mouth, where there are a few trout
that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.

[Footnote 4: From Part II of "Madame Bovary." Translated by Eleanor
Marx-Aveling. Copyright, 1901, by George Munro's Sons.]

We leave the highroad at a Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of
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 on 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 rising,
broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blonde corn-fields.
The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the color 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 St. Jean hills scarred from top to bottom
with red irregular lines; they are rain-tracks, and these brick tones,
standing out in narrow streaks against the gray color of the mountain,
are 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 without accent as its
landscape is without character. It is there that they make the worst
Neuchatel cheeses of all the _arrondissement_; 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 crossroad was made which joins that of Abbeville to
that of Amiens, and is occasionally 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 riverward. It is seen from afar sprawling along the
banks like a cow-herd taking a siesta by the water-side.

At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted
with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses
in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in