SONS OF THE CHURCH.
Marcel reappeared next day at three o'clock, his face green, his eyes
bloodshot, a lump on his forehead, his breeches torn, his breath tainted
with a strong smell of brandy, and his person covered with dirt.
He had been, according to an annual custom of his, six leagues away at
Iqueville to enjoy a midnight repast with a friend; and, stuttering more
than ever, crying, wishing to beat himself, he begged of them for
pardon, as if he had committed a crime. His masters granted it to him. A
singular feeling of serenity rendered them indulgent.
The snow had suddenly melted, and they walked about the garden, inhaling
the genial air, delighted merely with living.
Was it only chance that had kept them from death? Bouvard felt deeply
affected. Pécuchet recalled his first commission, and, full of
gratitude to the Force, the Cause, on which they depended, the idea took
possession of them to read pious works.
The Gospel dilated their souls, dazzled them like a sun. They perceived
Jesus standing on a mountain, with one arm raised, while below the
multitude listened to Him; or else on the margin of a lake in the midst
of the apostles, while they drew in their nets; next on the ass, in the
clamour of the "alleluias," His hair fanned by the quivering palms;
finally, lifted high upon the Cross, bending down His head, from which
eternally falls a dew of blood upon the world. What won them, what
ravished them, was His tenderness for the humble, His defence of the
poor, His exaltation of the oppressed; and they found in that Book,
wherein Heaven unfolds itself, nothing theological in the midst of so
many precepts, no dogma, no requirement, save purity of heart.
As for the miracles, their reason was not astonished by them. They had
been acquainted with them from their childhood. The loftiness of St.
John enchanted Pécuchet, and better disposed him to appreciate the
_Imitation_.
Here were no more parables, flowers, birds, but lamentations--a
compression of the soul into itself.
Bouvard grew sad as he turned over these pages, which seemed to have
been written in foggy weather, in the depths of a cloister, between a
belfry and a tomb. Our mortal life appeared there so wretched that one
must needs forget it and return to God. And the two poor men, after all
their disappointments, experienced that need of simple natures--to love
something, to find rest for their souls.
They studied _Ecclesiastes_, _Isaiah_, _Jeremiah_.
But the Bible dismayed them with its lion-voiced prophets, the crashing
of thunder in the skies, all the sobbings of Gehenna, and its God
scattering empires as the wind scatters clouds.
They read it on Sunday at the hour of vespers, while the bell was
ringing.
One day they went to mass, and then came back. It was a kind of
recreation at the end of the week. The Count and Countess de Faverges
bowed to them from the distance, a circumstance which was remarked. The
justice of the peace said to them with blinking eyes:
"Excellent! You have my approval."
All the village dames now sent them consecrated bread. The Abbé Jeufroy
paid them a visit; they returned it; friendly intercourse followed; and
the priest avoided talking about religion.
They were astonished at this reserve, so much so that Pécuchet, with an
assumption of indifference, asked him what was the way to set about
obtaining faith.
"Practise first of all."
They began to practise, the one with hope, the other with defiance,
Bouvard being convinced that he would never be a devotee. For a month he
regularly followed all the services; but, unlike Pécuchet, he did not
wish to subject himself to Lenten fare.
Was this a hygienic measure? We know what hygiene is worth. A matter of
the proprieties? Down with the proprieties! A mark of submission towards
the Church? He laughed at it just as much; in short, he declared the
rule absurd, pharisaical, and contrary to the spirit of the Gospel.
On Good Friday in other years they used to eat whatever Germaine served
up to them. But on this occasion Bouvard ordered a beefsteak. He sat
down and cut up the meat, and Marcel, scandalised, kept staring at him,
while Pécuchet gravely took the skin off his slice of codfish.
Bouvard remained with his fork in one hand, his knife in the other. At
length, making up his mind, he raised a mouthful to his lips. All at
once his hands began to tremble, his heavy countenance grew pale, his
head fell back.
"Are you ill?"
"No. But----" And he made an avowal. In consequence of his education (it
was stronger than himself), he could not eat meat on this day for fear
of dying.
Pécuchet, without misusing his victory, took advantage of it to live in
his own fashion. One evening he returned home with a look of sober joy
imprinted on his face, and, letting the word escape, said that he had
just been at confession.
Thereupon they argued about the importance of confession.
Bouvard acknowledged that of the early Christians, which was made
publicly: the modern is too easy. However, he did not deny that this
examination concerning ourselves might be an element of progress, a
leaven of morality.
Pécuchet, desirous of perfection, searched for his vices: for some time
past the puffings of pride were gone. His taste for work freed him from
idleness; as for gluttony, nobody was more moderate. Sometimes he was
carried away by anger.
He made a vow that he would be so no more.
In the next place, it would be necessary to acquire the virtues: first
of all, humility, that is to say, to believe yourself incapable of any
merit, unworthy of the least recompense, to immolate your spirit, and
to place yourself so low that people may trample you under their feet
like the mud of the roads. He was far as yet from these dispositions.
Another virtue was wanting in him--chastity. For inwardly he regretted
Mélie, and the pastel of the lady in the Louis XV. dress disturbed him
by her ample display of bosom. He shut it up in a cupboard, and
redoubled his modesty, so much so that he feared to cast glances at his
own person.
In order to mortify himself, Pécuchet gave up his little glass after
meals, confined himself to four pinches of snuff in the day, and even in
the coldest weather he did not any longer put on his cap.
One day, Bouvard, who was fastening up the vine, placed a ladder against
the wall of the terrace near the house, and, without intending it, found
himself landed in Pécuchet's room.
His friend, naked up to the middle, first gently smacked his shoulders
with the cat-o'-nine-tails without quite undressing; then, getting
animated, pulled off his shirt, lashed his back, and sank breathless on
a chair.
Bouvard was troubled, as if at the unveiling of a mystery on which he
should not have gazed.
For some time he had noticed a greater cleanliness about the floor,
fewer holes in the napkins, and an improvement in the diet--changes
which were due to the intervention of Reine, the curé's housekeeper.
Mixing up the affairs of the Church with those of her kitchen, strong as
a ploughman, and devoted though disrespectful, she gained admittance
into households, gave advice, and became mistress in them. Pécuchet
placed implicit confidence in her experience.
On one occasion she brought to him a corpulent man with narrow eyes like
a Chinaman, and a nose like a vulture's beak. This was M. Gouttman, a
dealer in pious articles. He unpacked some of them shut up in boxes
under the cart-shed: a cross, medals, and beads of all sizes; candelabra
for oratories, portable altars, tinsel bouquets, and sacred hearts of
blue pasteboard, St. Josephs with red beards, and porcelain crucifixes.
The price alone stood in his way.
Gouttman did not ask for money. He preferred barterings; and, having
gone up to the museum, he offered a number of his wares for their
collection of old iron and lead.
They appeared hideous to Bouvard. But Pécuchet's glance, the persistency
of Reine, and the bluster of the dealer were effectual in making him
yield.
Gouttman, seeing him so accommodating, wanted the halberd in addition;
Bouvard, tired of having exhibited its working, surrendered it. The
entire valuation was made. "These gentlemen still owed a hundred
francs." It was settled by three bills payable at three months; and they
congratulated themselves on a good bargain.
Their acquisitions were distributed through the various rooms. A crib
filled with hay and a cork cathedral decorated the museum.
On Pécuchet's chimney-piece there was a St. John the Baptist in wax;
along the corridor were ranged the portraits of episcopal dignitaries;
and at the bottom of the staircase, under a chained lamp, stood a
Blessed Virgin in an azure mantle and a crown of stars. Marcel cleaned
up those splendours, unable to imagine anything more beautiful in
Paradise.
What a pity that the St. Peter was broken, and how nicely it would have
done in the vestibule!
