Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubertis like a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape borderedwith a fringe of silver.spread riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along thethe lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturallyBefore us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the banks like a cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side.forest of Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway,from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain tracks, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to theand these brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in thegrey colour of the mountain are due to the quantity of iron middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses,springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country. cart-sheds and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders,poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. The thatchedHere we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and theIle-de-France, a bastard land whose language is without accent roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about aand its landscape is without character. It is there that they make third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses havethe worst Neufchatel cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against thethe other hand, farming is costly because so much manure is plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre peartreesometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their doorneeded to enrich this friable soil full of sand and flints.Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilferingYonville, but about this time a cross-road was made which crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But thejoins that of Abbeville to that of Amiens, and is occasionally courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and theused by the Rouen wagoners on their way to Flanders. Yonvillel’Abbayehas remained stationary in spite of its “new outlet.” from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith’s forgefences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a windowInstead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the and then a wheelwright’s, with two or three new carts outsidepasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and that partly block the way. Then across an open space appears61