The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy,
whitish light enter softly. Emma felt about,
opening and closing her eyes, while the drops of dew
hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole
around her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her
to him, and pressed her to his breast.
Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers
of the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and
looked at herself in his shaving-glass. Often
she even put between her teeth the big pipe that lay
on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces
of sugar near a bottle of water.
It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye.
Then Emma cried. She would have wished never
to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than herself
forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing
her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.
“What is the matter with you?” she said.
“Are you ill? Tell me!”
At last he declared with a serious air that her visits
were becoming imprudent—that she was compromising
herself.
Gradually Rodolphe’s fears took possession of
her. At first, 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
duckhunting except in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite
his respect for the laws, was infringing them, and
so he every moment expected to see the rural guard
turn up. But this anxiety whetted his pleasure,
and, all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself
on his luck and on his cuteness. At sight of
Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at
once entered upon a conversation.
“It isn’t warm; it’s nipping.”
Emma answered nothing. He went on—
“And you’re out so early?”