Pécuchet stopped sometimes before the old pit for composts, where he
discovered the tiara, one sandal, and the tip of an ear; allowed sighs
to escape him, then went on gardening, for now he combined manual labour
with religious exercises, and dug the soil attired in the monk's habit,
comparing himself to Bruno. This disguise might be a sacrilege. He gave
it up.
But he assumed the ecclesiastical style, no doubt owing to his intimacy
with the curé. He had the same smile, the same tone of voice, and, like
the priest too, he slipped both hands with a chilly air into his sleeves
up to the wrists. A day came when he was pestered by the crowing of the
cock and disgusted with the roses; he no longer went out, or only cast
sullen glances over the fields.
Bouvard suffered himself to be led to the May devotions. The children
singing hymns, the gorgeous display of lilacs, the festoons of verdure,
had imparted to him, so to speak, a feeling of imperishable youth. God
manifested Himself to his heart through the fashioning of nests, the
transparency of fountains, the bounty of the sun; and his friend's
devotion appeared to him extravagant, fastidious.
"Why do you groan during mealtime?"
"We ought to eat with groans," returned Pécuchet, "for it was in that
way that man lost his innocence"--a phrase which he had read in the
_Seminarist's Manual_, two duodecimo volumes he had borrowed from M.
Jeufroy: and he drank some of the water of La Salette, gave himself up
with closed doors to ejaculatory prayers, and aspired to join the
confraternity of St. Francis.
In order to obtain the gift of perseverance, he resolved to make a
pilgrimage in honour of the Blessed Virgin. He was perplexed as to the
choice of a locality. Should it be Nôtre Dame de Fourviers, de Chartres,
d'Embrun, de Marseille, or d'Auray? Nôtre Dame de la Délivrande was
nearer, and it suited just as well.
"You will accompany me?"
"I should look like a greenhorn," said Bouvard.
After all, he might come back a believer; he did not object to being
one; and so he yielded through complaisance.
Pilgrimages ought to be made on foot. But forty-three kilometers would
be trying; and the public conveyances not being adapted for meditation,
they hired an old cabriolet, which, after a twelve hours' journey, set
them down before the inn.
They got an apartment with two beds and two chests of drawers,
supporting two water-jugs in little oval basins; and "mine host"
informed them that this was "the chamber of the Capuchins" under the
Terror. There La Dame de la Délivrande had been concealed with so much
precaution that the good fathers said mass there clandestinely.
This gave Pécuchet pleasure, and he read aloud a sketch of the history
of the chapel, which had been taken downstairs into the kitchen.
It had been founded in the beginning of the second century by St.
Régnobert, first bishop of Lisieux, or by St. Ragnebert, who lived in
the seventh, or by Robert the Magnificent in the middle of the eleventh.
The Danes, the Normans, and, above all, the Protestants, had burnt and
ravaged it at various epochs. About 1112, the original statue was
discovered by a sheep, which indicated the place where it was by tapping
with its foot in a field of grass; and on this spot Count Baudouin
erected a sanctuary.
"'Her miracles are innumerable. A merchant of Bayeux, taken captive by
the Saracens, invoked her: his fetters fell off, and he escaped. A miser
found a nest of rats in his corn loft, appealed to her aid, and the rats
went away. The touch of a medal, which had been rubbed over her effigy,
caused an old materialist from Versailles to repent on his death-bed.
She gave back speech to Sieur Adeline, who lost it for having
blasphemed; and by her protection, M. and Madame de Becqueville had
sufficient strength to live chastely in the married state.
"'Amongst those whom she cured of irremediable diseases are mentioned
Mademoiselle de Palfresne, Anne Lirieux, Marie Duchemin, François Dufai,
and Madame de Jumillac _née_ d'Osseville.
"'Persons of high rank have visited her: Louis XI., Louis XIII., two
daughters of Gaston of Orléans, Cardinal Wiseman, Samirrhi, patriarch of
Antioch, Monseigneur Véroles, vicar apostolic of Manchuria; and the
Archbishop of Quelen came to return thanks to her for the conversion of
Prince Talleyrand.'"
"She might," said Pécuchet, "convert you also!"
Bouvard, already in bed, gave vent to a species of grunt, and presently
was fast asleep.
Next morning at six o'clock they entered the chapel.
Another was in course of construction. Canvas and boards blocked up the
nave; and the monument, in a rococo style, displeased Bouvard, above
all, the altar of red marble with its Corinthian pilasters.
The miraculous statue, in a niche at the left of the choir, was
enveloped in a spangled robe. The beadle came up with a wax taper for
each of them. He fixed it in a kind of candlestick overlooking the
balustrade, asked for three francs, made a bow, and disappeared.
Then they surveyed the votive offerings. Inscriptions on slabs bore
testimony to the gratitude of the faithful. They admired two swords in
the form of a cross presented by a pupil of the Polytechnic School,
brides' bouquets, military medals, silver hearts, and in the corner,
along the floor, a forest of crutches.
A priest passed out of the sacristy carrying the holy pyx.
When he had remained for a few minutes at the bottom of the altar, he
ascended the three steps, said the _Oremus_, the _Introit_, and the
_Kyrie_, which the boy who served mass recited all in one breath on
bended knees.
The number present was small--a dozen or fifteen old women. The rattling
of their beads could be heard accompanying the noise of a hammer driving
in stones. Pécuchet bent over his prie-dieu and responded to the
"Amens." During the elevation, he implored Our Lady to send him a
constant and indestructible faith. Bouvard, in a chair beside him, took
up his Euchology, and stopped at the litany of the Blessed Virgin.
"Most pure, most chaste, most venerable, most amiable, most
powerful--Tower of ivory--House of gold--Gate of the morning."
These words of adoration, these hyperboles drew him towards the being
who has been the object of so much reverence. He dreamed of her as she
is represented in church paintings, above a mass of clouds, cherubims at
her feet, the Infant Jesus on her breast--Mother of tendernesses, upon
whom all the sorrows of the earth have a claim--ideal of woman carried
up to heaven; for man exalts that love arising out of the depths of the
soul, and his highest aspiration is to rest upon her heart.
The mass was finished. They passed along by the dealers' sheds which
lined the walls in front of the church. They saw there images,
holy-water basins, urns with fillets of gold, Jesus Christs made of
cocoanuts, and ivory chaplets; and the sun brought into prominence the
rudeness of the paintings, the hideousness of the drawings. Bouvard, who
had some abominable specimens at his own residence, was indulgent
towards these. He bought a little Virgin of blue paste. Pécuchet
contented himself with a rosary as a memento.
The dealers called out: "Come on! come on! For five francs, for three
francs, for sixty centimes, for two sous, don't refuse Our Lady!"
The two pilgrims sauntered about without making any selections from the
proffered wares. Uncomplimentary remarks were made about them.
"What is it they want, these creatures?"
"Perhaps they are Turks."
"Protestants, rather."
A big girl dragged Pécuchet by the frock-coat; an old man in spectacles
placed a hand on his shoulder; all were bawling at the same time; and a
number of them left their sheds, and, surrounding the pair, redoubled
their solicitations and effronteries.
Bouvard could not stand this any longer.
"Let us alone, for God's sake!"
The crowd dispersed. But one fat woman followed them for some distance,
and exclaimed that they would repent of it.
When they got back to the inn they found Gouttman in the café. His
business called him to these quarters, and he was talking to a man who
was examining accounts at a table.
This person had a leather cap, a very wide pair of trousers, a red
complexion, and a good figure in spite of his white hair: he had the
appearance at the same time of a retired officer and an old strolling
player.
From time to time he rapped out an oath; then, when Gouttman replied in
a mild tone, he calmed down at once and passed to another part of the
accounts.
Bouvard who had been closely watching him, at the end of a quarter of an
hour came up to his side.
"Barberou, I believe?"
"Bouvard!" exclaimed the man in the cap, and they embraced each other.
