Then she looked at the banknotes, and dreaming of the unlimited number of rendezvous represented by those two thousand francs, she stammered⁠—

“What! what!”

“Oh!” he went on, laughing good-naturedly, “one puts anything one likes on receipts. Don’t you think I know what household affairs are?” And he looked at her fixedly, while in his hand he held two long papers that he slid between his nails. At last, opening his pocketbook, he spread out on the table four bills to order, each for a thousand francs.

“Sign these,” he said, “and keep it all!”

She cried out, scandalised.

“But if I give you the surplus,” replied Monsieur Lheureux impudently, “is that not helping you?”

And taking a pen he wrote at the bottom of the account, “Received of Madame Bovary four thousand francs.”