CHAPTER VIII.

NEW DIVERSIONS.

Satisfied with their regimen, they desired to improve their

constitutions by gymnastics; and taking up the _Manual of Amoros_, they

went through its atlas. All those young lads squatting, lying back,

standing, bending their legs, lifting weights, riding on beams, climbing

ladders, cutting capers on trapezes--such a display of strength and

agility excited their envy.

However, they were saddened by the splendour of the gymnasium described

in the preface; for they would never be able to get a vestibule for the

equipages, a hippodrome for the races, a sweep of water for the

swimming, or a "mountain of glory"--an artificial hillock over one

hundred feet in height.

A wooden vaulting-horse with the stuffing would have been expensive:

they abandoned the idea. The linden tree, thrown down in the garden,

might have been used as a horizontal pole; and, when they were skilful

enough to go over it from one end to the other, in order to have a

vertical one, they set up a beam of counter-espaliers. Pécuchet

clambered to the top; Bouvard slipped off, always fell back, finally

gave it up.

The "orthosomatic sticks" pleased him better; that is to say, two

broomsticks bound by two cords, the first of which passes under the

armpits, and the second over the wrists; and for hours he would remain

in this apparatus, with his chin raised, his chest extended, and his

elbows close to his sides.

For want of dumbbells, the wheelwright turned out four pieces of ash

resembling sugar-loaves with necks of bottles at the ends. These should

be carried to the right and to the left, to the front and to the back;

but being too heavy they fell out of their hands, at the risk of

bruising their legs. No matter! They set their hearts on Persian clubs,

and even fearing lest they might break, they rubbed them every evening

with wax and a piece of cloth.

Then they looked out for ditches. When they found one suitable for their

purpose, they rested a long pole in the centre, sprang forward on the

left foot, reached the opposite side, and then repeated the performance.

The country being flat, they could be seen at a distance; and the

villagers asked one another what were these extraordinary things

skipping towards the horizon.

When autumn arrived they went in for chamber gymnastics, which

completely bored them. Why had they not the indoor apparatus or

post-armchair invented in Louis XIV.'s time by the Abbé of St. Pierre?

How was it made? Where could they get the information?

Dumouchel did not deign to answer their letter on the subject.

Then they erected in the bakehouse a brachial weighing-machine. Over two

pulleys attached to the ceiling a rope was passed, holding a crossbeam

at each end. As soon as they had caught hold of it one pushed against

the ground with his toes, while the other lowered his arms to a level

with the floor; the first by his weight would draw towards him the

second, who, slackening his rope a little, would ascend in his turn. In

less than five minutes their limbs were dripping with perspiration.

In order to follow the prescriptions of the Manual, they tried to make

themselves ambidextrous, even to the extent of depriving themselves for

a time of the use of their right hands. They did more: Amoros points out

certain snatches of verse which ought to be sung during the manoeuvres,

and Bouvard and Pécuchet, as they proceeded, kept repeating the hymn No.

9: "A king, a just king is a blessing on earth."

When they beat their breast-bones: "Friends, the crown and the glory,"

etc.

At the various steps of the race:

"Let us catch the beast that cowers!

Soon the swift stag shall be ours!

Yes! the race shall soon be won,

Come, run! come, run! come, run!"[17]

And, panting more than hounds, they cheered each other on with the

sounds of their voices.

One side of gymnastics excited their enthusiasm--its employment as a

means of saving life. But they would have required children in order to

learn how to carry them in sacks, and they begged the schoolmaster to

furnish them with some. Petit objected that their families would be

annoyed at it. They fell back on the succour of the wounded. One

pretended to have swooned: the other rolled him away in a wheelbarrow

with the utmost precaution.

As for military escalades, the author extols the ladder of Bois-Rosé, so

called from the captain who surprised Fécamp in former days by climbing

up the cliff.

In accordance with the engraving in the book, they trimmed a rope with

little sticks and fixed it under the cart-shed. As soon as the first

stick is bestridden and the third grasped, the limbs are thrown out in

order that the second, which a moment before was against the chest,

might be directly under the thighs. The climber then springs up and

grasps the fourth, and so goes on.

In spite of prodigious strainings of the hips, they found it impossible

to reach the second step. Perhaps there is less trouble in hanging on to

stones with your hands, just as Bonaparte's soldiers did at the attack

of Fort Chambray? and to make one capable of such an action, Amoros has

a tower in his establishment.

The wall in ruins might do as a substitute for it. They attempted the

assault with it. But Bouvard, having withdrawn his foot too quickly from

a hole, got frightened, and was seized with dizziness.

Pécuchet blamed their method for it. They had neglected that which

relates to the phalanxes, so that they should go back to first

principles.

His exhortations were fruitless; and then, in his pride and presumption,

he went in for stilts.

Nature seemed to have destined him for them, for he immediately made use

of the great model with flat boards four feet from the ground, and,

balanced thereon, he stalked over the garden like a gigantic stork

taking exercise.

Bouvard, at the window, saw him stagger and then flop down all of a heap

over the kidney-beans, whose props, giving way as he descended, broke

his fall.

He was picked up covered with mould, his nostrils bleeding--livid; and

he fancied that he had strained himself.

Decidedly, gymnastics did not agree with men of their age. They

abandoned them, did not venture to move about any longer for fear of

accidents, and they remained the whole day sitting in the museum

dreaming of other occupations.

This change of habits had an influence on Bouvard's health. He became

very heavy, puffed like a whale after his meals, tried to make himself

thin, ate less, and began to grow weak.

Pécuchet, in like manner, felt himself "undermined," had itchings in his

skin and lumps in his throat.

"This won't do," said they; "this won't do."

Bouvard thought of going to select at the inn some bottles of Spanish

wine in order to put his bodily machinery in order.

As he was going out, Marescot's clerk and three men brought from

Beljambe a large walnut table. "Monsieur" was much obliged to him for

it. It had been conveyed in perfect order.

Bouvard in this way learned about the new fashion of table-turning. He

joked about it with the clerk.

However, all over Europe, America, Australia and the Indies, millions of

mortals passed their lives in making tables turn; and they discovered

the way to make prophets of canaries, to give concerts without

instruments, and to correspond by means of snails. The press, seriously

offering these impostures to the public, increased its credulity.

The spirit-rappers had alighted at the château of Faverges, and thence

had spread through the village; and the notary questioned them

particularly.

Shocked at Bouvard's scepticism, he invited the two friends to an

evening party at table-turning.

Was this a trap? Madame Bordin was to be there. Pécuchet went alone.

There were present as spectators the mayor, the tax-collector, the

captain, other residents and their wives, Madame Vaucorbeil, Madame

Bordin, of course, besides Mademoiselle Laverrière, Madame Marescot's

former schoolmistress, a rather squint-eyed lady with her hair falling

over her shoulders in the corkscrew fashion of 1830. In an armchair sat

a cousin from Paris, attired in a blue coat and wearing an air of

insolence.

The two bronze lamps, the whatnot containing a number of curiosities,

ballads embellished with vignettes on the piano, and small water-colours

in huge frames, had always excited astonishment in Chavignolles. But

this evening all eyes were directed towards the mahogany table. They

would test it by and by, and it had the importance of things which

contain a mystery. A dozen guests took their places around it with

outstretched hands and their little fingers touching one another. Only

the ticking of the clock could be heard. The faces indicated profound

attention. At the end of ten minutes several complained of tinglings in

the arms.

Pécuchet was incommoded.

"You are pushing!" said the captain to Foureau.

"Not at all."

"Yes, you are!"

"Ah! sir."

The notary made them keep quiet.

By dint of straining their ears they thought they could distinguish

cracklings of wood.

An illusion! Nothing had budged.

The other day when the Aubert and Lorraine families had come from

Lisieux and they had expressly borrowed Beljambe's table for the

occasion, everything had gone on so well. But this to-day exhibited a

certain obstinacy. Why?

The carpet undoubtedly counteracted it, and they changed to the

dining-room.

The round table, which was on rollers, glided towards the right-hand

side. The operators, without displacing their fingers, followed its

movements, and of its own accord it made two turns. They were astounded.

Then M. Alfred articulated in a loud voice:

"Spirit, how do you find my cousin?"

The table, slowly oscillating, struck nine raps. According to a slip of

paper, in which the number of raps were translated by letters, this

meant "Charming."

A number of voices exclaimed "Bravo!"

Then Marescot, to tease Madame Bordin, called on the spirit to declare

her exact age.

The foot of the table came down with five taps.

"What? five years!" cried Girbal.

"The tens don't count," replied Foureau.

The widow smiled, though she was inwardly annoyed.

The replies to the other questions were missing, so complicated was the

alphabet.

Much better was the plane table--an expeditious medium of which

Mademoiselle Laverrière had made use for the purpose of noting down in

an album the direct communications of Louis XII., Clémence Isaure,

Franklin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others. These mechanical

contrivances are sold in the Rue d'Aumale. M. Alfred promised one of

them; then addressing the schoolmistress: "But for a quarter of an hour

we should have a little music; don't you think so? A mazurka!"

Two metal chords vibrated. He took his cousin by the waist, disappeared

with her, and came back again.

The sweep of her dress, which just brushed the doors as they passed,

cooled their faces. She flung back her head; he curved his arms. The

gracefulness of the one, the playful air of the other, excited general

admiration; and, without waiting for the rout cakes, Pécuchet took

himself off, amazed at the evening's exhibition.

In vain did he repeat: "But I have seen it! I have seen it!"