Barberou had in the course of twenty years experienced many changes of
fortune. He had been editor of a newspaper, an insurance agent, and
manager of an oyster-bed.
"I will tell you all about it," he said.
At last, having returned to his original calling, he was travelling for
a Bordeaux house, and Gouttman, who took care of the diocese, disposed
of wines for him to the ecclesiastics. "But," he hurriedly added, "you
must pardon me one minute; then I shall be at your service."
He was proceeding with the examination of the accounts, and all of a
sudden he jumped up excitedly.
"What! two thousand?"
"Certainly."
"Ha! it's wrong, that's what it is!"
"What do you say?"
"I say that I've seen Hérambert myself," replied Barberou in a passion.
"The invoice makes it four thousand. No humbug!"
The dealer was not put out of countenance.
"Well, it discharges you--what next?"
Barberou, as he stood there with his face at first pale and then purple,
impressed Bouvard and Pécuchet with the apprehension that he was about
to strangle Gouttman.
He sat down, folded his arms, and said:
"You are a vile rascal, you must admit."
"No insults, Monsieur Barberou. There are witnesses. Be careful!"
"I'll bring an action against you!"
"Ta! ta! ta!" Then having fastened together his books, Gouttman lifted
the brim of his hat: "I wish you luck on't!" With these words he went
off.
Barberou explained the facts: For a credit of a thousand francs doubled
by a succession of renewals with interest, he had delivered to Gouttman
three thousand francs' worth of wines. This would pay his debt with a
profit of a thousand francs; but, on the contrary, he owed three
thousand on the transaction! His employers might dismiss him; they might
even prosecute him!
"Blackguard! robber! dirty Jew! And this fellow dines at priests'
houses! Besides, everything that touches the clerical headpiece----"
And he went on railing against the priests, and he struck the table with
such violence that the little statue was near falling.
"Gently!" said Bouvard.
"Hold on! What's this here?" And Barberou having removed the covering of
the little Virgin: "A pilgrimage bauble! Yours?"
"'Tis mine," said Pécuchet.
"You grieve me," returned Barberou; "but I'll give you a wrinkle on that
point. Don't be afraid." And as one must be a philosopher, and as there
is no use in fretting, he invited them to come and lunch with him.
The three sat down together at table.
Barberou was agreeable, recalled old times, took hold of the
maid-servant's waist, and wished to measure the breadth of Bouvard's
stomach. He would soon see them again, and would bring them a droll
book.
The idea of his visit was rather pleasant to them. They chatted about it
in the omnibus for an hour, while the horse was trotting. Then Pécuchet
shut his eyes. Bouvard also relapsed into silence. Internally he felt an
inclination towards religion.
"M. Marescot had the day before called to make an important
communication"--Marcel knew no more about it.
They did not see the notary till three days after; and at once he
explained the matter.
Madame Bordin offered to buy the farm from M. Bouvard, and to pay him
seven thousand five hundred francs a year.
She had been casting sheep's eyes on it since her youth, knew the
boundaries and lands all around it, its defects and its advantages; and
this desire consumed her like a cancer.
For the good lady, like a true Norman, cherished above everything landed
estate, less for the security of the capital than for the happiness of
treading on soil that belonged to herself. In that hope she had devoted
herself to inquiries and inspections from day to day, and had practised
prolonged economies; and she waited with impatience for Bouvard's
answer.
He was perplexed, not desiring that Pécuchet one day should be
fortuneless; but it was necessary to seize the opportunity--which was
the result of the pilgrimage, for the second time Providence had shown
itself favourable to them. They proposed the following conditions: An
annual payment, not of seven thousand five hundred francs, but of six
thousand francs, provided it should pass to the survivor.
Marescot made the point that one of them was in delicate health. The
constitution of the other gave him an apoplectic tendency. Madame
Bordin, carried away by her ruling passion, signed the contract.
Bouvard got into a melancholy frame of mind about it. Somebody might
desire his death; and this reflection inspired him with serious
thoughts, ideas about God and eternity.
Three days after, M. Jeufroy invited them to the annual dinner which it
was his custom to give to his colleagues. The dinner began at two
o'clock in the afternoon, and was to finish at eleven at night.
Perry was used at it as a beverage, and puns were circulated. The Abbé
Pruneau, before they broke up, composed an acrostic; M. Bougon performed
card-tricks; and Cerpet, a young curate, sang a little ballad which
bordered on gallantry.
The curé frequently came to see them. He presented religion under
graceful colours. And, after all, what risk would they run? So Bouvard
expressed his willingness to approach the holy table shortly, and
Pécuchet was to participate in the sacrament on the same occasion.
The great day arrived. The church, on account of the first communions,
was thronged with worshippers. The village shopkeepers and their
womenfolk were crowded close together in their seats, and the common
people either remained standing up behind or occupied the gallery over
the church door.
What was about to take place was inexplicable--so Bouvard reflected; but
reason does not suffice for the comprehension of certain things. Great
men have admitted that. Let him do as much as they had done; and so, in
a kind of torpor, he contemplated the altar, the censer, the tapers,
with his head a little light, for he had eaten nothing, and experienced
a singular weakness.
Pécuchet, by meditating on the Passion of Jesus Christ, excited himself
to outbursts of love. He would have liked to offer his soul up to Him as
well as the souls of others--and the ecstasies, the transports, the
illumination of the saints, all beings, the entire universe. Though he
prayed with fervour, the different parts of the mass seemed to him a
little long.
At length the little boys knelt down on the first step of the altar,
forming with their coats a black band, above which rose light or dark
heads of hair at unequal elevations. Then the little girls took their
places, with their veils falling from beneath their wreaths. From a
distance they resembled a row of white clouds at the end of the choir.
Then it was the turn of the great personages.
The first on the gospel-side was Pécuchet; but, too much moved, no
doubt, he kept swaying his head right and left. The curé found
difficulty in putting the host into his mouth, and as he received it he
turned up the whites of his eyes.
Bouvard, on the contrary, opened his jaws so widely, that his tongue
hung over his lip like a streamer. On rising he jostled against Madame
Bordin. Their eyes met. She smiled; without knowing the reason why, he
reddened.
After Madame Bordin, Mademoiselle de Faverges, the countess, their lady
companion, and a gentleman who was not known at Chavignolles approached
the altar in a body.
The last two were Placquevent and Petit, the schoolmaster, and then, all
of a sudden, Gorju made his appearance. He had got rid of the tuft on
his chin; and, as he went back to his place, he had his arms crossed
over his breast in a very edifying fashion.
The curé harangued the little boys. Let them take care later on in life
not to act like Judas, who betrayed his God, but to preserve always
their robe of innocence.
Pécuchet was regretting his when there was a sudden moving of the seats:
the mothers were impatient to embrace their children.
The parishioners, on their way out, exchanged felicitations. Some shed
tears. Madame de Faverges, while waiting for her carriage, turned round
towards Bouvard and Pécuchet, and presented her future son-in-law:
"Baron de Mahurot, engineer." The count was sorry not to have the
pleasure of their company. He would return the following week. "Pray
bear it in mind."
The carriage having now come up, the ladies of the château departed, and
the throng dispersed.
They found a parcel inside their own grounds in the middle of the grass.
The postman, as the house had been shut up, had thrown it over the wall.
It was the work which Barberou had promised to send, _Examination of
Christianity_, by Louis Hervieu, a former pupil of the Normal School.
Pécuchet would have nothing to say to it, and Bouvard had no desire to
make himself acquainted with it.
He had been repeatedly told that the sacrament would transform him. For
several days he awaited its blossomings in his conscience. He remained
the same as ever, and a painful astonishment took possession of him.
What! The Flesh of God mingles with our flesh, and it produces no effect
there! The Thought which governs the world does not illuminate our
spirits! The Supreme Power abandons us to impotence!
