Page 344 - madame-bovary

their yard gates.
Those who had secured seats the evening before kept it
waiting; some even were still in bed in their houses. Hi-
vert called, shouted, swore; then he got down from his seat
and went and knocked loudly at the doors. The wind blew
through the cracked windows.
The four seats, however, filled up. The carriage rolled
off; rows of apple-trees followed one upon another, and the
road between its two long ditches, full of yellow water, rose,
constantly narrowing towards the horizon.
Emma knew it from end to end; she knew that after a
meadow there was a sign-post, next an elm, a barn, or the
hut of a lime-kiln tender. Sometimes even, in the hope of
getting some surprise, she shut her eyes, but she never lost
the clear perception of the distance to be traversed.
At last the brick houses began to follow one another
more closely, the earth resounded beneath the wheels, the
‘Hirondelle’ glided between the gardens, where through an
opening one saw statues, a periwinkle plant, clipped yews,
and a swing. Then on a sudden the town appeared. Slop-
ing down like an amphitheatre, and drowned in the fog, it
widened out beyond the bridges confusedly. Then the open
country spread away with a monotonous movement till it
touched in the distance the vague line of the pale sky. Seen
thus from above, the whole landscape looked immovable
as a picture; the anchored ships were massed in one cor-
ner, the river curved round the foot of the green hills, and
the isles, oblique in shape, lay on the water, like large, mo-
tionless, black fishes. The factory chimneys belched forth