ow afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who wasn't so
particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff
of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her.

Emma had many shoes in her closet that she wore out one after the other,
without Charles allowing himself the slightest observation. So also he
disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought proper
to make a present of to Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork, and it
had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black
trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring to
use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him
another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to defray
the expense of this purchase.

So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One saw him
running about the village as before, and when Charles heard from afar
the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction.

It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order;
this provided him with an excuse for visiting Emma. He chatted with her
about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made
himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. Emma yielded to
this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have a
very handsome riding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at Rouen, to
give to Rodolphe. The week after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her
table.

But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and
seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was much embarrassed;
all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a
fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any
quantity of other things, and Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur
Derozerays' account, which he was in the habit of paying him every year
about midsummer.

She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost
patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some
in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received.

"Oh, very well, take them!" said Emma.

"I was only joking," he replied; "the only thing I regret is the whip.
My word! I'll ask monsieur to return it to me."

"No, no!" she said.

"Ah! I've got you!" thought Lheureux.

And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in