Bouvard denied the facts, but nevertheless consented to make an

experiment himself.

For a fortnight they spent every afternoon facing each other, with their

hands over a table, then over a hat, over a basket, and over plates. All

these remained motionless.

The phenomenon of table-turning is none the less certain. The common

herd attribute it to spirits; Faraday to prolonged nervous action;

Chevreuil to unconscious efforts; or perhaps, as Segouin admits, there

is evolved from the assembly of persons an impulse, a magnetic current.

This hypothesis made Pécuchet reflect. He took into his library the

_Magnetiser's Guide_, by Montacabère, read it over attentively, and

initiated Bouvard in the theory: All animated bodies receive and

communicate the influence of the stars--a property analogous to the

virtue of the loadstone. By directing this force we may cure the sick;

there is the principle. Science has developed since Mesmer; but it is

always an important thing to pour out the fluid and to make passes,

which, in the first place, must have the effect of inducing sleep.

"Well! send me to sleep," said Bouvard.

"Impossible!" replied Pécuchet: "in order to be subject to the magnetic

action, and to transmit it, faith is indispensable."

Then, gazing at Bouvard: "Ah! what a pity!"

"How?"

"Yes, if you wished, with a little practice, there would not be a

magnetiser anywhere like you."

For he possessed everything that was needed: easiness of access, a

robust constitution, and a solid mind.

The discovery just made of such a faculty in himself was flattering to

Bouvard. He took a plunge into Montacabère's book on the sly.

Then, as Germaine used to feel buzzings in her ears that deafened her,

he said to her one evening in a careless tone:

"Suppose we try magnetism?"

She did not make any objection to it. He sat down in front of her, took

her two thumbs in his hands, and looked fixedly at her, as if he had not

done anything else all his life.

The old dame, with her feet on a footwarmer, began by bending her neck;

her eyes closed, and quite gently she began to snore. At the end of an

hour, during which they had been staring at her, Pécuchet said in a low

tone:

"What do you feel?"

She awoke.

Later, no doubt, would come lucidity.

This success emboldened them, and, resuming with self-confidence, the

practice of medicine, they nursed Chamberlan, the beadle, for pains in

his ribs; Migraine the mason, who had a nervous affection of the

stomach; Mère Varin, whose encephaloid under the collar-bone required,

in order to nourish her, plasters of meat; a gouty patient, Père

Lemoine, who used to crawl by the side of taverns; a consumptive; a

person afflicted with hemiplegia, and many others. They also treated

corns and chilblains.

After an investigation into the disease, they cast questioning glances

at each other to determine what passes to use, whether the currents

should be large or small, ascending or descending, longitudinal,

transversal, bidigital, tridigital, or even quindigital.

When the one had had too much of it, the other replaced him. Then, when

they had come back to their own house, they noted down their observation

in their diary of treatment.

Their suave manners captivated everyone. However, Bouvard was liked

better, and his reputation spread as far as Falaise, where he had cured

La Barbée, the daughter of Père Barbée, a retired captain of long

standing.

She had felt something like a nail in the back of her head, spoke in a

hoarse voice, often remained several days without eating, and then

would devour plaster or coal. Her nervous crises, beginning with sobs,

ended in floods of tears; and every kind of remedy, from diet-drinks to

moxas, had been employed, so that, through sheer weariness, she accepted

Bouvard's offer to cure her.

When he had dismissed the servant-maid and bolted the door, he began

rubbing her abdomen, while leaning over the seat of the ovaries. A sense

of relief manifested itself by sighs and yawns. He placed his finger

between her eyebrows and the top of her nose: all at once she became

inert. If one lifted her arms, they fell down again. Her head remained

in whatever attitude he wished, and her lids, half closed, vibrating

with a spasmodic movement, allowed her eyeballs to be seen rolling

slowly about; they riveted themselves on the corners convulsively.

Bouvard asked her if she were in pain. She replied that she was not.

Then he inquired what she felt now. She indicated the inside of her

body.

"What do you see there?"

"A worm."

"What is necessary in order to kill it?"

She wrinkled her brow. "I am looking for--I am not able! I am not able!"

At the second sitting she prescribed for herself nettle-broth; at the

third, catnip. The crises became mitigated, then disappeared. It was

truly a miracle. The nasal addigitation did not succeed with the others,

and, in order to bring on somnambulism, they projected the construction

of a mesmeric tub. Pécuchet already had even collected the filings and

cleaned a score of bottles, when a scruple made him hesitate.

Amongst the patients there would be persons of the other sex.

"And what are we to do if this should give rise to an outburst of erotic

mania?"

This would not have proved any impediment to Bouvard; but for fear of

impostures and attempts to extort hush-money, it was better to put aside

the project. They contented themselves with a collection of musical

glasses, which they carried about with them to the different houses, so

as to delight the children.

One day, when Migraine was worse, they had recourse to the musical

glasses. The crystalline sounds exasperated him; but Deleuze enjoins

that one should not be frightened by complaints; and so they went on

with the music.

"Enough! enough!" he cried.

"A little patience!" Bouvard kept repeating.

Pécuchet tapped more quickly on the glass plates, and the instrument was

vibrating in the midst of the poor man's cries when the doctor appeared,

attracted by the hubbub.

"What! you again?" he exclaimed, enraged at finding them always with his

patients.

They explained their magnetic method of curing. Then he declaimed

against magnetism--"a heap of juggleries, whose effects came only from

the imagination."

However, animals are magnetised. Montacabère so states, and M. Fontaine

succeeded in magnetising a lion. They had not a lion, but chance had

offered them another animal.

For on the following day a ploughboy came to inform them that they were

wanted up at the farm for a cow in a hopeless condition.

They hurried thither. The apple trees were in bloom, and the herbage in

the farmyard was steaming under the rays of the rising sun.

At the side of a pond, half covered with a cloth, a cow was lowing,

while she shivered under the pails of water that were being emptied over

her body, and, enormously swollen, she looked like a hippopotamus.

Without doubt she had got "venom" while grazing amid the clover. Père

Gouy and his wife were afflicted because the veterinary surgeon was not

able to come, and the wheelwright who had a charm against swelling did

not choose to put himself out of his way; but "these gentlemen, whose

library was famous, must know the secret."

Having tucked up their sleeves, they placed themselves one in front of

the horns, the other at the rump, and, with great internal efforts and

frantic gesticulations, they spread wide their fingers in order to

scatter streams of fluid over the animal, while the farmer, his wife,

their son, and the neighbours regarded them almost with terror.

The rumblings which were heard in the cow's belly caused borborygms in

the interior of her bowels. She emitted wind.

Pécuchet thereupon said: "This is an opening door for hope--an outlet,

perhaps."

The outlet produced its effect: the hope gushed forth in a bundle of

yellow stuff, bursting with the force of a shell. The hide got loose;

the cow got rid of her swelling. An hour later there was no longer any

sign of it.

This was certainly not the result of imagination. Therefore the fluid

contained some special virtue. It lets itself be shut up in the objects

to whom it is given without being impaired. Such an expedient saves

displacements. They adopted it; and they sent their clients magnetised

tokens, magnetised handkerchiefs, magnetised water, and magnetised

bread.

Then, continuing their studies, they abandoned the passes for the system

of Puységur, which replaces the magnetiser by means of an old tree,

about the trunk of which a cord is rolled.

A pear tree in their fruit garden seemed made expressly for the purpose.

They prepared it by vigorously encircling it with many pressures. A

bench was placed underneath. Their clients sat in a row, and the results

obtained there were so marvellous that, in order to get the better of

Vaucorbeil, they invited him to a _séance_ along with the leading

personages of the locality.

Not one failed to attend. Germaine received them in the breakfast-room,

making excuses on behalf of her masters, who would join them presently.

From time to time they heard the bell ringing. It was the patients whom

she was bringing in by another way. The guests nudged one another,

drawing attention to the windows covered with dust, the stains on the

panels, the frayed pictures; and the garden, too, was in a wretched

state. Dead wood everywhere! The orchard was barricaded with two sticks

thrust into a gap in the wall.

Pécuchet made his appearance. "At your service, gentlemen."

And they saw at the end of the garden, under the Edouïn pear tree, a

number of persons seated.

Chamberlan, clean-shaven like a priest, in a short cassock of lasting,

with a leathern cap, gave himself up to the shivering sensations

engendered by the pains in his ribs. Migraine, whose stomach was always

tormenting him, made wry faces close beside him. Mère Varin, to hide her

tumour, wore a shawl with many folds. Père Lemoine, his feet

stockingless in his old shoes, had his crutches under his knees; and La

Barbée, who wore her Sunday clothes, looked exceedingly pale.

At the opposite side of the tree were other persons. A woman with an

albino type of countenance was sponging the suppurating glands of her

neck; a little girl's face half disappeared under her blue glasses; an

old man, whose spine was deformed by a contraction, with his involuntary

movements knocked against Marcel, a sort of idiot clad in a tattered

blouse and a patched pair of trousers. His hare-lip, badly stitched,

allowed his incisors to be seen, and his jaw, which was swollen by an

enormous inflammation, was muffled up in linen.

They were all holding in their hands pieces of twine that hung down from

the tree. The birds were singing, and the air was impregnated with the

refreshing smell of grass. The sun played with the branches, and the

ground was smooth as moss.

Meanwhile, instead of going to sleep, the subjects of the experiment

were straining their eyes.

"Up to the present," said Foureau, "it is not funny. Begin. I am going

away for a minute."

And he came back smoking an Abd-el-Kader, the last that was left from

the gate with the pipes.

