Madame Bovary

Excerpt: VII. HE was stoical the next day when Maitre Ha- reng, the bailiff, with two assistants, presented himself at her house to draw up the inventory for the distraint. They began with Bovary's consulting-room, and did not write down the phrenological head, which was considered an "instrument of his profession;" but in the kitchen they counted the plates, the saucepans, the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all the nick-nacks on the whatnot. They examined her dresses, the linen, the dressing- room; and her whole existence, to its most intimate details, was, like a corpse on whom a post-mortem is made, outspread before the eyes of these three men. Maitre Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a white choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to time -- " Allow me, madame. You allow me 1" Often he uttered exclamations. " Charming ! very pretty." Then ho began writing again, dipping his pen into the horn inkstand in his left hand. When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She kept a desk there in which Kodolphe's letters were locked. It had to be opened. " Ah ! a correspondence," said Maitre Hareng, with a discreet smile. "But allow me, for. I must make sure the box contains nothing else." And he tipped up the paperslightly, as if to shake out napoleons. Then she grew angered to see this coarse hand, with fingers red and pulpy like slugs, touching these pages against which her heart had beaten. They went at last F61icit6 came back. Emma had sent her out to watcli for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hur...