Page 395 - madame-bovary

apologising profusely for his rudeness.
‘I have come,’ she said, ‘to beg you, sir—‘
‘What, madame? I am listening.’
And she began explaining her position to him. Monsieur
Guillaumin knew it, being secretly associated with the
linendraper, from whom he always got capital for the loans
on mortgages that he was asked to make.
So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story
of the bills, small at first, bearing different names as endors-
ers, made out at long dates, and constantly renewed up to
the day, when, gathering together all the protested bills, the
shopkeeper had bidden his friend Vincart take in his own
name all the necessary proceedings, not wishing to pass for
a tiger with his fellow-citizens.
She mingled her story with recriminations against Lheu-
reux, to which the notary replied from time to time with
some insignificant word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his
tea, he buried his chin in his sky-blue cravat, into which
were thrust two diamond pins, held together by a small
gold chain; and he smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, am-
biguous fashion. But noticing that her feet were damp, he
said—
‘Do get closer to the stove; put your feet up against the
porcelain.’
She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary replied in a
gallant tone—
‘Beautiful things spoil nothing.’
Then she tried to move him, and, growing moved herself,
she began telling him about the poorness of her home, her

Madame Bovary