Pécuchet recalled to mind an admirable method of magnetising. He put

into his mouth the noses of all the patients in succession, and inhaled

their breath, in order to attract the electricity to himself; and at

the same time Bouvard clasped the tree, with the object of augmenting

the fluid.

The mason interrupted his hiccoughs; the beadle was agitated; the man

with the contraction moved no more. It was possible now to approach

them, and make them submit to all the tests.

The doctor, with his lancet, pricked Chamberlan's ear, which trembled a

little. Sensibility in the case of the others was manifest. The gouty

man uttered a cry. As for La Barbée, she smiled, as if in a dream, and a

stream of blood trickled under her jaw.

Foureau, in order to make the experiment himself, would fain have seized

the lancet, but the doctor having refused, he vigorously pinched the

invalid.

The captain tickled her nostrils with a feather; the tax-collector

plunged a pin under her skin.

"Let her alone now," said Vaucorbeil; "it is nothing astonishing, after

all. Simply a hysterical female! The devil will have his pains for

nothing."

"That one there," said Pécuchet, pointing towards Victoire, the

scrofulous woman, "is a physician. She recognises diseases, and

indicates the remedies."

Langlois burned to consult her about his catarrh; but Coulon, more

courageous, asked her for something for his rheumatism.

Pécuchet placed his right hand in Victoire's left, and, with her lids

closed uninterruptedly, her cheeks a little red, her lips quivering, the

somnambulist, after some rambling utterances, ordered _valum becum_.

She had assisted in an apothecary's shop at Bayeux. Vaucorbeil drew the

inference that what she wanted to say was _album Græcum_ a term which is

to be found in pharmacy.

Then they accosted Père Lemoine, who, according to Bouvard, could see

objects through opaque bodies. He was an ex-schoolmaster, who had sunk

into debauchery. White hairs were scattered about his face, and, with

his back against the tree and his palms open, he was sleeping in the

broad sunlight in a majestic fashion.

The physician drew over his eyes a double neckcloth; and Bouvard,

extending a newspaper towards him, said imperiously:

"Read!"

He lowered his brow, moved the muscles of his face, then threw back his

head, and ended by spelling out:

"Cons-ti-tu-tion-al."

But with skill the muffler could be slipped off!

These denials by the physician roused Pécuchet's indignation. He even

ventured to pretend that La Barbée could describe what was actually

taking place in his own house.

"May be so," returned the doctor.

Then, taking out his watch:

"What is my wife occupying herself with?"

For a long time La Barbée hesitated; then with a sullen air:

"Hey! what? I am there! She is sewing ribbons on a straw hat."

Vaucorbeil snatched a leaf from his note-book and wrote a few lines on

it, which Marescot's clerk hastened to deliver.

The _séance_ was over. The patients went away.

Bouvard and Pécuchet, on the whole, had not succeeded. Was this due to

the temperature, or to the smell of tobacco, or to the Abbé Jeufroy's

umbrella, which had a lining of copper, a metal unfavourable to the

emission of the fluid?

Vaucorbeil shrugged his shoulders. However, he could not deny the

honesty of MM. Deleuze, Bertrand, Morin, Jules Cloquet. Now these

masters lay down that somnambulists have predicted events, and submitted

without pain to cruel operations.

The abbé related stories more astonishing. A missionary had seen

Brahmins rushing, heads down, through a street; the Grand Lama of Thibet

rips open his bowels in order to deliver oracles.

"Are you joking?" said the physician.

"By no means."

"Come, now, what tomfoolery that is!"

And the question being dropped, each of them furnished an anecdote.

"As for me," said the grocer, "I had a dog who was always sick when the

month began on a Friday."

"We were fourteen children," observed the justice of the peace. "I was

born on the 14th, my marriage took place on the 14th, and my saint's-day

falls on the 14th. Explain this to me."

Beljambe had often reckoned in a dream the number of travellers he would

have next day at his inn; and Petit told about the supper of Cazotte.

The curé then made this reflection:

"Why do we not see into it quite easily?"

"The demons--is that what you say?" asked Vaucorbeil.

Instead of again opening his lips, the abbé nodded his head.

Marescot spoke of the Pythia of Delphi.

"Beyond all question, miasmas."

"Oh! miasmas now!"

"As for me, I admit the existence of a fluid," remarked Bouvard.

"Nervoso-siderial," added Pécuchet.

"But prove it, show it, this fluid of yours! Besides, fluids are out of

fashion. Listen to me."

Vaucorbeil moved further up to get into the shade. The others followed

him.

"If you say to a child, 'I am a wolf; I am going to eat you,' he

imagines that you are a wolf, and he is frightened. Therefore, this is a

vision conjured up by words. In the same way the somnambulist accepts

any fancies that you desire him to accept. He recollects instead of

imagining, and has merely sensations when he believes that he is

thinking. In this manner it is possible for crimes to be suggested, and

virtuous people may see themselves ferocious beasts, and involuntarily

become cannibals."

Glances were cast towards Bouvard and Pécuchet. Their scientific

pursuits were fraught with dangers to society.

Marescot's clerk reappeared in the garden flourishing a letter from

Madame Vaucorbeil.

The doctor tore it open, turned pale, and finally read these words:

"_I am sewing ribbons on a straw hat._"

Amazement prevented them from bursting into a laugh.

"A mere coincidence, deuce take it! It proves nothing."

And as the two magnetisers wore looks of triumph, he turned round at the

door to say to them:

"Don't go further. These are risky amusements."

The curé, while leading away his beadle, reproved them sternly:

"Are you mad? Without my permission! Practices forbidden by the Church!"

They had all just taken their leave; Bouvard and Pécuchet were talking

to the schoolmaster on the hillock, when Marcel rushed from the orchard,

the bandage of his chin undone, and stuttered:

"Cured! cured! good gentlemen."

"All right! enough! Let us alone."

Petit, a man of advanced ideas, thought the doctor's explanation

commonplace and unenlightened. Science is a monopoly in the hands of the

rich. She excludes the people. To the old-fashioned analysis of the

Middle Ages it is time that a large and ready-witted synthesis should

succeed. Truth should be arrived at through the heart. And, declaring

himself a spiritualist, he pointed out several works, no doubt

imperfect, but the heralds of a new dawn.

They sent for them.

Spiritualism lays down as a dogma the fated amelioration of our species.

Earth will one day become Heaven. And this is the reason why the

doctrine fascinated the schoolmaster. Without being Catholic, it was

known to St. Augustine and St. Louis. Allan Kardec even has published

some fragments dictated by them which are in accordance with

contemporary opinions. It is practical as well as benevolent, and

reveals to us, like the telescope, the supernal worlds.

Spirits, after death and in a state of ecstasy, are transported thither.

But sometimes they descend upon our globe, where they make furniture

creak, mingle in our amusements, taste the beauties of Nature, and the

pleasures of the arts.

Nevertheless, there are amongst us many who possess an astral

trunk--that is to say, behind the ear a long tube which ascends from

the hair to the planets, and permits us to converse with the spirits of

Saturn. Intangible things are not less real, and from the earth to the

stars, from the stars to the earth, a see-saw motion takes place, a

transmission, a continual change of place.

Then Pécuchet's heart swelled with extravagant aspirations, and when

night had come Bouvard surprised him at the window contemplating those

luminous spaces which are peopled with spirits.

Swedenborg made rapid journeys to them. For in less than a year he

explored Venus, Mars, Saturn, and, twenty-three times, Jupiter.

Moreover, he saw Jesus Christ in London; he saw St. Paul; he saw St.

John; he saw Moses; and in 1736 he saw the Last Judgment.

He has also given us descriptions of Heaven.

Flowers, palaces, market-places, and churches are found there, just as

with us. The angels, who were formerly human beings, lay their thoughts

upon leaves, chat about domestic affairs or else on spiritual matters;

and the ecclesiastical posts are assigned to those who, in their earthly

career, cultivated the Holy Scripture.

As for Hell, it is filled with a nauseous smell, with hovels, heaps of

filth, quagmires, and ill-clad persons.

And Pécuchet racked his brain in order to comprehend what was beautiful

in these revelations. To Bouvard they seemed the delirium of an

imbecile. All such matters transcend the bounds of Nature. Who, however,

can know anything about them? And they surrendered themselves to the

following reflections:

Jugglers can cause illusions amongst a crowd; a man with violent

passions can excite other people by them; but how can the will alone act

upon inert matter? A Bavarian, it is said, was able to ripen grapes; M.

Gervais revived a heliotrope; one with greater power scattered the

clouds at Toulouse.

It is necessary to admit an intermediary substance between the universe

and ourselves? The od, a new imponderable, a sort of electricity, is

perhaps nothing else. Its emissions explain the light that those who

have been magnetised believe they see: the wandering flames in

cemeteries, the forms of phantoms.

These images would not, therefore, be illusions, and the extraordinary

gifts of persons who are possessed, like those of clairvoyants, would

have a physical cause.

Whatever be their origin, there is an essence, a secret and universal

agent. If we could take possession of it, there would be no need of

force, of duration. That which requires ages would develop in a minute;

every miracle would be practicable, and the universe would be at our

disposal.

Magic springs from this eternal yearning of the human mind. Its value

has no doubt been exaggerated, but it is not a falsehood. Some Orientals

who are skilled in it perform prodigies. All travellers have vouched for

its existence, and at the Palais Royal M. Dupotet moves with his finger

the magnetic needle.

How to become magicians? This idea appeared to them foolish at first,

but it returned, tormented them, and they yielded to it, even while

affecting to laugh.

