Page 374 - madame-bovary

He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.
‘Not to speak of the bills signed by Monsieur Bovary, one
for seven hundred francs, and another for three hundred.
As to your little installments, with the interest, why, there’s
no end to ‘em; one gets quite muddled over ‘em. I’ll have
nothing more to do with it.’
She wept; she even called him ‘her good Monsieur Lheu-
reux.’ But he always fell back upon ‘that rascal Vincart.’
Besides, he hadn’t a brass farthing; no one was paying him
now-a-days; they were eating his coat off his back; a poor
shopkeeper like him couldn’t advance money.
Emma was silent, and Monsieur Lheureux, who was bit-
ing the feathers of a quill, no doubt became uneasy at her
silence, for he went on—
‘Unless one of these days I have something coming in, I
might—‘
‘Besides,’ said she, ‘as soon as the balance of Barnev-
ille—‘
‘What!’
And on hearing that Langlois had not yet paid he seemed
much surprised. Then in a honied voice—
‘And we agree, you say?’
‘Oh! to anything you like.’
On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few
figures, and declaring it would be very difficult for him, that
the affair was shady, and that he was being bled, he wrote
out four bills for two hundred and fifty francs each, to fall
due month by month.
‘Provided that Vincart will listen to me! However, it’s set-