prompt:
Chapter: She went on Thursdays. She got up and dressed silently, in order not to
awaken Charles, who would have made remarks about her getting ready too
early. Next she walked up and down, went to the windows, and looked out
at the Place. The early dawn was broadening between the pillars of the
market, and the chemist's shop, with the shutters still up, showed in
the pale light of the dawn the large letters of his signboard.

When the clock pointed to a quarter past seven, she went off to the
"Lion d'Or," whose door Artemise opened yawning. The girl then made
up the coals covered by the cinders, and Emma remained alone in the
kitchen. Now and again she went out. Hivert was leisurely harnessing his
horses, listening, moreover, to Mere Lefrancois, who, passing her head
and nightcap through a grating, was charging him with commissions and
giving him explanations that would have confused anyone else. Emma kept
beating the soles of her boots against the pavement of the yard.

At last, when he had eaten his soup, put on his cloak, lighted his pipe,
and grasped his whip, he calmly installed himself on his seat.

The "Hirondelle" started at a slow trot, and for about a mile stopped
here and there to pick up passengers who waited for it, standing at the
border of the road, in front of their yard gates.

Those who had secured seats the evening before kept it waiting; some
even were still in bed in their houses. Hivert called, shouted, swore;
then he got down from his seat and went and knocked loudly at the doors.
The wind blew through the cracked windows.

The four seats, however, filled up. The carriage rolled off; rows of
apple-trees followed one upon another, and the road between its two long
ditches, full of yellow water, rose, constantly narrowing towards the
horizon.

Emma knew it from end to end; she knew that after a meadow there was
a sign-post, next an elm, a barn, or the hut of a lime-kiln tender.
Sometimes even, in the hope of getting some surprise, she shut her eyes,
but she never lost the clear perception of the distance to be traversed.

At last the brick houses began to follow one another more closely, the
earth resounded beneath the wheels, the "Hirondelle" glided between the
gardens, where through an opening one saw statues, a periwinkle plant,
clipped yews, and a swing. Then on a sudden the town appeared. Sloping
down like an amphitheatre, and drowned in the fog, it widened out
beyond the bridges confusedly. Then the open country spread away with
a monotonous movement till it touched in the distance the vague line of
the pale sky. Seen thus from above, the whole landscape looked immovable
as a picture; the anchored ships were massed in one corner, the river
curved round the foot of the green hills, and the isles, oblique in
shape, lay on the water, like large, motionless, black fishes. The
factory chimneys belched forth immense brown fumes that were blown away
at the top. One heard the rumbling of the foundries, together with the
clear chimes of the churches that stood out in the mist. The leafless
trees on the boulevards made violet thickets in the midst of the
houses, and the roofs, all shining with the rain, threw back unequal
reflections, according to the height of the quarters in which they were.
Sometimes a gust of wind drove the clouds towards the Saint Catherine
hills, like aerial waves that broke silently against a cliff.

A giddiness seemed to her to detach itself from this mass of existence,
and her heart swelled as if the hundred and twenty thousand souls that
palpitated there had all at once sent into it the vapour of the passions
she fancied theirs. Her love grew in the presence of this vastness, and
expanded with tumult to the vague murmurings that rose towards her. She
poured it out upon the square, on the walks, on the streets, and the
old Norman city outspread before her eyes as an enormous capital, as a
Babylon into which she was entering. She leant with both hands against
the window, drinking in the breeze; the three horses galloped, the
stones grated in the mud, the diligence rocked, and Hivert, from afar,
hailed the carts on the road, while the bourgeois who had spent the
night at the Guillaume woods came quietly down the hill in their little
family carriages.

They stopped at the barrier; Emma undid her overshoes, put on other
gloves, rearranged her shawl, and some twenty paces farther she got down
from the "Hirondelle."

The town was then awakening. Shop-boys in caps were cleaning up the
shop-fronts, and women with baskets against their hips, at intervals
uttered sonorous cries at the corners of streets. She walked with
downcast eyes, close to the walls, and smiling with pleasure under her
lowered black veil.

For fear of being seen, she did not usually take the most direct road.
She plunged into dark alleys, and, all perspiring, reached the bottom
of the Rue Nationale, near the fountain that stands there. It is the
quarter for theatres, public-houses, and whores. Often a cart would
pass near her, bearing some shaking scenery. Waiters in aprons were
sprinkling sand on the flagstones between green shrubs. It all smelt of
absinthe, cigars, and oysters.

She turned down a street; she recognised him by his curling hair that
escaped from beneath his hat.

Leon walked along the pavement. She followed him to the hotel. He went
up, opened the door, entered--What an embrace!

Then, after the kisses, the words gushed forth. They told each other the
sorrows of the week, the presentiments, the anxiety for the letters; but
now everything was forgotten; they gazed into each other's faces with
voluptuous laughs, and tender names.

The bed was large, of mahogany, in the shape of a boat. The curtains
were in red levantine, that hung from the ceiling and bulged out too
much towards the bell-shaped bedside; and nothing in the world was so
lovely as her brown head and white skin standing out against this purple
colour, when, with a movement of shame, she crossed her bare arms,
hiding her face in her hands.

The warm room, with its discreet carpet, its gay ornaments, and its
calm light, seemed made for the intimacies of passion. The curtain-rods,
ending in arrows, their brass pegs, and the great balls of the fire-dogs
shone suddenly when the sun came in. On the chimney between the
candelabra there were two of those pink shells in which one hears the
murmur of the sea if one holds them to the ear.

How they loved that dear room, so full of gaiety, despite its rather
faded splendour! They always found the furniture in the same place, and
sometimes hairpins, that she had forgotten the Thursday before, under
the pedestal of the clock. They lunched by the fireside on a little
round table, inlaid with rosewood. Emma carved, put bits on his plate
with all sorts of coquettish ways, and she laughed with a sonorous and
libertine laugh when the froth of the champagne ran over from the
glass to the rings on her fingers. They were so completely lost in
the possession of each other that they thought themselves in their
own house, and that they would live there till death, like two spouses
eternally young. They said "our room," "our carpet," she even said "my
slippers," a gift of Leon's, a whim she had had. They were pink satin,
bordered with swansdown. When she sat on his knees, her leg, then too
short, hung in the air, and the dainty shoe, that had no back to it, was
held only by the toes to her bare foot.

He for the first time enjoyed the inexpressible delicacy of feminine
refinements. He had never met this grace of language, this reserve of
clothing, these poses of the weary dove. He admired the exaltation of
her soul and the lace on her petticoat. Besides, was she not "a lady"
and a married woman--a real mistress, in fine?

By the diversity of her humour, in turn mystical or mirthful, talkative,
taciturn, passionate, careless, she awakened in him a thousand desires,
called up instincts or memories. She was the mistress of all the novels,
the heroine of all the dramas, the vague "she" of all the volumes
of verse. He found again on her shoulder the amber colouring of the
"Odalisque Bathing"; she had the long waist of feudal chatelaines, and
she resembled the "Pale Woman of Barcelona." But above all she was the
Angel!

Often looking at her, it seemed to him that his soul, escaping towards
her, spread like a wave about the outline of her head, and descended
drawn down into the whiteness of her breast. He knelt on the ground
before her, and with both elbows on her knees looked at her with a
smile, his face upturned.

She bent over him, and murmured, as if choking with intoxication--

"Oh, do not move! do not speak! look at me! Something so sweet comes
from your eyes that helps me so much!"

She called him "child." "Child, do you love me?"

And she did not listen for his answer in the haste of her lips that
fastened to his mouth.

On the clock there was a bronze cupid, who smirked as he bent his arm
beneath a golden garland. They had laughed at it many a time, but when
they had to part everything seemed serious to them.

Motionless in front of each other, they kept repeating, "Till Thursday,
till Thursday."

Suddenly she seized his head between her hands, kissed him hurriedly on
the forehead, crying, "Adieu!" and rushed down the stairs.

She went to a hairdresser's in the Rue de la Comedie to have her hair
arranged. Night fell; the gas was lighted in the shop. She heard the
bell at the theatre calling the mummers to the performance, and she saw,
passing opposite, men with white faces and women in faded gowns going in
at the stage-door.

It was hot in the room, small, and too low where the stove was hissing
in the midst of wigs and pomades. The smell of the tongs, together with
the greasy hands that handled her head, soon stunned her, and she dozed
a little in her wrapper. Often, as he did her hair, the man offered her
tickets for a masked ball.