A course of preparation is indispensable.

In order to excite themselves the better, they kept awake at night,

fasted, and, wishing to convert Germaine into a more delicate medium,

they limited her diet. She indemnified herself by drinking, and consumed

so much brandy that she speedily ended in becoming intoxicated. Their

promenades in the corridor awakened her. She confused the noise of their

footsteps with the hummings in her ears and the voices which she

imagined she heard coming from the walls. One day, when she had put a

plaice into the pantry, she was frightened on seeing it covered with

flame; she became worse than ever after that, and ended by believing

that they had cast a spell over her.

Hoping to behold visions, they pressed the napes of each other's necks;

they made themselves little bags of belladonna; finally they adopted the

magic box, out of which rises a mushroom bristling with nails, to be

worn over the heart by means of a ribbon attached to the breast.

Everything proved unsuccessful. But they might make use of the sphere of

Dupotet!

Pécuchet, with a piece of charcoal, traced on the ground a black shield,

in order to enclose within its compass the animal spirits whose duty it

is to assist the ambient spirits, and rejoicing at having the mastery

over Bouvard, he said to him, with a pontifical air:

"I defy you to cross it!"

Bouvard viewed this circular space. Soon his heart began throbbing, his

eyes became clouded.

"Ha! let us make an end of it!" And he jumped over it, to get rid of an

inexpressible sense of unpleasantness.

Pécuchet, whose exultation was increasing, desired to make a corpse

appear.

Under the Directory a man in the Rue de l'Échiquier exhibited the

victims of the Terror. There are innumerable examples of persons coming

back from the other world. Though it may be a mere appearance, what

matter? The thing was to produce the effect.

The nearer to us we feel the phantom, the more promptly it responds to

our appeal. But he had no relic of his family--ring, miniature, or lock

of hair--while Bouvard was in a position to conjure up his father; but,

as he testified a certain repugnance on the subject, Pécuchet asked him:

"What are you afraid of?"

"I? Oh! nothing at all! Do what you like."

They kept Chamberlan in their pay, and he supplied them by stealth with

an old death's-head. A seamster cut out for them two long black robes

with hoods attached, like monks' habits. The Falaise coach brought them

a large parcel in a wrapper. Then they set about the work, the one

interested in executing it, the other afraid to believe in it.

The museum was spread out like a catafalque. Three wax tapers burned at

the side of the table pushed against the wall beneath the portrait of

Père Bouvard, above which rose the death's-head. They had even stuffed a

candle into the interior of the skull, and rays of light shot out

through the two eyeholes.

In the centre, on a chafing-dish, incense was smoking. Bouvard kept in

the background, and Pécuchet, turning his back to him, cast handfuls of

sulphur into the fireplace.

Before invoking a corpse the consent of the demons is required. Now,

this day being a Friday--a day which is assigned to Béchet--they should

occupy themselves with Béchet first of all.

Bouvard, having bowed to the right and to the left, bent his chin, and

raised his arms, began:

"In the names of Ethaniel, Anazin, Ischyros----"

He forgot the rest.

Pécuchet rapidly breathed forth the words, which had been jotted down on

a piece of pasteboard:

"Ischyros, Athanatos, Adonaï, Sadaï, Eloy, Messiasös" (the litany was a

long one), "I implore thee, I look to thee, I command thee, O Béchet!"

Then, lowering his voice:

"Where art thou, Béchet? Béchet! Béchet! Béchet!"

Bouvard sank into the armchair, and he was very pleased at not seeing

Béchet, a certain instinct reproaching him with making an experiment

which was a kind of sacrilege.

Where was his father's soul? Could it hear him? What if, all at once, it

were about to appear?

The curtains slowly moved under the wind, which made its way in through

a cracked pane of glass, and the wax-tapers caused shadows to oscillate

above the corpse's skull and also above the painted face. An earthy

colour made them equally brown. The cheek-bones were consumed by

mouldiness, the eyes no longer possessed any lustre; but a flame shone

above them in the eyeholes of the empty skull. It seemed sometimes to

take the other's place, to rest on the collar of the frock-coat, to have

a beard on it; and the canvas, half unfastened, swayed and palpitated.

Little by little they felt, as it were, the sensation of being touched

by a breath, the approach of an impalpable being. Drops of sweat

moistened Pécuchet's forehead, and Bouvard began to gnash his teeth: a

cramp gripped his epigastrium; the floor, like a wave, seemed to flow

under his heels; the sulphur burning in the chimney fell down in

spirals. At the same moment bats flitted about. A cry arose. Who was it?

And their faces under their hoods presented such a distorted aspect

that, gazing at each other, they were becoming more frightened than

before, not venturing either to move or to speak, when behind the door

they heard groans like those of a soul in torture.

At length they ran the risk. It was their old housekeeper, who, espying

them through a slit in the partition, imagined she saw the devil, and,

falling on her knees in the corridor, kept repeatedly making the sign of

the Cross.

All reasoning was futile. She left them the same evening, having no

desire to be employed by such people.

Germaine babbled. Chamberlan lost his place, and he formed against them

a secret coalition, supported by the Abbé Jeufroy, Madame Bordin, and

Foureau.

Their way of living, so unlike that of other people, gave offence. They

became objects of suspicion, and even inspired a vague terror.

What destroyed them above all in public opinion was their choice of a

servant. For want of another, they had taken Marcel.

His hare-lip, his hideousness, and the gibberish he talked made people

avoid him. A deserted child, he had grown up, the sport of chance, in

the fields, and from his long-continued privations he became possessed

by an insatiable appetite. Animals that had died of disease, putrid

bacon, a crushed dog--everything agreed with him so long as the piece

was thick; and he was as gentle as a sheep, but utterly stupid.

Gratitude had driven him to offer himself as a servant to MM. Bouvard

and Pécuchet; and then, believing that they were wizards, he hoped for

extraordinary gains.

Soon after the first days of his employment with them, he confided to

them a secret. On the heath of Poligny a man had formerly found an ingot

of gold. The anecdote is related by the historians of Falaise; they were

ignorant of its sequel: Twelve brothers, before setting out on a voyage,

had concealed twelve similar ingots along the road from Chavignolles to

Bretteville, and Marcel begged of his masters to begin a search for them

over again. These ingots, said they to each other, had perhaps been

buried just before emigration.

This was a case for the use of the divining-rod. Its virtues are

doubtful. They studied the question, however, and learned that a certain

Pierre Garnier gives scientific reasons to vindicate its claims: springs

and metals throw out corpuscles which have an affinity with the wood.

"This is scarcely probable. Who knows, however? Let us make the

attempt."

They cut themselves a forked branch from a hazel tree, and one morning

set forth to discover the treasure.

"It must be given up," said Bouvard.

"Oh, no! bless your soul!"

After they had been three hours travelling, a thought made them draw up:

"The road from Chavignolles to Bretteville!--was it the old or the new

road? It must be the old!"

They went back, and rushed through the neighbourhood at random, the

direction of the old road not being easy to discover.

Marcel went jumping from right to left, like a spaniel running at

field-sports. Bouvard was compelled to call him back every five minutes.

Pécuchet advanced step by step, holding the rod by the two branches,

with the point upwards. Often it seemed to him that a force and, as it

were, a cramp-iron drew it towards the ground; and Marcel very rapidly

made a notch in the neighbouring trees, in order to find the place

later.

Pécuchet, however, slackened his pace. His mouth was open; the pupils of

his eyes were contracted. Bouvard questioned him, caught hold of his

shoulders, and shook him. He did not stir, and remained inert, exactly

like La Barbée. Then he said he felt around his heart a kind of

compression, a singular experience, arising from the rod, no doubt, and

he no longer wished to touch it.

They returned next day to the place where the marks had been made on the

trees. Marcel dug holes with a spade; nothing, however, came of it, and

each time they felt exceedingly sheepish. Pécuchet sat down by the side

of a ditch, and while he mused, with his head raised, striving to hear

the voices of the spirits through his astral body, asking himself

whether he even had one, he fixed his eyes on the peak of his cap; the

ecstasy of the previous day once more took possession of him. It lasted

a long time, and became dreadful.

Above some oats in a by-path appeared a felt hat: it was that of M.

Vaucorbeil on his mare.

Bouvard and Marcel called out to him.

The crisis was drawing to an end when the physician arrived. In order to

examine Pécuchet he lifted his cap, and perceiving a forehead covered

with coppery marks:

"Ha! ha! _Fructus belli!_ Those are love-spots, my fine fellow! Take

care of yourself. The deuce! let us not trifle with love."

Pécuchet, ashamed, again put on his cap, a sort of head-piece that

swelled over a peak shaped like a half-moon, the model of which he had

taken from the Atlas of Amoros.

The doctor's words astounded him. He kept thinking of them with his eyes

staring before him, and suddenly had another seizure.

Vaucorbeil watched him, then, with a fillip, knocked off his cap.

Pécuchet recovered his faculties.

"I suspected as much," said the physician; "the glazed peak hypnotises

you like a mirror; and this phenomenon is not rare with persons who look

at a shining substance too attentively."

He pointed out how the experiment might be made on hens, then mounted

his nag, and slowly disappeared from their view.

Half a league further on they noticed, in a farmyard, a pyramidal object

stretched out towards the horizon. It might have been compared to an

enormous bunch of black grapes marked here and there with red dots. It

was, in fact, a long pole, garnished, according to the Norman custom,

with cross-bars, on which were perched turkeys bridling in the sunshine.

