“I have an arrangement to suggest to you,” he said. “If, instead of the sum agreed on, you would take—”
“Here it is,” she said placing fourteen napoleons in his hand.
The tradesman was dumbfounded. Then, to conceal his disappointment, he was profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which Emma declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of her apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change. She promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on. “Pshaw!” she thought, “he won’t think about it again.”
Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Rodolphe had received a seal with the motto Amor nel cor furthermore, a scarf for a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the Viscount’s, that Charles had formerly picked up in the road, and that Emma had kept. These presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and overexacting.
Then she had strange ideas.
“When midnight strikes,” she said, “you must think of me.”
And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of reproaches that always ended with the eternal question—
“Do you love me?”
“Why, of course I love you,” he answered.
“A great deal?”
“Certainly!”
“You haven’t loved any others?”
“Did you think you’d got a virgin?” he exclaimed laughing.