e 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.

Chapter Seven

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 p