Chapter summary
The day after the summons, the bailiff Hareng, with two witnesses, makes an inventory of the goods of Emma Bovary, and on Sunday she goes around Rouen looking for money: the bankers refuse, and Léon, at the hotel, tries in vain to raise three thousand francs and, when she suggests he take them from the notary's office, invents a friend, Morel, who will lend her the money the next day. On the way back, Emma thinks she sees the viscount pass by in a carriage, and on the stagecoach she watches Homais giving advice and promising an ointment to a blind man on the road, to whom she throws five francs. The next morning the poster for the sale of the furniture is on the square, and Emma goes to Guillaumin, who takes advantage of her distress to make a pass at her and sees her leave; then she begs Binet, the tax collector, who recoils in horror under the gaze of two neighbors hidden in the attic, and takes refuge at the house of her aunt, Aunt Rolet, until she decides to ask Rodolphe Boulanger for help.
Analysis
Emma runs around for money because she needs Charles not to know: she has Félicité watch over her husband during the inventory, hides the attic guard by saying the noise is the skylight, and asks Léon for whatever she thinks might be possible, taking it from the notary's office. The text gives her gaze an infernal boldness; Léon, who panics, invents that a friend, Morel, arrives at night and may perhaps lend the money, only to avoid being found out. The day ends in solitude because each one protects himself.
The inventory turns Emma's intimacy into public spectacle, the same gesture that the whole novel will make with her until the last line: exposing from the outside what was inside.
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