, bursting from their bags, rang all round her on

the floor. At last Lheureux explained that he had a very good friend,

Vincart, a broker at Rouen, who would discount these four bills. Then

he himself would hand over to madame the remainder after the actual debt

was paid.

But instead of two thousand francs he brought only eighteen hundred, for

the friend Vincart (which was only fair) had deducted two hundred francs

for commission and discount. Then he carelessly asked for a receipt.

"You understand--in business--sometimes. And with the date, if you

please, with the date."

A horizon of realisable whims opened out before Emma. She was prudent

enough to lay by a thousand crowns, with which the first three bills

were paid when they fell due; but the fourth, by chance, came to the

house on a Thursday, and Charles, quite upset, patiently awaited his

wife's return for an explanation.

If she had not told him about this bill, it was only to spare him such

domestic worries; she sat on his knees, caressed him, cooed to him, gave

him a long enumeration of all the indispensable things that had been got

on credit.

"Really, you must confess, considering the quantity, it isn't too dear."

Charles, at his wit's end, soon had recourse to the eternal Lheureux,

who swore he would arrange matters if the doctor would sign him two

bills, one of which was for seven hundred francs, payable in three

months. In order to arrange for this he wrote his mother a pathetic

letter. Instead of sending a reply she came herself; and when Emma

wanted to know whether he had got anything out of her, "Yes," he

replied; "but she wants to see the account." The next morning at

daybreak Emma ran to Lheureux to beg him to make out another account for

not more than a thousand francs, for to show the one for four thousand

it would be necessary to say that she had paid two-thirds, and confess,

consequently, the sale of the estate--a negotiation admirably carried

out by the shopkeeper, and which, in fact, was only actually known later

on.




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