She was stoical the next day when Maitre 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 nick-nacks 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 post-mortem is made, outspread before the eyes of these three

men.

Maitre 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 Maitre 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. Felicite 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 chimney-piece 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 fire-dogs.

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.




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