“Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got on with ladies⁠—if I didn’t with my own!”

Emma smiled.

“I wanted to tell you,” he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, “that it isn’t the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some, if need be.”

She made a gesture of surprise.

“Ah!” said he quickly and in a low voice, “I shouldn’t have to go far to find you some, rely on that.”

And he began asking after Père Tellier, the proprietor of the Café Français, whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.