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 and its landscape is
without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel
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 cross-road 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
riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along the banks like a
cowherd 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 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 bottoms 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 narrower,
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 wheelwright'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 th