Then she went away. She went up the streets; reached the Croix-Rouge,
put on her overshoes, that she had hidden in the morning under the seat,
and sank into her place among the impatient passengers. Some got out
at the foot of the hill. She remained alone in the carriage. At every
turning all the lights of the town were seen more and more completely,
making a great luminous vapour about the dim houses. Emma knelt on the
cushions and her eyes wandered over the dazzling light. She sobbed;
called on Leon, sent him tender words and kisses lost in the wind.

On the hillside a poor devil wandered about with his stick in the midst
of the diligences. A mass of rags covered his shoulders, and an old
staved-in beaver, turned out like a basin, hid his face; but when he
took it off he discovered in the place of eyelids empty and bloody
orbits. The flesh hung in red shreds, and there flowed from it liquids
that congealed into green scale down to the nose, whose black nostrils
sniffed convulsively. To speak to you he threw back his head with an
idiotic laugh; then his bluish eyeballs, rolling constantly, at the
temples beat against the edge of the open wound. He sang a little song
as he followed the carriages--

"Maids an the warmth of a summer day Dream of love, and of love always"

And all the rest was about birds and sunshine and green leaves.

Sometimes he appeared suddenly behind Emma, bareheaded, and she drew
back with a cry. Hivert made fun of him. He would advise him to get a
booth at the Saint Romain fair, or else ask him, laughing, how his young
woman was.

Often they had started when, with a sudden movement, his hat entered the
diligence through the small window, while he clung with his other arm
to the footboard, between the wheels splashing mud. His voice, feeble
at first and quavering, grew sharp; it resounded in the night like the
indistinct moan of a vague distress; and through the ringing of the
bells, the murmur of the trees, and the rumbling of the empty vehicle,
it had a far-off sound that disturbed Emma. It went to the bottom of
her soul, like a whirlwind in an abyss, and carried her away into the
distances of a boundless melancholy. But Hivert, noticing a weight
behind, gave the blind man sharp cuts with his whip. The thong lashed
his wounds, and he fell back into the mud with a yell. Then the
passengers in the "Hirondelle" ended by falling asleep, some with open
mouths, others with lowered chins, leaning against their neighbour's
shoulder, or with their arm passed through the strap, oscillating
regularly with the jolting of the carriage; and the reflection of the
lantern swinging without, on the crupper of the wheeler; penetrating
into the interior through the chocolate calico curtains, threw
sanguineous shadows over all these motionless people. Emma, drunk with
grief, shivered in her clothes, feeling her feet grow colder and colder,
and death in her soul.

Charles at home was waiting for her; the "Hirondelle" was always late
on Thursdays. Madame arrived at last, and scarcely kissed the child. The
dinner was not ready. No matter! She excused the servant. This girl now
seemed allowed to do just as she liked.

Often her husband, noting her pallor, asked if she were unwell.

"No," said Emma.

"But," he replied, "you seem so strange this evening."

"Oh, it's nothing! nothing!"

There were even days when she had no sooner come in than she went up to
her room; and Justin, happening to be there, moved about noiselessly,
quicker at helping her than the best of maids. He put the matches
ready, the candlestick, a book, arranged her nightgown, turned back the
bedclothes.

"Come!" said she, "that will do. Now you can go."

For he stood there, his hands hanging down and his eyes wide open, as if
enmeshed in the innumerable threads of a sudden reverie.

The following day was frightful, and those that came after still more
unbearable, because of her impatience to once again seize her happiness;
an ardent lust, inflamed by the images of past experience, and that
burst forth freely on the seventh day beneath Leon's caresses. His
ardours were hidden beneath outbursts of wonder and gratitude. Emma
tasted this love in a discreet, absorbed fashion, maintained it by all
the artifices of her tenderness, and trembled a little lest it should be
lost later on.

She often said to him, with her sweet, melancholy voice--

"Ah! you too, you will leave me! You will marry! You will be like all
the others."

He asked, "What others?"

"Why, like all men," she replied. Then added, repulsing him with a
languid movement--

"You are all evil!"

One day, as they were talking philosophically of earthly disillusions,
to experiment on his jealousy, or yielding, perhaps, to an over-strong
need to pour out her heart, she told him that formerly, before him, she
had loved someone.

"Not like you," she went on quickly, protesting by the head of her child
that "nothing had passed between them."

The young man believed her, but none the less questioned her to find out
what he was.

"He was a ship's captain, my dear."

Was this not preventing any inquiry, and, at the same time, assuming a
higher ground through this pretended fascination exercised over a man
who must have been of warlike nature and accustomed to receive homage?

The clerk then felt the lowliness of his position; he longed for
epaulettes, crosses, titles. All that would please her--he gathered that
from her spendthrift habits.

Emma nevertheless concealed many of these extravagant fancies, such as
her wish to have a blue tilbury to drive into Rouen, drawn by an English
horse and driven by a groom in top-boots. It was Justin who had inspired
her with this whim, by begging her to take him into her service as
valet-de-chambre*, and if the privation of it did not lessen the
pleasure of her arrival at each rendezvous, it certainly augmented the
bitterness of the return.

     * Manservant.

Often, when they talked together of Paris, she ended by murmuring, "Ah!
how happy we should be there!"

"Are we not happy?" gently answered the young man passing his hands over
her hair.

"Yes, that is true," she said. "I am mad. Kiss me!"

To her husband she was more charming than ever. She made him
pistachio-creams, and played him waltzes after dinner. So he thought
himself the most fortunate of men and Emma was without uneasiness, when,
one evening suddenly he said--

"It is Mademoiselle Lempereur, isn't it, who gives you lessons?"

"Yes."

"Well, I saw her just now," Charles went on, "at Madame Liegeard's. I
spoke to her about you, and she doesn't know you."

This was like a thunderclap. However, she replied quite naturally--

"Ah! no doubt she forgot my name."

"But perhaps," said the doctor, "there are several Demoiselles Lempereur
at Rouen who are music-mistresses."

"Possibly!" Then quickly--"But I have my receipts here. See!"

And she went to the writing-table, ransacked all the drawers, rummaged
the papers, and at last lost her head so completely that Charles
earnestly begged her not to take so much trouble about those wretched
receipts.

"Oh, I will find them," she said.

And, in fact, on the following Friday, as Charles was putting on one
of his boots in the dark cabinet where his clothes were kept, he felt
a piece of paper between the leather and his sock. He took it out and
read--

"Received, for three months' lessons and several pieces of music, the
sum of sixty-three francs.--Felicie Lempereur, professor of music."

"How the devil did it get into my boots?"

"It must," she replied, "have fallen from the old box of bills that is
on the edge of the shelf."

From that moment her existence was but one long tissue of lies, in which
she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania,
a pleasure carried to such an extent that if she said she had the day
before walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken
the left.

One morning, when she had gone, as usual, rather lightly clothed, it
suddenly began to snow, and as Charles was watching the weather from the
window, he caught sight of Monsieur Bournisien in the chaise of Monsieur
Tuvache, who was driving him to Rouen. Then he went down to give the
priest a thick shawl that he was to hand over to Emma as soon as he
reached the "Croix-Rouge." When he got to the inn, Monsieur Bournisien
asked for the wife of the Yonville doctor. The landlady replied that
she very rarely came to her establishment. So that evening, when he
recognised Madame Bovary in the "Hirondelle," the cure told her his
dilemma, without, however, appearing to attach much importance to it,
for he began praising a preacher who was doing wonders at the Cathedral,
and whom all the ladies were rushing to hear.

Still, if he did not ask for any explanation, others, later on, might
prove less discreet. So she thought well to get down each time at the
"Croix-Rouge," so that the good folk of her village who saw her on the
stairs should suspect nothing.

One day, however, Monsieur Lheureux met her coming out of the Hotel
de Boulogne on Leon's arm; and she was frightened, thinking he would
gossip. He was not such a fool. But three days after he came to her
room, shut the door, and said, "I must have some money."

She declared she could not give him any. Lheureux burst into
lamentations and reminded her of all the kindnesses he had shown her.

In fact, of the two bills signed by Charles, Emma up to the present had
paid only one. As to the second, the shopkeeper, at her request, had
consented to replace it by another, which again had been renewed for a
long date. Then he drew from his pocket a list of goods not paid for; to
wit, the curtains, the carpet, the material for the armchairs, several
dresses, and divers articles of dress, the bills for which amounted to
about two thousand francs.

