Page 357 - madame-bovary

not undertake it, he offered to go to the place to have an in-
terview with Langlois. On his return he announced that the
purchaser proposed four thousand francs.
Emma was radiant at this news.
‘Frankly,’ he added, ‘that’s a good price.’
She drew half the sum at once, and when she was about
to pay her account the shopkeeper said—
‘It really grieves me, on my word! to see you depriving
yourself all at once of such a big sum as that.’
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

Madame Bovary