M. Jeufroy, while reassuring him, prescribed for him the catechism of
the Abbé Gaume.
On the other hand, Pécuchet's devotion had become developed. He would
have liked to communicate under two species, kept singing psalms as he
walked along the corridor, and stopped the people of Chavignolles to
argue with, and to convert them. Vaucorbeil laughed in his face; Girbal
shrugged his shoulders; and the captain called him "Tartuffe."
It was now thought that they were going too far.
It is an excellent custom to consider things as so many symbols. If the
thunder rumbles, imagine to yourself the Last Judgment; at sight of a
cloudless sky, think of the abode of the blessed; say to yourself in
your walks that every step brings you nearer to death. Pécuchet observed
this method. When he took hold of his clothes, he thought of the carnal
envelope in which the Second Person of the Trinity was clad; the ticking
of the clock recalled to him the beatings of His heart, and the prick of
a pin the nails of the Cross. But in vain did he remain on his knees for
hours and multiply his fasts and strain his imagination. He did not
succeed in getting detached from self; it was impossible to attain to
perfect contemplation.
He had recourse to mystic authors: St. Theresa, John of the Cross, Louis
of Granada, Simpoli, and, of the more modern, Monseigneur Chaillot.
Instead of the sublimities which he expected, he encountered only
platitudes, a very disjointed style, frigid imagery, and many
comparisons drawn from lapidaries' shops.
He learned, however, that there is an active purgation and a passive
purgation, an internal vision and an external vision, four kinds of
prayers, nine excellencies in love, six degrees in humility, and that
the wounding of the soul is not very different from spiritual theft.
Some points embarrassed him.
"Since the flesh is accursed, how is it that we are bound to thank God
for the boon of existence?" "What proportion must be observed between
the fear indispensable to the salvation and the hope which is no less
so?" "Where is the sign of grace?" etc.
M. Jeufroy's answers were simple.
"Don't worry yourself. By desiring to sift everything we rush along a
perilous slope."
The _Catechism of Perseverance_, by Gaume, had disgusted Pécuchet so
much that he took up Louis Hervieu's book. It was a summary of modern
exegesis, prohibited by the government. Barberou, as a republican, had
bought the book.
It awakened doubts in Bouvard's mind, and, first of all, on original
sin. "If God had created man peccable, He ought not to punish him; and
evil is anterior to the Fall, since there were already volcanoes and
wild beasts. In short, this dogma upsets my notions of justice."
"What would you have?" said the curé. "It is one of those truths about
which everybody is agreed, without being able to furnish proofs of it;
and we ourselves make the crimes of their fathers rebound on the
children. Thus morality and law justify this decree of Providence, since
we find it in nature."
Bouvard shook his head. He had also doubts about hell.
"For every punishment should look to the amelioration of the guilty
person, which is impossible where the penalty is eternal; and how many
are enduring it? Just think! All the ancients, the Jews, the Mussulmans,
the idolaters, the heretics, and the children who have died without
baptism--those children created by God, and for what end?--for the
purpose of being punished for a sin which they did not commit!"
"Such is St. Augustine's opinion," added the curé; "and St. Fulgentius
involves even the unborn child in damnation. The Church, it is true, has
come to no decision on this matter. One remark, however. It is not God,
but the sinner who damns himself; and the offence being infinite, since
God is infinite, the punishment must be infinite. Is that all, sir?"
"Explain the Trinity to me," said Bouvard.
"With pleasure. Let us take a comparison: the three sides of a triangle,
or rather our soul, which contains being, knowing, and willing; what we
call faculty in the case of man is person in God. There is the mystery."
"But the three sides of the triangle are not each the triangle; these
three faculties of the soul do not make three souls, and your persons of
the Trinity are three Gods."
"Blasphemy!"
"So then there is only one person, one God, one substance affected in
three ways!"
"Let us adore without understanding," said the curé.
"Be it so," said Bouvard. He was afraid of being taken for an atheist,
and getting into bad odour at the château.
They now visited there three times a week, about five o'clock in winter,
and the cup of tea warmed them. The count's manners recalled the ease of
the ancient court; the countess, placid and plump, exhibited much
discernment about everything. Mademoiselle Yolande, their daughter, was
the type of the young person, the angel of "keepsakes"; and Madame de
Noares, their lady companion, resembled Pécuchet in having a pointed
nose like him.
The first time they entered the drawing-room she was defending somebody.
"I assure you he is changed. His gift is a proof of it."
This somebody was Gorju. He had made the betrothed couple an offer of a
Gothic prie-dieu. It was brought. The arms of the two houses appeared
on it in coloured relief. M. de Mahurot seemed satisfied with it, and
Madame de Noares said to him:
"You will remember my _protégés_?"
Then she brought in two children, a boy of a dozen years and his sister,
who was perhaps ten. Through the holes in their rags could be seen their
limbs, reddened with cold. The one was shod in old slippers, the other
wore only one wooden shoe. Their foreheads disappeared under their hair,
and they stared around them with burning eyeballs like famished wolves.
Madame de Noares told how she had met them that morning on the
high-road. Placquevent could not give any information about them.
They were asked their names.
"Victor--Victorine."
"Where was their father?'
"In jail."
"And what was he doing before that?"
"Nothing."
"Their country?"
"St. Pierre."
"But which St. Pierre?"
The two little ones for sole response, said, snivelling:
"Don't know--don't know."
Their mother was dead, and they were begging.
Madame de Noares explained how dangerous it would be to abandon them;
she moved the countess, piqued the count's sense of honour, was backed
up by mademoiselle, pressed the matter--succeeded.
The gamekeeper's wife would take charge of them. Later, work would be
found for them, and, as they did not know how to read or write, Madame
de Noares gave them lessons herself, with a view to preparing them for
catechism.
When M. Jeufroy used to come to the château, the two youngsters would be
sent for; he would question them, and then deliver a lecture, into which
he would import a certain amount of display on account of his audience.
On one occasion, when the abbé had discoursed about the patriarchs,
Bouvard, on the way home with him and Pécuchet, disparaged them very
much.
"Jacob is notorious for his thieveries, David for his murders, Solomon
for his debaucheries."
The abbé replied that we should look further into the matter. Abraham's
sacrifice is a prefigurement of the Passion; Jacob is another type of
the Messiah, just like Joseph, like the Brazen Serpent, like Moses.
"Do you believe," said Bouvard, "that he composed the 'Pentateuch'?"
"Yes, no doubt."
"And yet his death is recorded in it; the same observation applies to
Joshua; and, as for the Judges, the author informs us that, at the
period whose history he was writing, Israel had not yet kings. The work
was, therefore, written under the Kings. The Prophets, too, astonish
me."
"He's going to deny the Prophets now!"
"Not at all! but their overheated imagination saw Jehovah under
different forms--that of a fire, of a bush, of an old man, of a dove;
and they were not certain of revelation since they are always asking for
a sign."
"Ha! and where have you found out these nice things?"
"In Spinoza."
At this word, the curé jumped.
"Have you read him?"
"God forbid!"
"Nevertheless, sir, science----"
"Sir, no one can be a scholar without being a Christian."
Science furnished a subject for sarcasms on his part:
"Will it make an ear of corn sprout, this science of yours? What do we
know?" he said.
But he did know that the world was created for us; he did know that
archangels are above the angels; he did know that the human body will
rise again such as it was about the age of thirty.
His ecclesiastical self-complacency provoked Bouvard, who, through want
of confidence in Louis Hervieu, had written to Varlot; and Pécuchet,
better informed, asked M. Jeufroy for explanations of Scripture.
