"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, ambiguou