"Let us go in." And Pécuchet accosted the farmer, who yielded to their

request.

They traced a line with whiting in the middle of the press, tied down

the claws of a turkey-cock, then stretched him flat on his belly, with

his beak placed on the line. The fowl shut his eyes, and soon presented

the appearance of being dead. The same process was gone through with the

others. Bouvard passed them quickly across to Pécuchet, who ranged them

on the side on which they had become torpid.

The people about the farm-house exhibited uneasiness. The mistress

screamed, and a little girl began to cry.

Bouvard loosened all the turkeys. They gradually revived; but one could

not tell what might be the consequences.

At a rather tart remark of Pécuchet, the farmer grasped his pitchfork

tightly.

"Clear out, in God's name, or I'll smash your head!"

They scampered off.

No matter! the problem was solved: ecstasy is dependent on material

causes.

What, then, is matter? What is spirit? Whence comes the influence of the

one on the other, and the reciprocal exchange of influence?

In order to inform themselves on the subject, they made researches in

the works of Voltaire, Bossuet, Fénelon; and they renewed their

subscription to a circulating library.

The ancient teachers were inaccessible owing to the length of their

works, or the difficulty of the language; but Jouffroy and Damiron

initiated them into modern philosophy, and they had authors who dealt

with that of the last century.

Bouvard derived his arguments from Lamettrie, Locke, and Helvetius;

Pécuchet from M. Cousin, Thomas Reid, and Gérando. The former adhered to

experience; for the latter, the ideal was everything. The one belonged

to the school of Aristotle, the other to that of Plato; and they

proceeded to discuss the subject.

"The soul is immaterial," said Pécuchet.

"By no means," said his friend. "Lunacy, chloroform, a bleeding will

overthrow it; and, inasmuch as it is not always thinking, it is not a

substance which does nothing but think."

"Nevertheless," rejoined Pécuchet, "I have in myself something superior

to my body, which sometimes confutes it."

"A being in a being--_homo duplex_! Look here, now! Different tendencies

disclose opposite motives. That's all!"

"But this something, this soul, remains identical amid all changes from

without. Therefore, it is simple, indivisible, and thus spiritual."

"If the soul were simple," replied Bouvard, "the newly-born would

recollect, would imagine, like the adult. Thought, on the contrary,

follows the development of the brain. As to its being indivisible,

neither the perfume of a rose nor the appetite of a wolf, any more than

a volition or an affirmation, is cut in two."

"That makes no difference," said Pécuchet. "The soul is exempt from the

qualities of matter."

"Do you admit weight?" returned Bouvard. "Now, if matter can fall, it

can in the same way think. Having had a beginning, the soul must come

to an end, and as it is dependent on certain organs, it must disappear

with them."

"For my part, I maintain that it is immortal. God could not intend----"

"But if God does not exist?"

"What?" And Pécuchet gave utterance to the three Cartesian proofs:

"'_Primo_: God is comprehended in the idea that we have of Him;

_secundo_: Existence is possible to Him; _tertio_: How can I, a finite

being, have an idea of the Infinite? And, since we have this idea, it

comes to us from God; therefore, God exists.'"

He passed on to the testimony of conscience, the traditions of different

races, and the need of a Creator.

"When I see a clock----"

"Yes! yes! That's a well-known argument. But where is the clockmaker's

father?"

"However, a cause is necessary."

Bouvard was doubtful about causes. "From the fact that one phenomenon

succeeds another phenomenon, the conclusion is drawn that it is caused

by the first. Prove it."

"But the spectacle of the universe indicates an intention and a plan."

"Why? Evil is as perfectly organised as good. The worm that works its

way into a sheep's head and causes it to die, is as valuable from an

anatomical point of view as the sheep itself. Abnormalities surpass the

normal functions. The human body could be better constructed. Three

fourths of the globe are sterile. That celestial lamp-post, the moon,

does not always show itself! Do you think the ocean was destined for

ships, and the wood of trees for fuel for our houses?"

Pécuchet answered: "Yet the stomach is made to digest, the leg to walk,

the eye to see, although there are dyspepsias, fractures, and cataracts.

No arrangements without an end. The effects came on at the exact time or

at a later period. Everything depends on laws; therefore, there are

final causes."

Bouvard imagined that perhaps Spinoza would furnish him with some

arguments, and he wrote to Dumouchel to get him Saisset's translation.

Dumouchel sent him a copy belonging to his friend Professor Varelot,

exiled on the 2nd of December.

Ethics terrified them with its axioms, its corollaries. They read only

the pages marked with pencil, and understood this:

"'The substance is that which is of itself, by itself, without cause,

without origin. This substance is God. He alone is extension, and

extension is without bounds.'"

"What can it be bound with?"

"'But, though it be infinite, it is not the absolute infinite, for it

contains only one kind of perfection, and the Absolute contains all.'"

They frequently stopped to think it out the better. Pécuchet took

pinches of snuff, and Bouvard's face glowed with concentrated attention.

"Does this amuse you?"

"Yes, undoubtedly. Go on forever."

"'God displays Himself in an infinite number of attributes which

express, each in its own way, the infinite character of His being. We

know only two of them--extension and thought.

"'From thought and extension flow innumerable modes, which contain

others. He who would at the same time embrace all extension and all

thought would see there no contingency, nothing accidental, but a

geometrical succession of terms, bound amongst themselves by necessary

laws.'"

"Ah! that would be beautiful!" exclaimed Bouvard.

"'If God had a will, an end, if He acted for a cause, that would mean

that He would have some want, that He would lack some one perfection. He

would not be God.

"'Thus our world is but one point in the whole of things, and the

universe, impenetrable by our knowledge, is a portion of an infinite

number of universes emitting close to ours infinite modifications.

Extension envelops our universe, but is enveloped by God, who contains

in His thought all possible universes, and His thought itself is

enveloped in His substance.'"

It appeared to them that this substance was filled at night with an icy

coldness, carried away in an endless course towards a bottomless abyss,

leaving nothing around them but the Unseizable, the Immovable, the

Eternal.

This was too much for them, and they renounced it. And wishing for

something less harsh, they bought the course of philosophy, by M.

Guesnier, for the use of classes.

The author asks himself what would be the proper method, the ontological

or the psychological.

The first suited the infancy of societies, when man directed his

attention towards the external world. But at present, when he turns it

in upon himself, "we believe the second to be more scientific."

The object of psychology is to study the acts which take place in our

own breasts. We discover them by observation.

"Let us observe." And for a fortnight, after breakfast, they regularly

searched their consciousness at random, hoping to make great discoveries

there--and made none, which considerably astonished them.

"'One phenomenon occupies the ego, viz., the idea. What is its nature?

It has been supposed that the objects are put into the brain, and that

the brain transmits these images to our souls, which gives us the

knowledge of them.'"

But if the idea is spiritual, how are we to represent matter? Thence

comes scepticism as to external perceptions. If it is material,

spiritual objects could not be represented. Thence scepticism as to the

reality of internal notions.

"For another reason let us here be careful. This hypothesis will lead us

to atheism."

For an image, being a finite thing, cannot possibly represent the

Infinite.

"Yet," argued Bouvard, "when I think of a forest, of a person, of a dog,

I see this forest, this person, this dog. Therefore the ideas do

represent them."

And they proceeded to deal with the origin of ideas.

According to Locke, there are two originating causes--sensation and

reflection; and Condillac reduces everything to sensation.

But then reflection will lack a basis. It has need of a subject, of a

sentient being; and it is powerless to furnish us with the great

fundamental truths: God, merit and demerit, the Just, the

Beautiful--ideas which are all _innate_, that is to say, anterior to

facts, and to experience, and universal.

"If they were universal we should have them from our birth."

"By this word is meant dispositions to have them; and Descartes----"

"Your Descartes is muddled, for he maintains that the foetus possesses

them, and he confesses in another place that this is in an implied

fashion."

Pécuchet was astonished. "Where is this found?"

"In Gérando." And Bouvard tapped him lightly on the stomach.

"Make an end of it, then," said Pécuchet.

Then, coming to Condillac:

"'Our thoughts are not metamorphoses of sensation. It causes them, puts

them in play. In order to put them in play a motive power is necessary,

for matter of itself cannot produce movement.' And I found that in your

Voltaire," Pécuchet added, making a low bow to him.

Thus they repeated again and again the same arguments, each treating the

other's opinion with contempt, without persuading his companion that his

own was right.

But philosophy elevated them in their own estimation. They recalled with

disdain their agricultural and political preoccupations.

At present they were disgusted with the museum. They would have asked

nothing better than to sell the articles of _virtù_ contained in it. So

they passed on to the second chapter: "Faculties of the Soul."

"'They are three in number, no more: that of feeling, that of knowing,

and that of willing.

"'In the faculty of feeling we should distinguish physical sensibility

from moral sensibility. Physical sensations are naturally classified

into five species, being transmitted through the medium of the senses.

The facts of moral sensibility, on the contrary, owe nothing to the

body. What is there in common between the pleasure of Archimedes in

discovering the laws of weight and the filthy gratification of Apicius

in devouring a wild-boar's head?

"'This moral sensibility has five _genera_, and its second genus, moral

desires, is divided into five species, and the phenomena of the fourth

genus, affection, are subdivided into two other species, amongst which

is the love of oneself--a legitimate propensity, no doubt, but one

which, when it becomes exaggerated, takes the name of egoism.

"'In the faculty of knowing we find rational perception, in which there

are two principal movements and four degrees.