The six days of Genesis mean six great epochs. The pillage of the
precious vessels made by the Jews from the Egyptians must be interpreted
to mean intellectual riches, the arts of which they had stolen the
secret. Isaiah did not strip himself completely, _nudus_ in Latin
signifying "up to the hips": thus Virgil advises people to go naked in
order to plough, and that writer would not have given a precept opposed
to decency. Ezekiel devouring a book has nothing extraordinary in it; do
we not speak of devouring a pamphlet, a newspaper?
"But if we see metaphors everywhere, what will become of the facts?"
The abbé maintained, nevertheless, that they were realities.
This way of understanding them appeared disloyal to Pécuchet. He pushed
his investigations further, and brought a note on the contradictions of
the Bible.
"Exodus teaches us that for forty years they offered up sacrifices in
the desert; according to Amos and Jeremiah they offered up none.
Paralipomenon and the book of Esdras are not in agreement as to the
enumeration of the people. In Deuteronomy, Moses saw the Lord face to
face; according to Exodus, he could not see Him. Where, then, is the
inspiration?"
"An additional ground for admitting it," replied M. Jeufroy smiling.
"Impostors have need of connivance; the sincere take no such
precautions. In perplexity, have recourse to the Church. She is always
infallible."
"On whom does her infallibility depend?"
"The Councils of Basle and of Constance attribute it to the councils.
But often the councils are at variance--witness that which decided in
favour of Athanasius and of Arius; those of Florence and Lateran award
it to the Pope."
"But Adrian VI. declares that the Pope may be mistaken, like any other
person."
"Quibbles! All that does not affect the permanence of dogma."
"Louis Hervieu's work points out the variations: baptism was formerly
reserved for adults, extreme unction was not a sacrament till the ninth
century, the Real Presence was decreed in the eighth, purgatory
recognised in the fifteenth, the Immaculate Conception is a thing of
yesterday."
And so it came to pass that Pécuchet did not know what to think of
Jesus. Three Evangelists make him out to be a man. In one passage of St.
John he appears to be equal to God; in another, all the same, to
acknowledge himself His inferior.
The abbé rejoined by citing the letter of King Abgar, the acts of
Pilate, and the testimony of the sibyls, "the foundation of which is
genuine." He found the Virgin again amongst the Gauls, the announcement
of a Redeemer in China, the Trinity everywhere, the Cross on the cap of
the Grand Lama, and in Egypt in the closed hands of the gods; and he
even exhibited an engraving representing a nilometer, which, according
to Pécuchet, was a phallus.
M. Jeufroy secretly consulted his friend Pruneau, who searched for
proofs for him in the authors. A conflict of erudition was waged, and,
lashed by conceit, Pécuchet became abstruse, mythological. He compared
the Virgin to Isis, the Eucharist to the Homa of the Persians, Bacchus
to Moses, Noah's ark to the ship of Xithurus. These analogies
demonstrated to his satisfaction the identity of religions.
But there cannot be several religions, since there is only one God. And
when he was at the end of his arguments, the man in the cassock
exclaimed: "It is a mystery!"
"What is the meaning of that word? Want of knowledge: very good. But if
it denotes a thing the mere statement of which involves contradiction,
it is a piece of stupidity."
And now Pécuchet would never let M. Jeufroy alone. He would surprise him
in the garden, wait for him in the confessional, and take up the
argument again in the sacristy.
The priest had to invent plans in order to escape from him.
One day, after he had started for Sassetot on a sick call, Pécuchet
proceeded along the road in front of him in such a way as to render
conversation inevitable.
It was an evening about the end of August. The red sky began to darken,
and a large cloud lowered above them, regular at the base and forming
volutes at the top.
Pécuchet at first talked about indifferent subjects, then, having
slipped out the word "martyr":
"How many do you think there were of them?"
"A score of millions at least."
"Their number is not so great, according to Origen."
"Origen, you know, is open to suspicion."
A big gust of wind swept past, violently shaking the grass beside the
ditches and the two rows of young elm trees that stretched towards the
end of the horizon.
Pécuchet went on:
"Amongst the martyrs we include many Gaulish bishops killed while
resisting the barbarians, which is no longer the question at issue."
"Do you wish to defend the emperors?"
According to Pécuchet, they had been calumniated.
"The history of the Theban legion is a fable. I also question Symphorosa
and her seven sons, Felicitas and her seven daughters, and the seven
virgins of Ancyra condemned to violation, though septuagenarians, and
the eleven thousand virgins of St. Ursula, of whom one companion was
called _Undecemilla_, a name taken for a figure; still more, the ten
martyrs of Alexandria!"
"And yet--and yet they are found in authors worthy of credit."
Raindrops fell, and the curé unrolled his umbrella; and Pécuchet, when
he was under it, went so far as to maintain that the Catholics had made
more martyrs than the Jews, the Mussulmans, the Protestants, and the
Freethinkers--than all those of Rome in former days.
The priest exclaimed:
"But we find ten persecutions from the reign of Nero to that of Cæsar
Galba!"
"Well! and the massacres of the Albigenses? and St. Bartholomew? and the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes?"
"Deplorable excesses, no doubt; but you do not mean to compare these
people to St. Étienne, St. Lawrence, Cyprian, Polycarp, a crowd of
missionaries?"
"Excuse me! I will remind you of Hypatia, Jerome of Prague, John Huss,
Bruno, Vanini, Anne Dubourg!"
The rain increased, and its drops dashed down with such force that they
rebounded from the ground like little white rockets.
Pécuchet and M. Jeufroy walked on slowly, pressed close to one another,
and the curé said:
"After abominable tortures they were flung into vessels of boiling
water."
"The Inquisition made use of the same kind of torture, and it burned
very well for you."
"Illustrious ladies were exhibited to the public gaze in the
_lupanars_."
"Do you believe Louis XIV.'s dragoons regarded decency?"
"And mark well that the Christians had done nothing against the State."
"No more had the Huguenots."
The wind swept the rain into the air. It clattered on the leaves,
trickled at the side of the road; and the mud-coloured sky intermingled
with the fields, which lay bare after the close of harvest. Not a root
was to be seen. Only, in the distance, a shepherd's hut.
Pécuchet's thin overcoat had no longer a dry thread in it. The water ran
along his spine, got into his boots, into his ears, into his eyes, in
spite of the Amoros headpiece. The curé, while lifting up with one hand
the tail of his cassock, uncovered his legs; and the points of his
three-cornered hat sputtered the water over his shoulders, like the
gargoyles of a cathedral.
They had to stop, and, turning their backs to the storm, they remained
face to face, belly to belly, holding with their four hands the swaying
umbrella.
M. Jeufroy had not interrupted his vindication of the Catholics.
"Did they crucify your Protestants, as was done to St. Simeon; or get a
man devoured by two tigers, as happened to St. Ignatius?"
"But make some allowance for the number of women separated from their
husbands, children snatched from their mothers, and the exile of the
poor across the snow, in the midst of precipices. They huddled them
together in prisons; just when they were at the point of death they were
dragged along on the hurdle."
The abbé sneered. "You will allow me not to believe a word of it. And
our martyrs are less doubtful. St. Blandina was delivered over naked in
a net to a furious cow. St. Julia was beaten to death. St. Taracus, St.
Probus, and St. Andronicus had their teeth broken with a hammer, their
sides torn with iron combs, their hands pierced with reddened nails, and
their scalps carried off."
"You are exaggerating," said Pécuchet. "The death of the martyrs was at
that time an amplification of rhetoric."
"What! of rhetoric?"
"Why, yes; whilst what I relate to you, sir, is history. The Catholics
in Ireland disembowelled pregnant women in order to take their
children----"
"Never!"
"---- and give them to the pigs."
"Come now!"
"In Belgium they buried women alive."
"What nonsense!"
"We have their names."
"And even so," objected the priest, angrily shaking his umbrella, "they
cannot be called martyrs. There are no martyrs outside the Church."
"One word. If the value of a martyr depends on the doctrine, how could
he serve to demonstrate its existence?"
