Page 95 - madame-bovary

due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the
neighboring country.
Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and
the Ile-de-France, a bastard land whose language is with-
out accent and its landscape is without character. It is there
that they make the worst Neufchatel cheeses of all the ar-
rondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is costly
because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable
soil full of sand and flints.
Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to
Yonville, but about this time a cross-road was made which
joins that of Abbeville to that of Amiens, and is occasion-
ally used by the Rouen wagoners on their way to Flanders.
Yonville-l’Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of its
‘new outlet.’ Instead of improving the soil, they persist in
keeping up the pasture lands, however depreciated they
may be in value, and the lazy borough, growing away from
the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. It is seem from
afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking a si-
esta by the water-side.
At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a road-
way, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line
to the first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges,
are in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings,
wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries scattered under
thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to the
branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes,
reach down over about a third of the low windows, whose
coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle like the bot-

Madame Bovary