When Desperation Meets Exploitation — Madame Bovary

The next day Maitre Hareng the bailiff arrives with two assistants to draw up the inventory for the distraint. They begin in Charles's consulting room and spare the phrenological head as an instrument of his profession. In the kitchen they count the plates, the saucepans, the chairs, and the candlesticks. In the bedroom they examine the dresses, the linen, and the dressing room. Emma's whole existence is spread out before the three men like a corpse at a post-mortem. Hareng, in a thin black coat and a white choker, keeps saying allow me, madame, and charming, very pretty, while he writes. They open the desk. His fingers, red and pulpy, tip Rodolphe's old letters. Emma keeps a man hidden in the house so Charles will not walk in on the seizure. Yellow notices go up. The furniture will be sold.

On Sunday she goes to Rouen and asks brokers for money. They refuse. At the hotel she tells Léon she wants eight thousand francs. He has not got them. He calls her mad, then a coward, invents a friend named Morel who will lend, and the money does not come. She weeps under the cathedral, remembering the day she entered it full of hope. A tilbury shoots past, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. She thinks it is the Viscount, then thinks she was mistaken. The street is empty. At the Croix-Rouge she is almost glad to see Homais. Filled with disgust, she throws the blind man her last five-franc piece. It is all her fortune.

Back in Yonville she goes to the notary Guillaumin. His dining room shines with English cleanliness, two silver chafing-dishes, and stained glass, and she thinks this is the dining room she ought to have. He already knows the long story of her bills, because he is tied to the linendraper. He sits down to breakfast in a palm-leaf dressing-gown, listens, and turns the loan into a seduction. She flees, disgusted, and on the road she half regrets that she did not yield. The mayor's wife sees her go in to the tax collector. She and Madame Caron climb to an attic and watch Binet through linen hung on props while he turns his useless ivory spheres and Emma begs. Charles is at home in tears. The nurse is out looking for her. At last she remembers Rodolphe as good, delicate, and generous, and she sets out towards La Huchette, sure that one moment of their old love will make him pay, not seeing that she is offering herself.