Page 219 - madame-bovary

CHAPTER TEN

radually Rodolphe’s fears took possession of her. At
Gfirst, love had intoxicated her; and she had thought
of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to
her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it
should be disturbed. When she came back from his house
she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form
that passed in the horizon, and every village window from
which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the
noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and
trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.
One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly
thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed
to be aimed at her. It stuck out sideways from the end of
a small tub half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch.
Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on,
and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He
had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down
over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain
Binet lying in ambush for wild ducks.
‘You ought to have called out long ago!’ he exclaimed;
‘When one sees a gun, one should always give warning.’
The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he
had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited duck-
hunting except in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite his respect

1 Madame Bovary