She bowed her head. He went on--

"But if you haven't any ready money, you have an estate." And he
reminded her of a miserable little hovel situated at Barneville, near
Aumale, that brought in almost nothing. It had formerly been part of a
small farm sold by Monsieur Bovary senior; for Lheureux knew everything,
even to the number of acres and the names of the neighbours.

"If I were in your place," he said, "I should clear myself of my debts,
and have money left over."

She pointed out the difficulty of getting a purchaser. He held out the
hope of finding one; but she asked him how she should manage to sell it.

"Haven't you your power of attorney?" he replied.

The phrase came to her like a breath of fresh air. "Leave me the bill,"
said Emma.

"Oh, it isn't worth while," answered Lheureux.

He came back the following week and boasted of having, after much
trouble, at last discovered a certain Langlois, who, for a long time,
had had an eye on the property, but without mentioning his price.

"Never mind the price!" she cried.

But they would, on the contrary, have to wait, to sound the fellow.
The thing was worth a journey, and, as she could not undertake it, he
offered to go to the place to have an interview 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 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.

Despite the low price of each article, Madame Bovary senior, of course,
thought the expenditure extravagant.

"Couldn't you do without a carpet? Why have recovered the arm-chairs? In
my time there was a single arm-chair in a house, for elderly persons--at
any rate it was so at my mother's, who was a good woman, I can tell you.
Everybody can't be rich! No fortune can hold out against waste! I should
be ashamed to coddle myself as you do! And yet I am old. I need looking
after. And there! there! fitting up gowns! fallals! What! silk for
lining at two francs, when you can get jaconet for ten sous, or even for
eight, that would do well enough!"

Emma, lying on a lounge, replied as quietly as possible--"Ah! Madame,
enough! enough!"

The other went on lecturing her, predicting they would end in the
workhouse. But it was Bovary's fault. Luckily he had promised to destroy
that power of attorney.

"What?"

"Ah! he swore he would," went on the good woman.

Emma opened the window, called Charles, and the poor fellow was obliged
to confess the promise torn from him by his mother.

Emma disappeared, then came back quickly, and majestically handed her a
thick piece of paper.

"Thank you," said the old woman. And she threw the power of attorney
into the fire.

Emma began to laugh, a strident, piercing, continuous laugh; she had an
attack of hysterics.

"Oh, my God!" cried Charles. "Ah! you really are wrong! You come here
and make scenes with her!"

His mother, shrugging her shoulders, declared it was "all put on."

But Charles, rebelling for the first time, took his wife's part, so that
Madame Bovary, senior, said she would leave. She went the very next day,
and on the threshold, as he was trying to detain her, she replied--

"No, no! You love her better than me, and you are right. It is natural.
For the rest, so much the worse! You will see. Good day--for I am not
likely to come soon again, as you say, to make scenes."

Charles nevertheless was very crestfallen before Emma, who did not hide
the resentment she still felt at his want of confidence, and it needed
many prayers before she would consent to have another power of attorney.
He even accompanied her to Monsieur Guillaumin to have a second one,
just like the other, drawn up.

"I understand," said the notary; "a man of science can't be worried with
the practical details of life."

And Charles felt relieved by this comfortable reflection, which gave his
weakness the flattering appearance of higher pre-occupation.

And what an outburst the next Thursday at the hotel in their room with
Leon! She laughed, cried, sang, sent for sherbets, wanted to smoke
cigarettes, seemed to him wild and extravagant, but adorable, superb.

He did not know what recreation of her whole being drove her more and
more to plunge into the pleasures of life. She was becoming irritable,
greedy, voluptuous; and she walked about the streets with him carrying
her head high, without fear, so she said, of compromising herself.
At times, however, Emma shuddered at the sudden thought of meeting
Rodolphe, for it seemed to her that, although they were separated
forever, she was not completely free from her subjugation to him.

One night she did not return to Yonville at all. Charles lost his head
with anxiety, and little Berthe would not go to bed without her mamma,
and sobbed enough to break her heart. Justin had gone out searching the
road at random. Monsieur Homais even had left his pharmacy.

At last, at eleven o'clock, able to bear it no longer, Charles
harnessed his chaise, jumped in, whipped up his horse, and reached the
"Croix-Rouge" about two o'clock in the morning. No one there! He thought
that the clerk had perhaps seen her; but where did he live? Happily,
Charles remembered his employer's address, and rushed off there.

Day was breaking, and he could distinguish the escutcheons over the
door, and knocked. Someone, without opening the door, shouted out the
required information, adding a few insults to those who disturb people
in the middle of the night.

The house inhabited by the clerk had neither bell, knocker, nor porter.
Charles knocked loudly at the shutters with his hands. A policeman
happened to pass by. Then he was frightened, and went away.

"I am mad," he said; "no doubt they kept her to dinner at Monsieur
Lormeaux'." But the Lormeaux no longer lived at Rouen.

"She probably stayed to look after Madame Dubreuil. Why, Madame Dubreuil
has been dead these ten months! Where can she be?"

An idea occurred to him. At a cafe he asked for a Directory, and
hurriedly looked for the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived at
No. 74 Rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers.

As he was turning into the street, Emma herself appeared at the other
end of it. He threw himself upon her rather than embraced her, crying--

"What kept you yesterday?"

"I was not well."

"What was it? Where? How?"

She passed her hand over her forehead and answered, "At Mademoiselle
Lempereur's."

"I was sure of it! I was going there."

"Oh, it isn't worth while," said Emma. "She went out just now; but for
the future don't worry. I do not feel free, you see, if I know that the
least delay upsets you like this."

This was a sort of permission that she gave herself, so as to get
perfect freedom in her escapades. And she profited by it freely, fully.
When she was seized with the desire to see Leon, she set out upon any
pretext; and as he was not expecting her on that day, she went to fetch
him at his office.

It was a great delight at first, but soon he no longer concealed the
truth, which was, that his master complained very much about these
interruptions.

"Pshaw! come along," she said.

And he slipped out.

She wanted him to dress all in black, and grow a pointed beard, to
look like the portraits of Louis XIII. She wanted to see his lodgings;
thought them poor. He blushed at them, but she did not notice this, then
advised him to buy some curtains like hers, and as he objected to the
expense--

"Ah! ah! you care for your money," she said laughing.

Each time Leon had to tell her everything that he had done since their
last meeting. She asked him for some verses--some verses "for herself,"
a "love poem" in honour of her. But he never succeeded in getting a
rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying a sonnet in
a "Keepsake." This was less from vanity than from the one desire of
pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes;
he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words
and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this
corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profanity and
dissimulation?

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Every Thursday morning Emma rises early and takes the Hirondelle to Rouen. The sight of the coastal town never fails to inspire her. Emma and Lon come to think of their hotel room as their own home. Emma enchants Lon and he imagines that she fulfills all the ideals of a mistress. Emma basks in the youthful ardor of his love. When it is time for her to leave they grow serious and say "Till Thursday. Afterward she goes to a salon to have her hair arranged and then meets the Hirondelle for the sad journey back to Yonville. On the hill-road outside of Rouen there is a beggar whose face is deformed by disease leaving two bloody sockets in place of eyelids. He walks beside the coaches and sings a song that begins:. A clear day's warmth will often move. A lass to stray in dreams of love. The beggar terrifies Emma. At home she retreats to her room where Justin helps her arrange her things. She passes the rest of the week anticipating her weekly meeting with Lon. Sometimes she tells her lover that he will one day tire of her and even lets it slip that she loved another before him though she claims that nothing happened. This torments the young man and he desires to be more admirable in her eyes. At home she dotes on her husband who suspects nothing of her affair. One day, however, he tells her that he has seen Mademoiselle Lempereur, the woman she is supposedly taking lessons from and the teacher does not know her. Emma covers by saying that the woman probably doesn't remember her name and a few days later arranges for Charles to find a receipt for the lessons. She begins to lie often and with increasing zest. One day Monsieur Lheureux sees her walking on Lon's arm in Rouen and a few days later he visits and asks for some of the money due him. She has none but he convinces her that she could sell the run-down cottage left to them by Charles' father. He even offers to find a buyer and a week later produces a Monsieur Langlois who pays 4,000 francs. Lheureux brings Emma half the money immediately. When she tries to settle her debt with Lheureux he waves off her present obligation and tempts her by producing four promissory notes for 1,000 francs each and tells her that he will raise the remaining 2,000 francs through a banker in Rouen. After commission she receives only 1,800 but wisely puts aside 3,000 so she is able to pay the first three notes. When the fourth falls due, however, it is one of her Thursdays away and a confused Charles receives the note and waits for his wife. She explains away the debt and Charles works out an arrangement with Lheureux for two more notes and then writes to his mother for help. Instead of sending money the elder Madame Bovary comes and demands to see the bill. Emma has Lheureux fix up a false bill so that her husband and mother-in-law will not suspect that she has sold the cottage. The old woman criticizes her daughter's lavish spending and fine furnishings and tells her that she has arranged for Charles to cancel the power of attorney. Emma is hysterical and brings out the document and contemptuously throws it in the fire. Seeing his wife upset Charles upbraids his mother who leaves and promises that she will not return for a long time. After she leaves Charles begs Emma to once again take the power of attorney and they have a new document drawn up. She becomes reckless in her passion for Lon and dares to walk openly with him in the street. One Thursday night she does not return and Charles, crazed with worry, rides to Rouen in the middle of the night and eventually finds her on the street in morning. She excuses herself and criticizes him for overreacting. Before long she goes to Rouen with only the slightest excuse at any time that pleased her. She demands increasingly more of Lon's attention and he finds himself being steered by her passion. He wonders where she could have learned it


