our 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