Page 94 - madame-bovary

CHAPTER ONE

onville-l’Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey
Yof which not even the ruins remain) is a market-town
twenty-four miles from Rouen, between the Abbeville and
Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley watered by the Rieule,
a little river that runs into the Andelle after turning three
water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout that
the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.
We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight
on to the top of the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The
river that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions
with distinct physiognomies—all on the left is pasture land,
all of the right arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge
of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of the
Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently ris-
ing, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond
cornfields. The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a
white line the colour of the roads and of the plains, and the
country is like a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet
cape bordered with a fringe of silver.
Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of
the forest of Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills
scarred from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they
are rain tracks, and these brick-tones standing out in nar-
row streaks against the grey colour of the mountain are