prompt:
Chapter: During the journeys he made to see her, Leon had often dined at the
chemist's, and he felt obliged from politeness to invite him in turn.

"With pleasure!" Monsieur Homais replied; "besides, I must invigorate
my mind, for I am getting rusty here. We'll go to the theatre, to the
restaurant; we'll make a night of it."

"Oh, my dear!" tenderly murmured Madame Homais, alarmed at the vague
perils he was preparing to brave.

"Well, what? Do you think I'm not sufficiently ruining my health living
here amid the continual emanations of the pharmacy? But there! that is
the way with women! They are jealous of science, and then are opposed to
our taking the most legitimate distractions. No matter! Count upon
me. One of these days I shall turn up at Rouen, and we'll go the pace
together."

The druggist would formerly have taken good care not to use such an
expression, but he was cultivating a gay Parisian style, which he
thought in the best taste; and, like his neighbour, Madame Bovary, he
questioned the clerk curiously about the customs of the capital; he
even talked slang to dazzle the bourgeois, saying bender, crummy, dandy,
macaroni, the cheese, cut my stick and "I'll hook it," for "I am going."

So one Thursday Emma was surprised to meet Monsieur Homais in the
kitchen of the "Lion d'Or," wearing a traveller's costume, that is to
say, wrapped in an old cloak which no one knew he had, while he carried
a valise in one hand and the foot-warmer of his establishment in the
other. He had confided his intentions to no one, for fear of causing the
public anxiety by his absence.

The idea of seeing again the place where his youth had been spent no
doubt excited him, for during the whole journey he never ceased talking,
and as soon as he had arrived, he jumped quickly out of the diligence
to go in search of Leon. In vain the clerk tried to get rid of him.
Monsieur Homais dragged him off to the large Cafe de la Normandie,
which he entered majestically, not raising his hat, thinking it very
provincial to uncover in any public place.

Emma waited for Leon three quarters of an hour. At last she ran to
his office; and, lost in all sorts of conjectures, accusing him of
indifference, and reproaching herself for her weakness, she spent the
afternoon, her face pressed against the window-panes.

At two o'clock they were still at a table opposite each other. The large
room was emptying; the stove-pipe, in the shape of a palm-tree, spread
its gilt leaves over the white ceiling, and near them, outside the
window, in the bright sunshine, a little fountain gurgled in a white
basin, where; in the midst of watercress and asparagus, three torpid
lobsters stretched across to some quails that lay heaped up in a pile on
their sides.

Homais was enjoying himself. Although he was even more intoxicated with
the luxury than the rich fare, the Pommard wine all the same rather
excited his faculties; and when the omelette au rhum* appeared, he began
propounding immoral theories about women. What seduced him above all
else was chic. He admired an elegant toilette in a well-furnished
apartment, and as to bodily qualities, he didn't dislike a young girl.

     * In rum.

Leon watched the clock in despair. The druggist went on drinking,
eating, and talking.

"You must be very lonely," he said suddenly, "here at Rouen. To be sure
your lady-love doesn't live far away."

And the other blushed--

"Come now, be frank. Can you deny that at Yonville--"

The young man stammered something.

"At Madame Bovary's, you're not making love to--"

"To whom?"

"The servant!"

He was not joking; but vanity getting the better of all prudence, Leon,
in spite of himself protested. Besides, he only liked dark women.

"I approve of that," said the chemist; "they have more passion."

And whispering into his friend's ear, he pointed out the symptoms by
which one could find out if a woman had passion. He even launched into
an ethnographic digression: the German was vapourish, the French woman
licentious, the Italian passionate.

"And negresses?" asked the clerk.

"They are an artistic taste!" said Homais. "Waiter! two cups of coffee!"

"Are we going?" at last asked Leon impatiently.

"Ja!"

But before leaving he wanted to see the proprietor of the establishment
and made him a few compliments. Then the young man, to be alone, alleged
he had some business engagement.

"Ah! I will escort you," said Homais.

And all the while he was walking through the streets with him he talked
of his wife, his children; of their future, and of his business; told
him in what a decayed condition it had formerly been, and to what a
degree of perfection he had raised it.

Arrived in front of the Hotel de Boulogne, Leon left him abruptly, ran
up the stairs, and found his mistress in great excitement. At mention of
the chemist she flew into a passion. He, however, piled up good reasons;
it wasn't his fault; didn't she know Homais--did she believe that he
would prefer his company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and,
sinking on his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous
pose, full of concupiscence and supplication.

She was standing up, her large flashing eyes looked at him seriously,
almost terribly. Then tears obscured them, her red eyelids were lowered,
she gave him her hands, and Leon was pressing them to his lips when a
servant appeared to tell the gentleman that he was wanted.

"You will come back?" she said.

"Yes."

"But when?"

"Immediately."

"It's a trick," said the chemist, when he saw Leon. "I wanted to
interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you. Let's go and have
a glass of garus at Bridoux'."

Leon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the druggist joked
him about quill-drivers and the law.

"Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil prevents you? Be a
man! Let's go to Bridoux'. You'll see his dog. It's very interesting."

And as the clerk still insisted--

"I'll go with you. I'll read a paper while I wait for you, or turn over
the leaves of a 'Code.'"

Leon, bewildered by Emma's anger, Monsieur Homais' chatter, and,
perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was undecided, and, as it
were, fascinated by the chemist, who kept repeating--

"Let's go to Bridoux'. It's just by here, in the Rue Malpalu."

Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through that indefinable
feeling that drags us into the most distasteful acts, he allowed
himself to be led off to Bridoux', whom they found in his small yard,
superintending three workmen, who panted as they turned the large
wheel of a machine for making seltzer-water. Homais gave them some good
advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took some garus. Twenty times Leon
tried to escape, but the other seized him by the arm saying--

"Presently! I'm coming! We'll go to the 'Fanal de Rouen' to see the
fellows there. I'll introduce you to Thornassin."

At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight to the hotel.
Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She
detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an
insult, and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself from
him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a
woman, avaricious too, and cowardly.

Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had, no doubt,
calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love always alienates
us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt
sticks to our fingers.

They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their
love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers,
verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a waning passion
striving to keep itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly
promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey. Then
she confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This
disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned to him
more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off
the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding
snake. She went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see once more that the
door was closed, then, pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one
movement, she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.

Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those quivering
lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms, something vague
and dreary that seemed to Leon to glide between them subtly as if to
separate them.

He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she must
have passed, he thought, through every experience of suffering and of
pleasure. What had once charmed now frightened him a little. Besides, he
rebelled against his absorption, daily more marked, by her personality.
He begrudged Emma this constant victory. He even strove not to love her;
then, when he heard the creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like
drunkards at the sight of strong drinks.

She did not fail, in truth, to lavish all sorts of attentions upon him,
from the delicacies of food to the coquettries of dress and languishing
looks. She brought roses to her breast from Yonville, which she threw
into his face; was anxious about his health, gave him advice as to his
conduct; and, in order the more surely to keep her hold on him, hoping
perhaps that heaven would take her part, she tied a medal of the
Virgin round his neck. She inquired like a virtuous mother about his
companions. She said to him--

"Don't see them; don't go out; think only of ourselves; love me!"

