Page 101 - madame-bovary

ard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!’ she went on,
speaking to herself, ‘the table that comes in so handy for
folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season,
I have slept six visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn’t
come!’
‘Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen’s dinner?’
‘Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the
clock strikes six you’ll see him come in, for he hasn’t his
equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have
his seat in the small parlour. He’d rather die than dine any-
where else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular
about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes
comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn’t so much as
look at what he eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks
a rough word!’
‘Well, you see, there’s a great difference between an
educated man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-col-
lector.’
Six o’clock struck. Binet came in.
He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round
his thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knot-
ted over the top of his head with string, showed under the
turned-up peak a bald forehead, flattened by the constant
wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair
collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round, well-blacked
boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking
out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular
line of fair whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, af-
ter the fashion of a garden border, his long, wan face, whose

100 Madame Bovary