The rain ceased; they did not speak again till they reached the village.
But, on the threshold of the presbytery, the curé said:
"I pity you! really, I pity you!"
Pécuchet immediately told Bouvard about the wrangle. It had filled him
with an antipathy to religion, and, an hour later, seated before a
brushwood fire, they both read the _Curé Meslier_. These dull negations
disgusted Pécuchet; then, reproaching himself for perhaps having
misunderstood heroes, he ran through the history of the most illustrious
martyrs in the Biography.
What a clamour from the populace when they entered the arena! and, if
the lions and the jaguars were too quiet, the people urged them to come
forward by their gestures and their cries. The victims could be seen
covered with gore, smiling where they stood, with their gaze towards
heaven. St. Perpetua bound up her hair in order that she might not look
dejected.
Pécuchet began to reflect. The window was open, the night tranquil; many
stars were shining. There must have passed through these martyrs' souls
things of which we have no idea--a joy, a divine spasm! And Pécuchet, by
dwelling on the subject, believed that he understood this emotion, and
that he would have done the same himself.
"You?"
"Certainly."
"No fudge! Do you believe--yes or no?"
"I don't know."
He lighted a candle; then, his eyes falling on the crucifix in the
alcove:
"How many wretches have sought help from that!"
And, after a brief silence:
"They have denaturalised Him. It is the fault of Rome--the policy of the
Vatican."
But Bouvard admired the Church for her magnificence, and would have
brought back the Middle Ages provided he might be a cardinal.
"You must admit I should have looked well in the purple."
Pécuchet's headpiece, placed in front of the fire, was not yet dry.
While stretching it out he felt something in the lining, and out tumbled
a medal of St. Joseph.
Madame de Noares wished to ascertain from Pécuchet whether he had not
experienced some kind of change, bringing him happiness, and betrayed
herself by her questions. On one occasion, whilst he was playing
billiards, she had sewn the medal in his cap.
Evidently she was in love with him: they might marry; she was a widow,
and he had had no suspicion of this attachment, which might have brought
about his life's happiness.
Though he exhibited a more religious tendency than M. Bouvard, she had
dedicated him to St. Joseph, whose succour is favourable to conversions.
No one knew so well as she all the beads and the indulgences which they
procure, the effect of relics, the privileges of blessed waters. Her
watch was attached to a chain that had touched the bonds of St. Peter.
Amongst her trinkets glittered a pearl of gold, in imitation of the one
in the church of Allouagne containing a tear of Our Lord; a ring on her
little finger enclosed some of the hair of the curé of Ars, and, as she
was in the habit of collecting simples for the sick, her apartment was
like a sacristy combined with an apothecary's laboratory.
Her time was passed in writing letters, in visiting the poor, in
dissolving irregular connections, and in distributing photographs of the
Sacred Heart. A gentleman had promised to send her some "martyr's
paste," a mixture of paschal wax and human dust taken from the
Catacombs, and used in desperate cases in the shape of fly-blisters and
pills. She promised some of it to Pécuchet.
He appeared shocked at such materialism.
In the evening a footman from the château brought him a basketful of
little books relating pious phrases of the great Napoleon, witticisms of
clergymen at inns, frightful deaths that had happened to atheists. All
those things Madame de Noares knew by heart, along with an infinite
number of miracles. She related several stupid ones--miracles without an
object, as if God had performed them to excite the wonder of the world.
Her own grandmother had locked up in a cupboard some prunes covered with
a piece of linen, and when the cupboard was opened a year later they saw
thirteen of them on the cloth forming a cross.
"Explain this to me."
This was the phrase she used after her marvellous tales, which she
declared to be true, with the obstinacy of a mule. Apart from this she
was a harmless woman of lively disposition.
On one occasion, however, she deviated from her character.
Bouvard was disputing with her about the miracle of Pezilla: this was a
fruit-dish in which wafers had been hidden during the Revolution and
which had become gilded of itself.
"Perhaps there was at the bottom a little yellow colour caused by
humidity?"
"Not at all! I repeat it, there was not! The cause of the gilding was
the contact with the Eucharist."
By way of proof she relied on the attestations of bishops.
"It is, they say, like a buckler, a--a palladium over the diocese of
Perpignan. Ask Monsieur Jeufroy, then!"
Bouvard could not stand this kind of talk any longer; and, after he had
looked over his Louis Hervieu, he took Pécuchet off with them.
The clergyman was finishing his dinner. Reine offered them chairs, and,
at a gesture from her master, she went to fetch two little glasses,
which she filled with Rosolio.
After this Bouvard explained what had brought him there.
The abbé did not reply candidly.
"Everything is possible to God, and the miracles are a proof of
religion."
"However, there are laws of nature--"
"That makes no difference to Him. He sets them aside in order to
instruct, to correct."
"How do you know whether He sets them aside?" returned Bouvard. "So long
as Nature follows her routine we never bestow a thought on it, but in an
extraordinary phenomenon we believe we see the hand of God."
"It may be there," replied the ecclesiastic; "and when an occurrence has
been certified by witnesses----"
"The witnesses swallow everything, for there are spurious miracles."
The priest grew red.
"Undoubtedly; sometimes."
"How can we distinguish them from the genuine ones? If the genuine ones,
given as proofs, have themselves need of proofs, why perform them?"
Reine interposed, and, preaching like her master, said it was necessary
to obey.
"Life is a passage, but death is eternal."
"In short," suggested Bouvard, guzzling the Rosolio, "the miracles of
former times are not better demonstrated than the miracles of to-day;
analogous reasonings uphold those of Christians and Pagans."
The curé flung down his fork on the table.
"Again I tell you those miracles were spurious! There are no miracles
outside of the Church."
"Stop!" said Pécuchet, "that is the same argument you used regarding the
martyrs: the doctrine rests on the facts and the facts on the doctrine."
M. Jeufroy, having swallowed a glass of water, replied:
"Even while denying them you believe in them. The world which twelve
fishermen converted--look at that! it seems to me a fine miracle."
"Not at all!"
Pécuchet gave a different account of the matter: "Monotheism comes from
the Hebrews; the Trinity from the Indians; the Logos belongs to Plato,
and the Virgin Mother to Asia."
No matter! M. Jeufroy clung to the supernatural and did not desire that
Christianity should have humanly the least reason for its existence,
though he saw amongst all peoples foreshadowings or deformations of it.
The scoffing impiety of the eighteenth century he would have tolerated,
but modern criticism, with its politeness, exasperated him.
"I prefer the atheist who blasphemes to the sceptic who cavils."
Then he looked at them with an air of bravado, as if to dismiss them.
Pécuchet returned home in a melancholy frame of mind. He had hoped for a
reconciliation between faith and reason.
Bouvard made him read this passage from Louis Hervieu:
"In order to know the abyss which separates them, oppose their axioms.
"Reason says to you: 'The whole comprehends the part,' and faith replies
to you: 'By substantiation, Jesus, while communicating with the
apostles, had His body in His hand and His head in His mouth.'
"Reason says to you: 'No one is responsible for the crime of another,'
and faith replies to you: 'By original sin.'
"Reason says to you: 'Three make three,' and faith declares that 'Three
make one.'"
They no longer associated with the abbé.
It was the period of the war with Italy. The respectable people were
trembling for the Pope. They were thundering against Victor Emmanuel.
Madame de Noares went so far as to wish for his death. Bouvard and
Pécuchet alone protested timidly.
When the door of the drawing-room flew open in front of them and they
looked at themselves in the lofty mirrors, as they passed, whilst
through the windows they caught a glimpse of the walks where glared
above the grass the red waistcoat of a man-servant, they felt a
sensation of delight; and the luxuriousness of their surroundings
rendered them indulgent to the words that were uttered there.