"'Abstraction may present perils to whimsical minds.

"'Memory brings us into contact with the past, as foresight does with

the future.

"'Imagination is rather a special faculty, _sui generis_.'"

So many intricacies in order to demonstrate platitudes, the pedantic

tone of the author, and the monotony of his forms of expression--"We are

prepared to acknowledge it," "Far from us be the thought," "Let us

interrogate our consciousness"--the sempiternal eulogy on Dugald

Stewart; in short, all this verbiage, disgusted them so much that,

jumping over the faculty of willing, they went into logic.

It taught them the nature of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction,

and the principal causes of our errors.

Nearly all come from the misuse of words.

"The sun is going to bed." "The weather is becoming brown," "The winter

is drawing near"--vicious modes of speech which would make us believe in

personal entities, when it is only a question of very simple

occurrences. "I remember such an object," "such an axiom," "such a

truth"--illusion! These are ideas and not at all things which remain in

me; and the rigour of language requires, "I remember such an act of my

mind by which I perceived that object," "whereby I have deduced that

axiom," "whereby I have admitted this truth."

As the term that describes an incident does not embrace it in all its

aspects, they try to employ only abstract words, so that in place of

saying, "Let us make a tour," "It is time to dine," "I have the colic,"

they give utterance to the following phrases: "A promenade would be

salutary," "This is the hour for absorbing aliments," "I experience a

necessity for disburdenment."

Once masters of logic, they passed in review the different criterions;

first, that of common sense.

If the individual can know nothing, why should all individuals know

more? An error, were it a hundred thousand years old, does not by the

mere fact of its being old constitute truth. The multitude invariably

pursues the path of routine. It is, on the contrary, the few who are

guided by progress.

Is it better to trust to the evidence of the senses? They sometimes

deceive, and never give information save as to externals. The innermost

core escapes them.

Reason offers more safeguards, being immovable and impersonal; but in

order that it may be manifested it is necessary that it should

incarnate itself. Then, reason becomes my reason; a rule is of little

value if it is false. Nothing can show such a rule to be right.

We are recommended to control it with the senses; but they may make the

darkness thicker. From a confused sensation a defective law will be

inferred, which, later, will obstruct the clear view of things.

Morality remains.

This would make God descend to the level of the useful, as if our wants

were the measure of the Absolute.

As for the evidence--denied by the one, affirmed by the other--it is its

own criterion. M. Cousin has demonstrated it.

"I see no longer anything but revelation," said Bouvard. "But, to

believe it, it is necessary to admit two preliminary cognitions--that of

the body which has felt, and that of the intelligence which has

perceived; to admit sensation and reason. Human testimonies! and

consequently open to suspicion."

Pécuchet reflected--folded his arms. "But we are about to fall into the

frightful abyss of scepticism."

In Bouvard's opinion it frightened only weak brains.

"Thank you for the compliment," returned Pécuchet. "However, there are

indisputable facts. We can arrive at truth within a certain limit."

"Which? Do two and two always make four? Is that which is contained in

some degree less than that which contains it? What is the meaning of

nearly true, a fraction of God, the part of an indivisible thing?"

"Oh, you are a mere sophist!" And Pécuchet, annoyed, remained for three

days in a sulk.

They employed themselves in running through the contents of several

volumes. Bouvard smiled from time to time, and renewing the

conversation, said:

"The fact is, it is hard to avoid doubt; thus, for the existence of God,

Descartes', Kant's, and Leibnitz's proofs are not the same, and mutually

destroy one another. The creation of the world by atoms, or by a spirit,

remains inconceivable. I feel myself, at the same time, matter and

thought, while all the time I am ignorant of what one or the other

really is. Impenetrability, solidity, weight, seem to me to be mysteries

just as much as my soul, and, with much stronger reason, the union of

the soul and the body. In order to explain it, Leibnitz invented his

harmony, Malebranche premotion, Cudworth a mediator, and Bossuet sees in

it a perpetual miracle."

"Exactly," said Pécuchet. And they both confessed that they were tired

of philosophy. Such a number of systems confused them. Metaphysics is of

no use: one can live without it. Besides, their pecuniary embarrassments

were increasing. They owed one bill to Beljambe for three hogsheads of

wine, another to Langlois for two stone of sugar, a sum of one hundred

francs to the tailor, and sixty to the shoemaker.

Their expenditures were continuous, of course, and meantime Maître Gouy

did not pay up.

They went to Marescot to ask him to raise money for them, either by the

sale of the Ecalles meadow, or by a mortgage on their farm, or by giving

up their house on the condition of getting a life annuity and keeping

the usufruct.

In Marescot's opinion this would be an impracticable course; but a

better means might be devised, and they should be informed about it.

After this they thought of their poor garden. Bouvard undertook the

pruning of the row of elms and Pécuchet the trimming of the espalier.

Marcel would have to dig the borders.

At the end of a quarter of an hour they stopped. The one closed his

pruning-knife, the other laid down his scissors, and they began to walk

to and fro quietly, Bouvard in the shade of the linden trees, with his

waistcoat off, his chest held out and his arms bare; Pécuchet close to

the wall, with his head hanging down, his arms behind his back, the peak

of his cap turned over his neck for precaution; and thus they proceeded

in parallel lines without even seeing Marcel, who was resting at the

side of the hut eating a scrap of bread.

In this reflective mood thoughts arose in their minds. They grasped at

them, fearing to lose them; and metaphysics came back again--came back

with respect to the rain and the sun, the gravel in their shoes, the

flowers on the grass--with respect to everything. When they looked at

the candle burning, they asked themselves whether the light is in the

object or in our eyes. Since stars may have disappeared by the time

their radiance has reached us, we admire, perhaps, things that have no

existence.

Having found a Raspail cigarette in the depths of a waistcoat, they

crumbled it over some water, and the camphor moved about. Here, then, is

movement in matter. One degree more of movement might bring on life!

But if matter in movement were sufficient to create beings, they would

not be so varied. For in the beginning lands, water, men, and plants had

no existence. What, then, is this primordial matter, which we have never

seen, which is no portion of created things, and which yet has produced

them all?

Sometimes they wanted a book. Dumouchel, tired of assisting them, no

longer answered their letters. They enthusiastically took up the new

question, especially Pécuchet. His need of truth became a burning

thirst.

Moved by Bouvard's preachings, he gave up spiritualism, but soon resumed

it again only to abandon it once more, and, clasping his head with his

hands, he would exclaim:

"Oh, doubt! doubt! I would much prefer nothingness."

Bouvard perceived the insufficiency of materialism, and tried to stop at

that, declaring, however, that he had lost his head over it.

They began with arguments on a solid basis, but the basis gave way; and

suddenly they had no longer a single idea--just as a bird takes wing the

moment we wish to catch it.

During the winter evenings they chatted in the museum at the corner of

the fire, staring at the coals. The wind, whistling in the corridor,

shook the window-panes; the black masses of trees swayed to and fro, and

the dreariness of the night intensified the seriousness of their

thoughts.

Bouvard from time to time walked towards the further end of the

apartment and then came back. The torches and the pans on the walls

threw slanting shadows on the ground; and the St. Peter, seen in

profile, showed on the ceiling the silhouette of his nose, resembling a

monstrous hunting-horn.

They found it hard to move about amongst the various articles, and

Bouvard, by not taking precautions, often knocked against the statue.

With its big eyes, its drooping lip, and its air of a drunkard, it also

annoyed Pécuchet. For a long time he had wished to get rid of it, but

through carelessness put it off from day to day.

One evening, in the middle of a dispute on the monad, Bouvard hit his

big toe against St. Peter's thumb, and turning on him in a rage,

exclaimed:

"He plagues me, this jackanapes! Let us toss him out!"

It was difficult to do this over the staircase. They flung open the

window, and gently tried to tip St. Peter over the edge. Pécuchet, on

his knees, attempted to raise his heels, while Bouvard pressed against

his shoulders. The old codger in stone did not budge. After this they

had recourse to the halberd as a lever, and finally succeeded in

stretching him out quite straight. Then, after a see-saw motion, he

dashed into the open space, his tiara going before him. A heavy crash

reached their ears, and next day they found him broken into a dozen

pieces in the old pit for composts.

An hour afterwards the notary came in, bringing good news to them. A

lady in the neighbourhood was willing to advance a thousand crown-pieces

on the security of a mortgage of their farm, and, as they were

expressing their satisfaction at the proposal:

"Pardon me. She adds, as a condition, that you should sell her the

Ecalles meadow for fifteen hundred francs. The loan will be advanced

this very day. The money is in my office."

They were both disposed to give way.

Bouvard ended by saying: "Good God! be it so, then."

"Agreed," said Marescot. And then he mentioned the lender's name: it was

Madame Bordin.

"I suspected 'twas she!" exclaimed Pécuchet.

Bouvard, who felt humiliated, had not a word to say.

She or some one else--what did it matter? The principal thing was to get

out of their difficulties.

When they received the money (they were to get the sum for the Ecalles

later) they immediately paid all their bills; and they were returning to

their abode when, at the corner of the market-place, they were stopped

by Farmer Gouy.

He had been on his way to their house to apprise them of a misfortune.

The wind, the night before, had blown down twenty apple trees into the

farmyard, overturned the boilery, and carried away the roof of the barn.

They spent the remainder of the afternoon in estimating the amount of

the damage, and they continued the inquiry on the following day with the

assistance of the carpenter, the mason, and the slater. The repairs

would cost at least about eighteen hundred francs.