She would have liked to be able to watch over his life; and the idea
occurred to her of having him followed in the streets. Near the hotel
there was always a kind of loafer who accosted travellers, and who would
not refuse. But her pride revolted at this.

"Bah! so much the worse. Let him deceive me! What does it matter to me?
As If I cared for him!"

One day, when they had parted early and she was returning alone along
the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; then she sat down on a
form in the shade of the elm-trees. How calm that time had been! How she
longed for the ineffable sentiments of love that she had tried to figure
to herself out of books! The first month of her marriage, her rides in
the wood, the viscount that waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all repassed
before her eyes. And Leon suddenly appeared to her as far off as the
others.

"Yet I love him," she said to herself.

No matter! She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came this
insufficiency in life--this instantaneous turning to decay of everything
on which she leant? But if there were somewhere a being strong and
beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement,
a poet's heart in an angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing
out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find
him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of
seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom,
every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left
upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.

A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were heard
from the convent-clock. Four o'clock! And it seemed to her that she had
been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity of passions may be
contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small space.

Emma lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no more about money
matters than an archduchess.

Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund and bald, came to her
house, saying he had been sent by Monsieur Vincart of Rouen. He took out
the pins that held together the side-pockets of his long green overcoat,
stuck them into his sleeve, and politely handed her a paper.

It was a bill for seven hundred francs, signed by her, and which
Lheureux, in spite of all his professions, had paid away to Vincart. She
sent her servant for him. He could not come. Then the stranger, who
had remained standing, casting right and left curious glances, that his
thick, fair eyebrows hid, asked with a naive air--

"What answer am I to take Monsieur Vincart?"

"Oh," said Emma, "tell him that I haven't it. I will send next week; he
must wait; yes, till next week."

And the fellow went without another word.

But the next day at twelve o'clock she received a summons, and the sight
of the stamped paper, on which appeared several times in large letters,
"Maitre Hareng, bailiff at Buchy," so frightened her that she rushed in
hot haste to the linendraper's. She found him in his shop, doing up a
parcel.

"Your obedient!" he said; "I am at your service."

But Lheureux, all the same, went on with his work, helped by a young
girl of about thirteen, somewhat hunch-backed, who was at once his clerk
and his servant.

Then, his clogs clattering on the shop-boards, he went up in front
of Madame Bovary to the first door, and introduced her into a narrow
closet, where, in a large bureau in sapon-wood, lay some ledgers,
protected by a horizontal padlocked iron bar. Against the wall, under
some remnants of calico, one glimpsed a safe, but of such dimensions
that it must contain something besides bills and money. Monsieur
Lheureux, in fact, went in for pawnbroking, and it was there that he had
put Madame Bovary's gold chain, together with the earrings of poor old
Tellier, who, at last forced to sell out, had bought a meagre store
of grocery at Quincampoix, where he was dying of catarrh amongst his
candles, that were less yellow than his face.

Lheureux sat down in a large cane arm-chair, saying: "What news?"

"See!"

And she showed him the paper.

"Well how can I help it?"

Then she grew angry, reminding him of the promise he had given not to
pay away her bills. He acknowledged it.

"But I was pressed myself; the knife was at my own throat."

"And what will happen now?" she went on.

"Oh, it's very simple; a judgment and then a distraint--that's about
it!"

Emma kept down a desire to strike him, and asked gently if there was no
way of quieting Monsieur Vincart.

"I dare say! Quiet Vincart! You don't know him; he's more ferocious than
an Arab!"

Still Monsieur Lheureux must interfere.

"Well, listen. It seems to me so far I've been very good to you." And
opening one of his ledgers, "See," he said. Then running up the page
with his finger, "Let's see! let's see! August 3d, two hundred francs;
June 17th, a hundred and fifty; March 23d, forty-six. In April--"

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 Lheureux." 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 biting 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 Barneville--"

"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 settled. I don't
play the fool; I'm straight enough."

Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not one of which,
however, was in his opinion worthy of madame.

"When I think that there's a dress at threepence-halfpenny a yard, and
warranted fast colours! And yet they actually swallow it! Of course you
understand one doesn't tell them what it really is!" He hoped by this
confession of dishonesty to others to quite convince her of his probity
to her.

Then he called her back to show her three yards of guipure that he had
lately picked up "at a sale."

"Isn't it lovely?" said Lheureux. "It is very much used now for the
backs of arm-chairs. It's quite the rage."

And, more ready than a juggler, he wrapped up the guipure in some blue
paper and put it in Emma's hands.

"But at least let me know--"

"Yes, another time," he replied, turning on his heel.

That same evening she urged Bovary to write to his mother, to ask her
to send as quickly as possible the whole of the balance due from the
father's estate. The mother-in-law replied that she had nothing more,
the winding up was over, and there was due to them besides Barneville an
income of six hundred francs, that she would pay them punctually.

Then Madame Bovary sent in accounts to two or three patients, and she
made large use of this method, which was very successful. She was always
careful to add a postscript: "Do not mention this to my husband; you
know how proud he is. Excuse me. Yours obediently." There were some
complaints; she intercepted them.

To get money she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old
odds and ends, and she bargained rapaciously, her peasant blood standing
her in good stead. Then on her journey to town she picked up nick-nacks
secondhand, that, in default of anyone else, Monsieur Lheureux would
certainly take off her hands. She bought ostrich feathers, Chinese
porcelain, and trunks; she borrowed from Felicite, from Madame
Lefrancois, from the landlady at the Croix-Rouge, from everybody, no
matter where.

With the money she at last received from Barneville she paid two bills;
the other fifteen hundred francs fell due. She renewed the bills, and
thus it was continually.

Sometimes, it is true, she tried to make a calculation, but she
discovered things so exorbitant that she could not believe them
possible. Then she recommenced, soon got confused, gave it all up, and
thought no more about it.

The house was very dreary now. Tradesmen were seen leaving it with angry
faces. Handkerchiefs were lying about on the stoves, and little Berthe,
to the great scandal of Madame Homais, wore stockings with holes in
them. If Charles timidly ventured a remark, she answered roughly that it
wasn't her fault.

What was the meaning of all these fits of temper? He explained
everything through her old nervous illness, and reproaching himself with
having taken her infirmities for faults, accused himself of egotism, and
longed to go and take her in his arms.

"Ah, no!" he said to himself; "I should worry her."

And he did not stir.

After dinner he walked about alone in the garden; he took little Berthe
on his knees, and unfolding his medical journal, tried to teach her
to read. But the child, who never had any lessons, soon looked up with
large, sad eyes and began to cry. Then he comforted her; went to fetch
water in her can to make rivers on the sand path, or broke off branches
from the privet hedges to plant trees in the beds. This did not spoil
the garden much, all choked now with long weeds. They owed Lestiboudois
for so many days. Then the child grew cold and asked for her mother.

"Call the servant," said Charles. "You know, dearie, that mamma does not
like to be disturbed."

Autumn was setting in, and the leaves were already falling, as they did
two years ago when she was ill. Where would it all end? And he walked up
and down, his hands behind his back.

Madame was in her room, which no one entered. She stayed there all
day long, torpid, half dressed, and from time to time burning Turkish
pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian's shop. In order
not to have at night this sleeping man stretched at her side, by dint of
manoeuvring, she at last succeeded in banishing him to the second floor,
while she read till morning extravagant books, full of pictures of
orgies and thrilling situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried out,
and Charles hurried to her.

"Oh, go away!" she would say.

Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever by that inner flame
to which adultery added fuel, panting, tremulous, all desire, she threw
open her window, breathed in the cold air, shook loose in the wind her
masses of hair, too heavy, and, gazing upon the stars, longed for some
princely love. She thought of him, of Leon. She would then have given
anything for a single one of those meetings that surfeited her.

These were her gala days. She wanted them to be sumptuous, and when he
alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit liberally,
which happened pretty well every time. He tried to make her understand
that they would be quite as comfortable somewhere else, in a smaller
hotel, but she always found some objection.

One day she drew six small silver-gilt spoons from her bag (they were
old Roualt's wedding present), begging him to pawn them at once for her,
and Leon obeyed, though the proceeding annoyed him. He was afraid of
compromising himself.

Then, on, reflection, he began to think his mistress's ways were growing
odd, and that they were perhaps not wrong in wishing to separate him
from her.