The count lent them all the works of M. de Maistre. He expounded the
principles contained in them before a circle of intimate friends--Hurel,
the curé, the justice of the peace, the notary, and the baron, his
future son-in-law, who used to come from time to time for twenty-four
hours to the château.
"What is abominable," said the count, "is the spirit of 'eighty-nine.
First of all they question the existence of God; then they dispute about
government; then comes liberty--liberty for insults, for revolt, for
enjoyments, or rather for plunder, so that religion and authority ought
to proscribe the independents, the heretics. No doubt they will protest
against what they call persecution, as if the executioners persecuted
the criminals. Let me resume: No State without God! the law being unable
to command respect unless it comes from on high, and, in fact, it is not
a question of the Italians, but of determining which shall have the best
of it, the Revolution or the Pope, Satan or Jesus Christ."
M. Jeufroy expressed his approval by monosyllables, Hurel by means of a
smile, and the justice of the peace by nodding his head. Bouvard and
Pécuchet kept their eyes fixed on the ceiling; Madame de Noares, the
countess, and Yolande were making clothes for the poor, and M. de
Mahurot, beside his betrothed, was turning over the leaves of a book.
Then came intervals of silence, during which everyone seemed to be
absorbed in the investigation of a problem. Napoleon III. was no longer
a saviour, and he had even given a deplorable example by allowing the
masons at the Tuileries to work on Sunday.
"It ought not to be permitted," was the ordinary phrase of the count.
Social economy, fine arts, literature, history, scientific doctrines--on
all he decided in his quality of Christian and father of a family; and
would to God that the government, in this respect, exercised the same
severity that he exhibited in his household! Authority alone is the
judge of the dangers of science: spread too extensively, it inspires
fatal ambitions in the breasts of the people. They were happier, these
poor people, when the nobles and the bishops tempered the absolutism of
the king. The manufacturers now make use of them. They are on the point
of sinking into slavery.
And all looked back with regret to the old _régime_, Hurel through
meanness, Coulon through ignorance, Marescot as a man of artistic
tastes.
Bouvard, when he found himself at home once more, fortified his mind
with a course of Lamettrie, Holbach, and others; whilst Pécuchet forsook
a religion which had become a medium of government.
M. de Mahurot had communicated in order the better to charm the ladies,
and, if he adopted it as a practice, it was in the interests of the
servants.
A mathematician and _dilettante_, who played waltzes on the piano and
admired Topffer, he was distinguished by a tasteful scepticism. What was
said about feudal abuses, the Inquisition, and the Jesuits, was the
result of prejudice. He extolled progress, though he despised everyone
who was not a gentleman, or who had not come from the Polytechnic
School!
M. Jeufroy likewise displeased the two friends. He believed in sorcery,
made jokes about idolatry, declared that all idioms are derived from the
Hebrew. His rhetoric lacked the element of novelty: it was invariably
the stag at bay, honey and absinthe, gold and lead, perfumes, urns, and
the comparison of the Christian soul to the soldier who ought to say in
the face of sin: "Thou shalt not pass!"
In order to avoid his discourses they used to come to the château at as
late an hour as possible.
One day, however, they encountered him there. He had been an hour
awaiting his two pupils. Suddenly Madame de Noares entered.
"The little girl has disappeared. I am bringing Victor in. Ah! the
wretch!"
She had found in his pocket a silver thimble which she had lost three
days ago. Then, stifled with sobs:
"That is not all! While I was giving him a scolding, he turned his back
on me!"
And, ere the count and countess could have said a word:
"However, it is my own fault: pardon me!"
She had concealed from them the fact that the two orphans were the
children of Touache, who was now in prison.
What was to be done?
If the count sent them away they would be lost, and his act of charity
would be taken for a caprice.
M. Jeufroy was not surprised. Since man is corrupt, our natural duty is
to punish him in order to improve him.
Bouvard protested. Leniency was better. But the count once more
expatiated on the iron hand indispensable for children as well as for
the people. These two children were full of vices--the little girl was
untruthful, the boy brutish. This theft, after all, might have been
excused, the impertinence never. Education should be the school of
respect.
Therefore Sorel, the gamekeeper, would immediately administer to the
youngster a good flogging.
M. de Mahurot, who had something to say to him, undertook the
commission. He went to the anteroom for a gun, and called Victor, who
had remained in the centre of the courtyard with downcast head.
"Follow me," said the baron. As the way to the gamekeeper's lodge turned
off a little from Chavignolles, M. Jeufroy, Bouvard, and Pécuchet
accompanied him.
At a hundred paces from the château, he begged them not to speak any
more while he was walking along the wood.
The ground sloped down to the river's edge, where rose great blocks of
stone. At sunset they looked like slabs of gold. On the opposite side
the green hillocks were wrapped in shadow. A keen wind was blowing.
Rabbits came out of their burrows, and began browsing on the grass.
A shot went off; a second; a third: and the rabbits jumped up, then
rolled over. Victor flung himself on them to seize hold of them, and
panted, soaking with perspiration.
"You have your clothes in nice condition!" said the baron.
There was blood on his ragged blouse.
Bouvard shrank from the sight of blood. He would not admit that it ever
should be shed.
M. Jeufroy returned:
"Circumstances sometimes make it necessary. If the guilty person does
not give his own, there is need of another's--a truth which the
Redemption teaches us."
According to Bouvard, it had been of hardly any use, since nearly all
mankind would be damned, in spite of the sacrifice of Our Lord.
"But every day He renews it in the Eucharist."
"And whatever be the unworthiness of the priest," said Pécuchet, "the
miracle takes place at the words."
"There is the mystery, sir."
Meanwhile Victor had riveted his eyes on the gun, and he even tried to
touch it.
"Down with your paws!" And M. de Mahurot took a long path through the
wood.
The clergyman had placed Pécuchet on one side of him and Bouvard at the
other, and said to the latter:
"Attention, you know. _Debetur pueris._"
Bouvard assured him that he humbled himself in the presence of the
Creator, but was indignant at their having made Him a man. We fear His
vengeance; we work for His glory. He has every virtue: an arm, an eye, a
policy, a habitation.
"'Our Father, who art in heaven,' what does that mean?"
And Pécuchet added: "The universe has become enlarged; the earth is no
longer its central point. It revolves amongst an infinite multitude of
other worlds. Many of them surpass it in grandeur, and this belittlement
of our globe shows a more sublime ideal of God.
"So, then, religion must change. Paradise is something infantile, with
its blessed always in a state of contemplation, always chanting hymns,
and looking from on high at the tortures of the damned. When one
reflects that Christianity had for its basis an apple!"
The curé was annoyed. "Deny revelation; that would be simpler."
"How do you make out that God spoke?" said Bouvard.
"Prove that he did not speak!" said M. Jeufroy.
"Once again, who affirms it?"
"The Church."
"Nice testimony!"
This discussion bored M. de Mahurot, and, as he walked along: "Pray
listen to the curé. He knows more than you."
Bouvard and Pécuchet made signs to indicate that they were taking
another road; then, at Croix-Verte:
"A very good evening."
"Your servant," said the baron.
All this would be told to M. de Faverges, and perhaps a rupture would
result. So much the worse. They felt that they were despised by those
people of rank. They were never asked to dinner, and they were tired of
Madame de Noares, with her continual remonstrances.
They could not, however, keep the De Maistre; and a fortnight after they
returned to the château, not expecting to be welcomed, but they were.
All the family were in the boudoir, and amongst those present were Hurel
and, strangely enough, Foureau.
Correction had failed to correct Victor. He refused to learn his
catechism; and Victorine gave utterance to vulgar words. In short, the
boy should go to a reformatory, and the girl to a nunnery. Foureau was
charged with carrying out the measure, and he was about to go when the
countess called him back.
They were waiting for M. Jeufroy to fix the date of the marriage, which
was to take place at the
[Illustration: BOUVART AND PÉCUCHET CARRIED THEM OFF]
mayor's office before being celebrated in the church, in order to show
that they looked on civil marriage with contempt.