Then, in the evening, Gouy presented himself. Marianne herself had, a

short time before, told him all about the sale of the Ecalles meadow--a

piece of land with a splendid yield, suitable in every way, and scarcely

requiring any cultivation at all, the best bit in the whole farm!--and

he asked for a reduction.

The two gentlemen refused it. The matter was submitted to the justice of

the peace, who decided in favour of the farmer. The loss of the Ecalles,

which was valued at two thousand francs per acre, caused him an annual

depreciation of seventy, and he was sure to win in the courts.

Their fortune was diminished. What were they to do? And soon the

question would be, How were they to live?

They both sat down to table full of discouragement. Marcel knew nothing

about it in the kitchen. His dinner this time was better than theirs.

The soup was like dish-water, the rabbit had a bad smell, the

kidney-beans were underdone, the plates were dirty, and at dessert

Bouvard burst into a passion and threatened to break everything on

Marcel's head.

"Let us be philosophers," said Pécuchet. "A little less money, the

intrigues of a woman, the clumsiness of a servant--what is it but this?

You are too much immersed in matter."

"But when it annoys me?" said Bouvard.

"For my part, I don't admit it," rejoined Pécuchet.

He had recently been reading an analysis of Berkeley, and added:

"I deny extension, time, space, even substance! for the true substance

is the mind-perceiving qualities."

"Quite so," said Bouvard; "but get rid of the world, and you'll have no

proof left of God's existence."

Pécuchet uttered a cry, and a long one too, although he had a cold in

his head, caused by the iodine of potassium, and a continual

feverishness increased his excitement. Bouvard, being uneasy about him,

sent for the doctor.

Vaucorbeil ordered orange-syrup with the iodine, and for a later stage

cinnabar baths.

"What's the use?" replied Pécuchet. "One day or another the form will

die out. The essence does not perish."

"No doubt," said the physician, "matter is indestructible. However----"

"Ah, no!--ah, no! The indestructible thing is being. This body which is

there before me--yours, doctor--prevents me from knowing your real self,

and is, so to speak, only a garment, or rather a mask."

Vaucorbeil believed he was mad.

"Good evening. Take care of your mask."

Pécuchet did not stop. He procured an introduction to the Hegelian

philosophy, and wished to explain it to Bouvard.

"All that is rational is real. There is not even any reality save the

idea. The laws of the mind are laws of the universe; the reason of man

is identical with that of God."

Bouvard pretended to understand.

"Therefore the absolute is, at the same time, the subject and the

object, the unity whereby all differences come to be settled. Thus,

things that are contradictory are reconciled. The shadow permits the

light; heat and cold intermingled produce temperature. Organism

maintains itself only by the destruction of organism; everywhere there

is a principle that disunites, a principle that connects."

They were on the hillock, and the curé was walking past the gateway with

his breviary in his hand.

Pécuchet asked him to come in, as he desired to finish the explanation

of Hegel, and to get some notion of what the curé would say about it.

The man of the cassock sat down beside them, and Pécuchet broached the

question of Christianity.

"No religion has established this truth so well: 'Nature is but a moment

of the idea.'"

"A moment of the idea!" murmured the priest in astonishment.

"Why, yes. God in taking a visible envelope showed his consubstantial

union with it."

"With nature--oh! oh!"

"By His decease He bore testimony to the essence of death; therefore,

death was in Him, made and makes part of God."

The ecclesiastic frowned.

"No blasphemies! it was for the salvation of the human race that He

endured sufferings."

"Error! We look at death in the case of the individual, where, no doubt,

it is a calamity; but with relation to things it is different. Do not

separate mind from matter."

"However, sir, before the Creation----"

"There was no Creation. It has always existed. Otherwise this would be a

new being adding itself to the Divine idea, which is absurd."

The priest arose; business matters called him elsewhere.

"I flatter myself I've floored him!" said Pécuchet. "One word more.

Since the existence of the world is but a continual passage from life to

death, and from death to life, so far from everything existing, nothing

is. But everything is becoming--do you understand?"

"Yes; I do understand--or rather I don't."

Idealism in the end exasperated Bouvard.

"I don't want any more of it. The famous _cogito_ stupefies me. Ideas of

things are taken for the things themselves. What we understand very

slightly is explained by means of words which we don't understand at

all--substance, extension, force, matter, and soul. So much abstraction,

imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know in what way He is, if

He is at all. Formerly, He used to cause the wind, the thunderstorms,

revolutions. At present, He is diminishing. Besides, I don't see the

utility of Him."

"And morality--in this state of affairs."

"Ah! so much the worse."

"It lacks a foundation in fact," said Pécuchet.

And he remained silent, driven into a corner by premises which he had

himself laid down. It was a surprise--a crushing bit of logic.

Bouvard no longer even believed in matter.

The certainty that nothing exists (deplorable though it may be) is none

the less a certainty. Few persons are capable of possessing it. This

transcendency on their part inspired them with pride, and they would

have liked to make a display of it. An opportunity presented itself.

One morning, while they were going to buy tobacco, they saw a crowd in

front of Langlois' door. The public conveyance from Falaise was

surrounded, and there was much excitement about a convict named Touache,

who was wandering about the country. The conductor had met him at

Croix-Verte between two gendarmes, and the people of Chavignolles

breathed a sigh of relief.

Girbal and the captain remained on the green; then the justice of the

peace made his appearance, curious to obtain information, and after him

came M. Marescot in a velvet cap and sheepskin slippers.

Langlois invited them to honour his shop with their presence; they would

be more at their ease; and in spite of the customers and the loud

ringing of the bell, the gentlemen continued their discussion as to

Touache's offences.

"Goodness gracious!" said Bouvard, "he had bad instincts. That was the

whole of it!"

"They are conquered by virtue," replied the notary.

"But if a person has not virtue?"

And Bouvard positively denied free-will.

"Yet," said the captain, "I can do what I like. I am free, for instance,

to move my leg."

"No, sir, for you have a motive for moving it."

The captain looked out for something to say in reply, and found nothing.

But Girbal discharged this shaft:

"A Republican speaking against liberty. That is funny."

"A droll story," chimed in Langlois.

Bouvard turned on him with this question:

"Why don't you give all you possess to the poor?"

The grocer cast an uneasy glance over his entire shop.

"Look here, now, I'm not such an idiot! I keep it for myself."

"If you were St. Vincent de Paul, you would act differently, since you

would have his character. You obey your own. Therefore, you are not

free."

"That's a quibble!" replied the company in chorus.

Bouvard did not flinch, and said, pointing towards the scales on the

counter:

"It will remain motionless so long as each scale is empty. So with the

will; and the oscillation of the scales between two weights which seem

equal represents the strain on our mind when it is hesitating between

different motives, till the moment when the more powerful motive gets

the better of it and leads it to a determination."

"All that," said Girbal, "makes no difference for Touache, and does not

prevent him from being a downright vicious rogue."

Pécuchet addressed the company:

"Vices are properties of Nature, like floods, tempests."

The notary stopped, and raising himself on tiptoe at every word:

"I consider your system one of complete immorality. It gives scope to

every kind of excess, excuses crimes, and declares the guilty innocent."

"Exactly," replied Bouvard; "the wretch who follows his appetites is

right from his own point of view just as much as the honest man who

listens to reason."

"Do not defend monsters!"

"Wherefore monsters? When a person is born blind, an idiot, a homicide,

this appears to us to be opposed to order, as if order were known to us,

as if Nature were striving towards an end."

"You then raise a question about Providence?"

"I do raise a question about it."

"Look rather to history," exclaimed Pécuchet. "Recall to mind the

assassinations of kings, the massacres amongst peoples, the dissensions

in families, the affliction of individuals."

"And at the same time," added Bouvard, for they mutually excited each

other, "this Providence takes care of little birds, and makes the claws

of crayfishes grow again. Oh! if by Providence you mean a law which

rules everything, I am of the same opinion, and even more so."

"However, sir," said the notary, "there are principles."

"What stuff is that you're talking? A science, according to Condillac,

is so much the better the less need it has of them. They do nothing but

summarise acquired knowledge, and they bring us back to those

conceptions which are exactly the disputable ones."

"Have you, like us," went on Pécuchet, "scrutinised and explored the

arcana of metaphysics?"

"It is true, gentlemen--it is true!"

Then the company broke up.

But Coulon, drawing them aside, told them in a paternal tone that he was

no devotee certainly, and that he even hated the Jesuits. However, he

did not go as far as they did. Oh, no! certainly not. And at the corner

of the green they passed in front of the captain, who, as he lighted his

pipe, growled:

"All the same, I do what I like, by God!"

Bouvard and Pécuchet gave utterance on other occasions to their

scandalous paradoxes. They threw doubt on the honesty of men, the

chastity of women, the intelligence of government, the good sense of the

people--in short, they sapped the foundations of everything.

Foureau was provoked by their behaviour, and threatened them with

imprisonment if they went on with such discourses.

The evidence of their own superiority caused them pain. As they

maintained immoral propositions, they must needs be immoral: calumnies

were invented about them. Then a pitiable faculty developed itself in

their minds, that of observing stupidity and no longer tolerating it.

Trifling things made them feel sad: the advertisements in the

newspapers, the profile of a shopkeeper, an idiotic remark overheard by

chance. Thinking over what was said in their own village, and on the

fact that there were even as far as the Antipodes other Coulons, other

Marescots, other Foureaus, they felt, as it were, the heaviness of all

the earth weighing down upon them.

They no longer went out of doors, and received no visitors.