In fact someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her
that he was "ruining himself with a married woman," and the good lady at
once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious
creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of
love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in
the affair. He kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open
his eyes, to warn him of the abyss into which he was falling. Such
an intrigue would damage him later on, when he set up for himself. He
implored him to break with her, and, if he would not make this sacrifice
in his own interest, to do it at least for his, Dubocage's sake.

At last Leon swore he would not see Emma again, and he reproached
himself with not having kept his word, considering all the worry and
lectures this woman might still draw down upon him, without reckoning
the jokes made by his companions as they sat round the stove in the
morning. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle
down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every
bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment,
has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises.
The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears
within him the debris of a poet.

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast, and his
heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music,
dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.

They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession
that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick of him as he
was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of
marriage.

But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated at
the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from
corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting
all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Leon of her
baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some
catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not
the courage to make up her mind to it herself.

She none the less went on writing him love letters, in virtue of the
notion that a woman must write to her lover.

But whilst she wrote it was another man she saw, a phantom fashioned out
of her most ardent memories, of her finest reading, her strongest
lusts, and at last he became so real, so tangible, that she palpitated
wondering, without, however, the power to imagine him clearly, so lost
was he, like a god, beneath the abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in
that azure land where silk ladders hang from balconies under the breath
of flowers, in the light of the moon. She felt him near her; he was
coming, and would carry her right away in a kiss.

Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of vague love wearied
her more than great debauchery.

She now felt constant ache all over her. Often she even received
summonses, stamped paper that she barely looked at. She would have liked
not to be alive, or to be always asleep.

On Mid-Lent she did not return to Yonville, but in the evening went to
a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a club wig, and
three-cornered hat cocked on one side. She danced all night to the wild
tones of the trombones; people gathered round her, and in the morning
she found herself on the steps of the theatre together with five or six
masks, debardeuses* and sailors, Leon's comrades, who were talking about
having supper.

     * People dressed as longshoremen.

The neighbouring cafes were full. They caught sight of one on the
harbour, a very indifferent restaurant, whose proprietor showed them to
a little room on the fourth floor.

The men were whispering in a corner, no doubt consorting about expenses.
There were a clerk, two medical students, and a shopman--what company
for her! As to the women, Emma soon perceived from the tone of their
voices that they must almost belong to the lowest class. Then she was
frightened, pushed back her chair, and cast down her eyes.

The others began to eat; she ate nothing. Her head was on fire, her eyes
smarted, and her skin was ice-cold. In her head she seemed to feel the
floor of the ball-room rebounding again beneath the rhythmical pulsation
of the thousands of dancing feet. And now the smell of the punch, the
smoke of the cigars, made her giddy. She fainted, and they carried her
to the window.

Day was breaking, and a great stain of purple colour broadened out
in the pale horizon over the St. Catherine hills. The livid river was
shivering in the wind; there was no one on the bridges; the street lamps
were going out.

She revived, and began thinking of Berthe asleep yonder in the servant's
room. Then a cart filled with long strips of iron passed by, and made a
deafening metallic vibration against the walls of the houses.

She slipped away suddenly, threw off her costume, told Leon she must get
back, and at last was alone at the Hotel de Boulogne. Everything, even
herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a
bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there
grow young again.

She went out, crossed the Boulevard, the Place Cauchoise, and the
Faubourg, as far as an open street that overlooked some gardens. She
walked rapidly; the fresh air calming her; and, little by little, the
faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the lights, the supper,
those women, all disappeared like mists fading away. Then, reaching the
"Croix-Rouge," she threw herself on the bed in her little room on the
second floor, where there were pictures of the "Tour de Nesle." At four
o'clock Hivert awoke her.

When she got home, Felicite showed her behind the clock a grey paper.
She read--

"In virtue of the seizure in execution of a judgment."

What judgment? As a matter of fact, the evening before another paper
had been brought that she had not yet seen, and she was stunned by these
words--

"By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame Bovary." Then,
skipping several lines, she read, "Within twenty-four hours, without
fail--" But what? "To pay the sum of eight thousand francs." And there
was even at the bottom, "She will be constrained thereto by every
form of law, and notably by a writ of distraint on her furniture and
effects."

What was to be done? In twenty-four hours--tomorrow. Lheureux, she
thought, wanted to frighten her again; for she saw through all his
devices, the object of his kindnesses. What reassured her was the very
magnitude of the sum.

However, by dint of buying and not paying, of borrowing, signing bills,
and renewing these bills that grew at each new falling-in, she had ended
by preparing a capital for Monsieur Lheureux which he was impatiently
awaiting for his speculations.

She presented herself at his place with an offhand air.

"You know what has happened to me? No doubt it's a joke!"

"How so?"

He turned away slowly, and, folding his arms, said to her--

"My good lady, did you think I should go on to all eternity being your
purveyor and banker, for the love of God? Now be just. I must get back
what I've laid out. Now be just."

She cried out against the debt.

"Ah! so much the worse. The court has admitted it. There's a judgment.
It's been notified to you. Besides, it isn't my fault. It's Vincart's."

"Could you not--?"

"Oh, nothing whatever."

"But still, now talk it over."

And she began beating about the bush; she had known nothing about it; it
was a surprise.

"Whose fault is that?" said Lheureux, bowing ironically. "While I'm
slaving like a nigger, you go gallivanting about."

"Ah! no lecturing."

"It never does any harm," he replied.

She turned coward; she implored him; she even pressed her pretty white
and slender hand against the shopkeeper's knee.

"There, that'll do! Anyone'd think you wanted to seduce me!"

"You are a wretch!" she cried.

"Oh, oh! go it! go it!"

"I will show you up. I shall tell my husband."

"All right! I too. I'll show your husband something."

And Lheureux drew from his strong box the receipt for eighteen hundred
francs that she had given him when Vincart had discounted the bills.

"Do you think," he added, "that he'll not understand your little theft,
the poor dear man?"

She collapsed, more overcome than if felled by the blow of a pole-axe.
He was walking up and down from the window to the bureau, repeating all
the while--

"Ah! I'll show him! I'll show him!" Then he approached her, and in a
soft voice said--

"It isn't pleasant, I know; but, after all, no bones are broken, and,
since that is the only way that is left for you paying back my money--"

"But where am I to get any?" said Emma, wringing her hands.

"Bah! when one has friends like you!"

And he looked at her in so keen, so terrible a fashion, that she
shuddered to her very heart.

"I promise you," she said, "to sign--"

"I've enough of your signatures."

"I will sell something."

"Get along!" he said, shrugging his shoulders; "you've not got
anything."

And he called through the peep-hole that looked down into the shop--

"Annette, don't forget the three coupons of No. 14."

The servant appeared. Emma understood, and asked how much money would be
wanted to put a stop to the proceedings.

"It is too late."

"But if I brought you several thousand francs--a quarter of the sum--a
third--perhaps the whole?"

"No; it's no use!"

And he pushed her gently towards the staircase.

"I implore you, Monsieur Lheureux, just a few days more!" She was
sobbing.

"There! tears now!"

"You are driving me to despair!"