Foureau tried to defend it. The count and Hurel attacked it. What was a
municipal function beside a priesthood?--and the baron would not have
believed himself to be really wedded if he had been married only in the
presence of a tri-coloured scarf.
"Bravo!" said M. Jeufroy, who had just come in. "Marriage having been
established by Jesus Christ----"
Pécuchet stopped him: "In which Gospel? In the Apostolic times they
respected it so little that Tertullian compares it to adultery."
"Oh! upon my word!"
"Yes, certainly! and it is not a sacrament. A sign is necessary for a
sacrament. Show me the sign in marriage."
In vain did the curé reply that it represented the union of God with the
Church.
"You do not understand Christianity either! And the law----"
"The law preserves the stamp of Christianity," said M. de Faverges.
"Without that, it would permit polygamy."
A voice rejoined: "Where would be the harm?"
It was Bouvard, half hidden by a curtain.
"You might have many wives, like the Patriarchs, the Mormons, the
Mussulmans, and nevertheless be an honest man."
"Never!" exclaimed the priest; "honesty consists in rendering what is
due. We owe homage to God. So he who is not a Christian is not honest."
"Just as much as others," said Bouvard.
The count, believing that he saw in this rejoinder an attack on
religion, extolled it. It had set free the slaves.
Bouvard referred to authorities to prove the contrary:
"St. Paul recommends them to obey their masters as they would obey
Jesus. St. Ambrose calls servitude a gift of God. Leviticus, Exodus, and
the Councils have sanctioned it. Bossuet treats it as a part of the law
of nations. And Monseigneur Bouvier approves of it."
The count objected that, none the less, Christianity had developed
civilisation.
"Ay, and idleness, by making a virtue of poverty."
"However, sir, the morality of the Gospel?"
"Ha! ha! not so moral! Those who labour only during the last hour are
paid as much as those who labour from the first hour. To him who hath is
given, and from him who hath not is taken away. As for the precept of
receiving blows without returning them and of letting yourself be
robbed, it encourages the audacious, the cowardly, and the dissolute."
They were doubly scandalised when Pécuchet declared that he liked
Buddhism as well.
The priest burst out laughing.
"Ha! ha! ha! Buddhism!"
Madame de Noares lifted up her hands: "Buddhism!"
"What! Buddhism!" repeated the count.
"Do you understand it?" said Pécuchet to M. Jeufroy, who had become
confused. "Well, then, learn something about it. Better than
Christianity, and before it, it has recognised the nothingness of
earthly things. Its practices are austere, its faithful more numerous
than the entire body of Christians; and, as for incarnation, Vishnu had
not merely one, but nine of them. So judge."
"Travellers' lies!" said Madame de Noares.
"Backed up by the Freemasons!" added the curé.
And all talking at the same time:
"Come, then, go on!"
"Very pretty!"
"For my part, I think it funny!"
"Not possible!"
Finally, Pécuchet, exasperated, declared that he would become a
Buddhist!
"You are insulting Christian ladies," said the baron.
Madame de Noares sank into an armchair. The countess and Yolande
remained silent. The count kept rolling his eyes; Hurel was waiting for
his orders. The abbé, to contain himself, read his breviary.
This sight calmed M. de Faverges; and, looking at the two worthies:
"Before you find fault with the Gospel, and that when there may be
stains on your own lives, there is some reparation----"
"Reparation?"
"For stains?"
"Enough! gentlemen. You don't understand me." Then, addressing Foureau:
"Sorel is informed about it. Go to him."
Bouvard and Pécuchet withdrew without bowing.
At the end of the avenue they all three gave vent to their indignation.
"They treated me as if I were a servant," grumbled Foureau; and, as his
companions agreed with him, in spite of their recollection of the affair
of the hemorrhoids, he exhibited towards them a kind of sympathy.
Road-menders were working in the neighbourhood. The man who was over
them drew near: it was Gorju. They began to chat.
He was overseeing the macadamisation of the road, voted in 1848, and he
owed this post to M. de Mahurot, the engineer. "The one that's going to
marry Mademoiselle de Faverges. I suppose 'tis from the house below you
were just coming?"
"For the last time," said Pécuchet gruffly.
Gorju assumed an innocent air. "A quarrel! Come, come!"
And if they could have seen his countenance when they had turned on
their heels, they might have observed that he had scented the cause of
it.
A little further on, they stopped before a trellised enclosure, inside
which there were kennels, and also a red-tiled cottage.
Victorine was on the threshold. They heard dogs barking. The
gamekeeper's wife came out. Knowing the object of the mayor's visit, she
called to Victor. Everything was ready beforehand, and their outfit was
contained in two pocket-handkerchiefs fastened together with pins.
"A pleasant journey," said the woman to the children, too glad to have
no more to do with such vermin.
Was it their fault if they owed their birth to a convict father? On the
contrary, they seemed very quiet, and did not even betray any alarm as
to the place to which they were being conveyed.
Bouvard and Pécuchet watched them as they walked in front of them.
Victorine muttered some unintelligible words, with her little bundle
over her arm, like a milliner carrying a bandbox.
Every now and then she would turn round, and Pécuchet, at the sight of
her fair curls and her pretty figure, regretted that he had not such a
child. Brought up under different conditions, she would be charming
later. What happiness only to see her growing tall, to hear day after
day her bird-like warbling, to kiss her when the fancy seized him!--and
a feeling of tenderness, rising from his heart to his lips, made his
eyes grow moist and somewhat oppressed his spirit.
Victor, like a soldier, had slung his baggage over his shoulder. He
whistled, threw stones at the crows in the furrows, and went to cut
switches off the trees.
Foureau called him back; and Bouvard, holding him by the hand, was
delighted at feeling within his own those fingers of a robust and
vigorous lad. The poor little wretch asked for nothing but to grow
freely, like a flower in the open air! and he would rot between closed
walls with tasks, punishment, a heap of tomfooleries! Bouvard was seized
with pity, springing from a sense of revolt, a feeling of indignation
against Fate, one of those fits of rage in which one longs to destroy
government altogether.
"Jump about!" he said, "amuse yourself! Have a bit of fun as long as you
can!"
The youngster scampered off.
His sister and he were to sleep at the inn, and at daybreak the
messenger from Falaise would take Victor and set him down at the
reformatory of Beaubourg; while a nun belonging to the orphanage of
Grand-Camp would come to fetch Victorine.
Foureau having gone into these details, was once more lost in his own
thoughts. But Bouvard wished to know how much the maintenance of the
youngsters would cost.
"Bah! a matter perhaps of three hundred francs. The count has given me
twenty-five for the first disbursements. What a stingy fellow!"
And, stung to the heart by the contempt shown towards his scarf, Foureau
quickened his pace in silence.
Bouvard murmured: "They make me feel sad. I will take the charge of
them."
"And so will I," said Pécuchet, the same idea having occurred to both of
them.
No doubt there were impediments?
"None," returned Foureau. Besides, he had the right as mayor to entrust
deserted children to whomsoever he thought fit. And, after a prolonged
hesitation:
"Well, yes; take them! That will annoy _him_."
Bouvard and Pécuchet carried them off.
When they returned to their abode they found at the end of the
staircase, under the Madonna, Marcel upon his knees praying with
fervour. With his head thrown back, his eyes half closed, and his
hare-lip gaping, he had the appearance of a fakir in ecstasy.
"What a brute!" said Bouvard.
"Why? He is perhaps attending to things that would make you envy him if
you could only see them. Are there not two worlds entirely distinct?
The aim of a process of reasoning is of less consequence than the manner
of reasoning. What does the form of belief matter? The great thing is to
believe."
Such were the objections of Pécuchet to Bouvard's observation.
[Illustration: decoration]