Page 96 - madame-bovary

toms of bottles. Against the plaster wall diagonally crossed
by black joists, a meagre pear-tree sometimes leans and the
ground-floors have at their door a small swing-gate to keep
out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped
in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrow-
er, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a
bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a
broomstick; there is a blacksmith’s forge and then a wheel-
wright’s, with two or three new carts outside that partly
block the way. Then across an open space appears a white
house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his
finger on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight
of steps; scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary’s
house, and the finest in the place.
*The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of
notaries.
The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty pac-
es farther down, at the entrance of the square. The little
cemetery that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast high,
is so full of graves that the old stones, level with the ground,
form a continuous pavement, on which the grass of itself
has marked out regular green squares. The church was re-
built during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The
wooden roof is beginning to rot from the top, and here and
there has black hollows in its blue colour. Over the door,
where the organ should be, is a loft for the men, with a spiral
staircase that reverberates under their wooden shoes.
The daylight coming through the plain glass windows
falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which