"What do I care?" said he, shutting the door.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Out of politeness Lon extends an invitation to Monsieur Homais to visit him in Rouen and the pharmacist, feeling something of a daredevil, decides to relive some of the glories of his youth. Emma and Lon are both surprised when Monsieur Homais accompanies Emma to Rouen one day and immediately drags the clerk off to dine. Emma is vexed and impatient and spends the afternoon waiting in their hotel room. Lon suffers through a long meal with the pharmacist who then insists on accompanying him on his business visits. Lon manages to steal a few minutes at the hotel where Emma, hysterical from waiting, fails to appreciate his predicament. Homais insists that Lon accompany him to another caf. Eventually Lon is able to return to the hotel but finds that Emma has left in a fury. In the coming weeks she tries to recapture some of her original passion for him by pushing herself to extremes. For his part, Lon grows to be somewhat frightened of her and begins to resent her. Still, he is beguiled by her beauty and her attention. One day, after leaving the hotel, she sees the walls of her old convent and sits on a nearby bench to ponder her childhood ardor and present feelings. She finds that she is totally devoted to her passions. One day a representative of Monsieur Vinart, the Rouen banker, arrives with a note for 500 francs due immediately. Emma sends him away with a promise to pay the following week. The next day, however, she receives an official protest of non-payment. She visits Lheureux in his office and he explains that he was forced to sign the note over to the banker and that Vinart will not be appeased. She is furious. He washes his hands at the whole matter and blames the banker. She pleads with him but to no avail. Finally he agrees to advance her four 250 franc notes against the balance of the cottage. Before she leaves he sells her some fine fabric on credit. Soon she finds that there is nothing to the inheritance except the cottage and 600 francs a year. She sends requests for payment to Charles' patients and selling her things in Rouen. Additionally she borrowed money from everyone she can. She signs more promissory notes. The household begins to fall into disarray and Emma becomes defensive when Charles asks about their financial troubles. Autumn arrives and she is alternatively morose and consumed by passion for Lon. She banishes Charles to sleeping in the attic while she stays awake, reading lurid novels. Lon, alarmed by the change in his mistress, wonders if he should break it off. He is about to be promoted to head clerk and he resolves to give up his romantic ideals and act sensibly. He is bored with her and her with him but she cannot give him up. She is tortured by an ideal bliss, an ideal man which she cannot grasp and she is tormented by countless official documents of debt that continue to arrive. On the night of the mid-Lenten festivities she accompanies Lon and his friends to a costume ball and in a caf afterward is disgusted by the company she is keeping. She swoons in a faint and revives thinking of her daughter. When she returns home Flicit shows her a recently arrived document that proclaims she must pay 8,000 francs the following day or suffer a public seizure of all her possessions. Lheureux refuses to help. She puts her hand on his knee but she acts insulted when he asks if she is trying to seduce him. He knowingly tells her that she has many friends and she had better raise the money through them.


prompt:
Chapter: 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.

At two o'clock she hurried to Leon, and knocked at the door. No one
answered. At length he appeared.

"What brings you here?"

"Do I disturb you?"

"No; but--" And he admitted that his landlord didn't like his having
"women" there.

"I must speak to you," she went on.

Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.

"No, no! Down there, in our home!"

And they went to their room at the Hotel de Boulogne.

On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She
said to him--

"Leon, you will do me a service?"

And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added--

"Listen, I want eight thousand francs."

"But you are mad!"

"Not yet."

And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she explained
her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it; her mother-in-law
detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but he, Leon, he would set
about finding this indispensable sum.

"How on earth can I?"

"What a coward you are!" she cried.

Then he said stupidly, "You are exaggerating the difficulty. Perhaps,
with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be stopped."

All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible that
they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Leon, could be
security instead of her.

"Go, try, try! I will love you so!"

He went out, and came back at the end of an hour, saying, with solemn
face--

"I have been to three people with no success."

Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney corners,
motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as she stamped her
feet. He heard her murmuring--

"If I were in your place _I_ should soon get some."

"But where?"

"At your office." And she looked at him.

An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their lids
drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look, so that the
young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute will of this woman
who was urging him to a crime. Then he was afraid, and to avoid any
explanation he smote his forehead, crying--

"Morel is to come back to-night; he will not refuse me, I hope" (this
was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant); "and I will
bring it you to-morrow," he added.

Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had expected.
Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing--

"However, if you don't see me by three o'clock do not wait for me, my
darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!"

He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no strength
left for any sentiment.

Four o'clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville, mechanically
obeying the force of old habits.

The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and sharp,
when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen folk, in
Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She reached the
Place du Parvis. People were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed
out through the three doors like a stream through the three arches of
a bridge, and in the middle one, more motionless than a rock, stood the
beadle.

Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had
entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out before her, less
profound than her love; and she walked on weeping beneath her veil,
giddy, staggering, almost fainting.

"Take care!" cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard that was
thrown open.

She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between the
shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who was it?
She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.

Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was empty. She
was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean against a wall to keep
herself from falling.

Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know. All
within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost, sinking
at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on
reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she saw the good Homais, who was watching
a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the
"Hirondelle." In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchief six
cheminots for his wife.

Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped loaves,
that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige of Gothic food
that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the Crusades, and with which
the robust Normans gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the
table, in the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of hippocras
and huge boars' heads, the heads of Saracens to be devoured. The
druggist's wife crunched them up as they had done--heroically, despite
her wretched teeth. And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never
failed to bring her home some that he bought at the great baker's in the
Rue Massacre.

"Charmed to see you," he said, offering Emma a hand to help her into the
"Hirondelle." Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords of the netting,
and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive and Napoleonic.

But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill he
exclaimed--

"I can't understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable
industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to work.
Progress, my word! creeps at a snail's pace. We are floundering about in
mere barbarism."

The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door, as if it
were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.

"This," said the chemist, "is a scrofulous affection."

And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first
time, murmured something about "cornea," "opaque cornea," "sclerotic,"
"facies," then asked him in a paternal tone--

"My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of
getting drunk at the public, you'd do better to die yourself."

He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The blind
man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost idiotic. At last
Monsieur Homais opened his purse--

"Now there's a sou; give me back two lairds, and don't forget my advice:
you'll be the better for it."

Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the druggist
said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic pomade of his own
composition, and he gave his address--"Monsieur Homais, near the market,
pretty well known."

"Now," said Hivert, "for all this trouble you'll give us your
performance."

The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown back,
whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue, and rubbed
his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of hollow yell like a
famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw him over her shoulder
a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune. It seemed to her very fine
thus to throw it away.

The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant out
through the window, crying--

"No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose the
diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries."

The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes
gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable fatigue
overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied, discouraged, almost
asleep.

"Come what may come!" she said to herself. "And then, who knows? Why, at
any moment could not some extraordinary event occur? Lheureux even might
die!"

At nine o'clock in the morning she was awakened by the sound of voices
in the Place. There was a crowd round the market reading a large bill
fixed to one of the posts, and she saw Justin, who was climbing on to
a stone and tearing down the bill. But at this moment the rural guard
seized him by the collar. Monsieur Homais came out of his shop, and Mere
Lefrangois, in the midst of the crowd, seemed to be perorating.

"Madame! madame!" cried Felicite, running in, "it's abominable!"

And the poor girl, deeply moved, handed her a yellow paper that she had
just torn off the door. Emma read with a glance that all her furniture
was for sale.

Then they looked at one another silently. The servant and mistress had
no secret one from the other. At last Felicite sighed--

"If I were you, madame, I should go to Monsieur Guillaumin."

"Do you think--"

And this question meant to say--

"You who know the house through the servant, has the master spoken
sometimes of me?"

"Yes, you'd do well to go there."

She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with jet beads, and
that she might not be seen (there was still a crowd on the Place), she
took the path by the river, outside the village.

She reached the notary's gate quite breathless. The sky was sombre, and
a little snow was falling. At the sound of the bell, Theodore in a
red waistcoat appeared on the steps; he came to open the door almost
familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and showed her into the dining-room.

A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that filled up the
niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the oak-stained
paper hung Steuben's "Esmeralda" and Schopin's "Potiphar." The
ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes, the crystal door-knobs,
the parquet and the furniture, all shone with a scrupulous, English
cleanliness; the windows were ornamented at each corner with stained
glass.

"Now this," thought Emma, "is the dining-room I ought to have."

The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown to his breast
with his left arm, while with the other hand he raised and quickly put
on again his brown velvet cap, pretentiously cocked on the right side,
whence looked out the ends of three fair curls drawn from the back of
the head, following the line of his bald skull.

After he had offered her a seat he sat down to breakfast, 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 endorsers, 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 Lheureux, 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, ambiguous
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 worries, her wants.
He could understand that; an elegant woman! and, without leaving off
eating, he had turned completely round towards her, so that his knee
brushed against her boot, whose sole curled round as it smoked against
the stove.

But when she asked for a thousand sous, he closed his lips, and declared
he was very sorry he had not had the management of her fortune before,
for there were hundreds of ways very convenient, even for a lady, of
turning her money to account. They might, either in the turf-peats
of Grumesnil or building-ground at Havre, almost without risk, have
ventured on some excellent speculations; and he let her consume herself
with rage at the thought of the fabulous sums that she would certainly
have made.

"How was it," he went on, "that you didn't come to me?"

"I hardly know," she said.

"Why, hey? Did I frighten you so much? It is I, on the contrary, who
ought to complain. We hardly know one another; yet I am very devoted to
you. You do not doubt that, I hope?"

He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a greedy kiss, then
held it on his knee; and he played delicately with her fingers whilst
he murmured a thousand blandishments. His insipid voice murmured like a
running brook; a light shone in his eyes through the glimmering of his
spectacles, and his hand was advancing up Emma's sleeve to press her
arm. She felt against her cheek his panting breath. This man oppressed
her horribly.

She sprang up and said to him--

"Sir, I am waiting."

"For what?" said the notary, who suddenly became very pale.

"This money."

"But--" Then, yielding to the outburst of too powerful a desire, "Well,
yes!"

He dragged himself towards her on his knees, regardless of his
dressing-gown.

"For pity's sake, stay. I love you!"

He seized her by her waist. Madame Bovary's face flushed purple. She
recoiled with a terrible look, crying--

"You are taking a shameless advantage of my distress, sir! I am to be
pitied--not to be sold."

And she went out.

The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his fine
embroidered slippers. They were a love gift, and the sight of them at
last consoled him. Besides, he reflected that such an adventure might
have carried him too far.

"What a wretch! what a scoundrel! what an infamy!" she said to herself,
as she fled with nervous steps beneath the aspens of the path. The
disappointment of her failure increased the indignation of her outraged
modesty; it seemed to her that Providence pursued her implacably, and,
strengthening herself in her pride, she had never felt so much esteem
for herself nor so much contempt for others. A spirit of warfare
transformed her. She would have liked to strike all men, to spit in
their faces, to crush them, and she walked rapidly straight on, pale,
quivering, maddened, searching the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes,
and as it were rejoicing in the hate that was choking her.

When she saw her house a numbness came over her. She could not go on;
and yet she must. Besides, whither could she flee?

Felicite was waiting for her at the door. "Well?"

"No!" said Emma.

And for a quarter of an hour the two of them went over the various
persons in Yonville who might perhaps be inclined to help her. But each
time that Felicite named someone Emma replied--

"Impossible! they will not!"

"And the master'll soon be in."

"I know that well enough. Leave me alone."

She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now; and
when Charles came in she would have to say to him--

"Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours. In
your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and it is I,
poor man, who have ruined you."

Then there would be a great sob; next he would weep abundantly, and at
last, the surprise past, he would forgive her.

"Yes," she murmured, grinding her teeth, "he will forgive me, he who
would give a million if I would forgive him for having known me! Never!
never!"

This thought of Bovary's superiority to her exasperated her. Then,
whether she confessed or did not confess, presently, immediately,
to-morrow, he would know the catastrophe all the same; so she must wait
for this horrible scene, and bear the weight of his magnanimity. The
desire to return to Lheureux's seized her--what would be the use? To
write to her father--it was too late; and perhaps, she began to repent
now that she had not yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of
a horse in the alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter
than the plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the
square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to Lestiboudois in
front of the church, saw her go in to the tax-collector's.

She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up to
the attic, and, hidden by some linen spread across props, stationed
themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of Binet's room.

He was alone in his garret, busy imitating in wood one of those
indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres hollowed
out one within the other, the whole as straight as an obelisk, and of no
use whatever; and he was beginning on the last piece--he was nearing his
goal. In the twilight of the workshop the white dust was flying from his
tools like a shower of sparks under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the
two wheels were turning, droning; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his
nostrils distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete
happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace occupations,
which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and satisfy by a
realisation of that beyond which such minds have not a dream.

"Ah! there she is!" exclaimed Madame Tuvache.

But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was saying.

At last these ladies thought they made out the word "francs," and Madame
Tuvache whispered in a low voice--

"She is begging him to give her time for paying her taxes."

"Apparently!" replied the other.

They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the
candlesticks, the banister rails against the walls, while Binet stroked
his beard with satisfaction.

"Do you think she wants to order something of him?" said Madame Tuvache.

"Why, he doesn't sell anything," objected her neighbour.

The tax-collector seemed to be listening with wide-open eyes, as if he
did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant manner. She came
nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no longer spoke.

"Is she making him advances?" said Madame Tuvache. Binet was scarlet to
his very ears. She took hold of his hands.

"Oh, it's too much!"

And no doubt she was suggesting something abominable to him; for the
tax-collector--yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at Lutzen,
had been through the French campaign, and had even been recommended for
the cross--suddenly, as at the sight of a serpent, recoiled as far as he
could from her, crying--

"Madame! what do you mean?"

"Women like that ought to be whipped," said Madame Tuvache.

"But where is she?" continued Madame Caron, for she had disappeared
whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going up the Grande Rue,
and turning to the right as if making for the cemetery, they were lost
in conjectures.

"Nurse Rollet," she said on reaching the nurse's, "I am choking; unlace
me!" She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her with a
petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she did not
answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began spinning flax.

"Oh, leave off!" she murmured, fancying she heard Binet's lathe.

"What's bothering her?" said the nurse to herself. "Why has she come
here?"

She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that drove her from
her home.

Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw things but
vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic persistence. She looked
at the scales on the walls, two brands smoking end to end, and a long
spider crawling over her head in a rent in the beam. At last she began
to collect her thoughts. She remembered--one day--Leon--Oh! how long
ago that was--the sun was shining on the river, and the clematis were
perfuming the air. Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon
began to recall the day before.

"What time is it?" she asked.

Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to that side
of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly, saying--

"Nearly three."

"Ah! thanks, thanks!"

For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would,
perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told the
nurse to run to her house to fetch him.

"Be quick!"

"But, my dear lady, I'm going, I'm going!"

She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first.
Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And she already
saw herself at Lheureux's spreading out her three bank-notes on his
bureau. Then she would have to invent some story to explain matters to
Bovary. What should it be?

The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no clock
in the cot, Emma feared she was perhaps exaggerating the length of time.
She began walking round the garden, step by step; she went into the path
by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping that the woman would have
come back by another road. At last, weary of waiting, assailed by fears
that she thrust from her, no longer conscious whether she had been here
a century or a moment, she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and
stopped her ears. The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken
Mere Rollet said to her--

"There is no one at your house!"

"What?"

"Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you; they're
looking for you."

Emma answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about
her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back
instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and
uttered a cry; for the thought of Rodolphe, like a flash of lightning in
a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so good, so delicate, so
generous! And besides, should he hesitate to do her this service, she
would know well enough how to constrain him to it by re-waking, in a
single moment, their lost love. So she set out towards La Huchette, not
seeing that she was hastening to offer herself to that which but a while
ago had so angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The following day three officials arrive and inventory all the goods in the house. That evening she feels regret as she looks over all the expensive items in the house she used to temper her frustrated passion. The following day, a Sunday, she travels to Rouen to look for money but the bankers either refuse or simply laugh at her. Leon calls her crazy when he hears how much money she needs. He agrees to try to raise 3,000 francs but returns from his mission empty handed. She hints that he should steal the money from his office and the frightened clerk promises to borrow the money from a friend who is returning that night. Leon tells Emma that he will bring the money the following day but she is not to wait for him past 3 o'clock. On her way to the Hirondelle she passes the cathedral and remembers how full of hope she had been when she first met Leon there. She sees a man in a carriage that she believes is the vicomte and the sight depresses her. Monsieur Homais is also returning to Yonville and when the blind beggar accosts the carriage in his usual manner Homais lectures the man and tells him that he can heal him with a salve of his own invention. Emma gives the beggar a five franc piece - the last money she has in the world. She collapses into her bed that night resigned to let come what may. In the morning a notice in the square explains that the contents of the Bovary's house are subject to sale. Felicite, who is romantically involved with the notary Guillaumin's manservant, advises her mistress to seek funds from the notary. Guillaumin knows of her predicament through his secret business associations with Lheureux. He initially refuses to give her money but, abandoning his decorum, begins to caress her and falls on his knees and tells her that he loves her. Disgusted, Emma flees the house. She returns home where she waits for Charles, enraged that he should be in a position to be condescending to her. As he enters the front door, however, she flees out the back and the mayor's wife, Madame Tuvache sees her enter the tax collector Binet's house. Madame Tuvache and Madame Caron watch through a window and see her confront Binet and then seemingly make romantic advances to the man who recoils in horror. Emma flees to Madame Rollet's cottage and collapses sobbing on the bed. She comes to her senses and, realizing it is nearly 3 o'clock, orders the confused wet nurse to go to her house to meet Leon. Emma waits a long time but when Madame Rollet returns she tells her that he was not there. Furthermore she explains that Madame Bovary's anguished husband is calling for her and everyone is looking for her. Emma suddenly thinks of Rodolphe and sets out for La Huchette certain of help from that quarter