One afternoon a dialogue arose, outside the front entrance, between

Marcel and a gentleman who wore dark spectacles and a hat with a large

brim. It was the academician Larsoneur. He observed a curtain

half-opening and doors being shut. This step on his part was an attempt

at reconciliation; and he went away in a rage, directing the man-servant

to tell his masters that he regarded them as a pair of common fellows.

Bouvard and Pécuchet did not care about this. The world was diminishing

in importance, and they saw it as if through a cloud that had descended

from their brains over their eyes.

Is it not, moreover, an illusion, a bad dream? Perhaps, on the whole,

prosperity and misfortune are equally balanced. But the welfare of the

species does not console the individual.

"And what do others matter to me?" said Pécuchet.

His despair afflicted Bouvard. It was he who had brought his friend to

this pass, and the ruinous condition of their house kept their grief

fresh by daily irritations.

In order to revive their spirits they tried discussions, and prescribed

tasks for themselves, but speedily fell back into greater sluggishness,

into more profound discouragement.

At the end of each meal they would remain with their elbows on the table

groaning with a lugubrious air.

Marcel would give them a scared look, and then go back to his kitchen,

where he stuffed himself in solitude.

About the middle of midsummer they received a circular announcing the

marriage of Dumouchel with Madame Olympe-Zulma Poulet, a widow.

"God bless him!"

And they recalled the time when they were happy.

Why were they no longer following the harvesters? Where were the days

when they went through the different farm-houses looking everywhere for

antiquities? Nothing now gave them such hours of delight as those which

were occupied with the distillery and with literature. A gulf lay

between them and that time. It was irrevocable.

They thought of taking a walk as of yore through the fields, wandered

too far, and got lost. The sky was dotted with little fleecy clouds, the

wind was shaking the tiny bells of the oats; a stream was purling along

through a meadow--and then, all at once, an infectious odour made them

halt, and they saw on the pebbles between the thorn trees the putrid

carcass of a dog.

The four limbs were dried up. The grinning jaws disclosed teeth of ivory

under the bluish lips; in place of the stomach there was a mass of

earth-coloured flesh which seemed to be palpitating with the vermin that

swarmed all over it. It writhed, with the sun's rays falling on it,

under the gnawing of so many mouths, in this intolerable stench--a

stench which was fierce and, as it were, devouring.

Yet wrinkles gathered on Bouvard's forehead, and his eyes filled with

tears.

Pécuchet said in a stoical fashion, "One day we shall be like that."

The idea of death had taken hold of them. They talked about it on their

way back.

After all, it has no existence. We pass away into the dew, into the

breeze, into the stars. We become part of the sap of trees, the

brilliance of precious stones, the plumage of birds. We give back to

Nature what she lent to each of us, and the nothingness before us is not

a bit more frightful than the nothingness behind us.

They tried to picture it to themselves under the form of an intense

night, a bottomless pit, a continual swoon. Anything would be better

than such an existence--monotonous, absurd, and hopeless.

They enumerated their unsatisfied wants. Bouvard had always wished for

horses, equipages, a big supply of Burgundy, and lovely women ready to

accommodate him in a splendid habitation. Pécuchet's ambition was

philosophical knowledge. Now, the vastest of problems, that which

contains all others, can be solved in one minute. When would it come,

then? "As well to make an end of it at once."

"Just as you like," said Bouvard.

And they investigated the question of suicide.

Where is the evil of casting aside a burden which is crushing you? and

of doing an act harmful to nobody? If it offended God, should we have

this power? It is not cowardice, though people say so, and to scoff at

human pride is a fine thing, even at the price of injury to oneself--the

thing that men regard most highly.

They deliberated as to the different kinds of death. Poison makes you

suffer. In order to cut your throat you require too much courage. In the

case of asphyxia, people often fail to effect their object.

Finally, Pécuchet carried up to the garret two ropes belonging to their

gymnastic apparatus. Then, having fastened them to the same cross-beam

of the roof, he let a slip-knot hang down from the end of each, and drew

two chairs underneath to reach the ropes.

This method was the one they selected.

They asked themselves what impression it would cause in the district,

what would become of their library, their papers, their collections. The

thought of death made them feel tenderly about themselves. However, they

did not abandon their project, and by dint of talking about it they grew

accustomed to the idea.

On the evening of the 24th of December, between ten and eleven o'clock,

they sat thinking in the museum, both differently attired. Bouvard wore

a blouse over his knitted waistcoat, and Pécuchet, through economy, had

not left off his monk's habit for the past three months.

As they were very hungry (for Marcel, having gone out at daybreak, had

not reappeared), Bouvard thought it would be a healthful thing for him

to drink a quart bottle of brandy, and for Pécuchet to take some tea.

While he was lifting up the kettle he spilled some water on the floor.

"Awkward!" exclaimed Bouvard.

Then, thinking the infusion too small, he wanted to strengthen it with

two additional spoonfuls.

"This will be execrable," said Pécuchet.

"Not at all."

And while each of them was trying to draw the work-box closer to

himself, the tray upset and fell down. One of the cups was smashed--the

last of their fine porcelain tea-service.

Bouvard turned pale.

"Go on! Confusion! Don't put yourself about!"

"Truly, a great misfortune! I attribute it to my father."

"Your natural father," corrected Pécuchet, with a sneer.

"Ha! you insult me!"

"No; but I am tiring you out! I see it plainly! Confess it!"

And Pécuchet was seized with anger, or rather with madness. So was

Bouvard. The pair began shrieking, the one excited by hunger, the other

by alcohol. Pécuchet's throat at length emitted no sound save a

rattling.

"It is infernal, a life like this. I much prefer death. Adieu!"

He snatched up the candlestick and rushed out, slamming the door behind

him.

Bouvard, plunged in darkness, found some difficulty in opening it. He

ran after Pécuchet, and followed him up to the garret.

The candle was on the floor, and Pécuchet was standing on one of the

chairs, with a rope in his hand. The spirit of imitation got the better

of Bouvard.

"Wait for me!"

And he had just got up on the other chair when, suddenly stopping:

"Why, we have not made our wills!"

"Hold on! That's quite true!"

Their breasts swelled with sobs. They leaned against the skylight to

take breath.

The air was chilly and a multitude of stars glittered in a sky of inky

blackness.

The whiteness of the snow that covered the earth was lost in the haze of

the horizon.

They perceived, close to the ground, little lights, which, as they drew

near, looked larger, all reaching up to the side of the church.

Curiosity drove them to the spot. It was the midnight mass. These lights

came from shepherds' lanterns. Some of them were shaking their cloaks

under the porch.

The serpent snorted; the incense smoked. Glasses suspended along the

nave represented three crowns of many-coloured flames; and, at the end

of the perspective at the two sides of the tabernacle, immense wax

tapers were pointed with red flames. Above the heads of the crowd and

the broad-brimmed hats of the women, beyond the chanters, the priest

could be distinguished in his chasuble of gold. To his sharp voice

responded the strong voices of the men who filled up the gallery, and

the wooden vault quivered above its stone arches. The walls were

decorated with the stations of the Cross. In the midst of the choir,

before the altar, a lamb was lying down, with its feet under its belly

and its ears erect.

The warm temperature imparted to them both a strange feeling of comfort,

and their thoughts, which had been so tempestuous only a short time

before, became peaceful, like waves when they are calmed.

They listened to the Gospel and the _Credo_, and watched the movements

of the priest. Meanwhile, the old, the young, the beggar women in rags,

the mothers in high caps, the strong young fellows with tufts of fair

down on their faces, were all praying, absorbed in the same deep joy,

and saw the body of the Infant Christ shining, like a sun, upon the

straw of a stable. This faith on the part of others touched Bouvard in

spite of his reason, and Pécuchet in spite of the hardness of his heart.

There was a silence; every back was bent, and, at the tinkling of a

bell, the little lamb bleated.

The host was displayed by the priest, as high as possible between his

two hands. Then burst forth a strain of gladness inviting the whole

world to the feet of the King of Angels. Bouvard and Pécuchet

involuntarily joined in it, and they felt, as it were, a new dawn rising

in their souls.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Roughly speaking, about 93 acres.--TRANSLATOR.

[2] _Cuscute_--dodder.

[3] One hectare contains 2 acres 1 rood 38 perches.--TRANSLATOR.

[4] The [Text missing in original.--_Transcriber._]

[5] Raspail, the author of the work here referred to, was called in to

attend Gustave Flaubert's sister Caroline before her death in

1846.--TRANSLATOR.

[6] A decalitre contains over two gallons.--TRANSLATOR.

[7] A myriamètre is over six miles.--TRANSLATOR.

[8] This would, roughly speaking, be about eleven yards.--TRANSLATOR.

[9]

_Oui, prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée--

Je l'aime!_

[10] The Vinegar Merchant's Wheelbarrow.

[11]

_Des flammes de les yeux inonde ma paupière.

Chante-moi quelque chant, comme parfois, le soir,

Tu m'en chantais, avec des pleurs dans ton oeil noir._

[12]

_Soyons heureux! buvons! car la coupe est remplie,

Car cette heure est à moi, et le reste est folie!_

[13]

_N'est-ce pas qu'il est doux

D'aimer, et savoir qu'on vous aime à genoux?_

[14]

_Oh! laisse-moi dormir et rêver sur ton sein,

Doña Sol, ma beauté, mon amour!_

[15]

_Que dans tous vos discours la passion emue

Aille chercher le coeur, l'échauffe et le remue._

[16] _La savate_--a military practice of beating with an old shoe

soldiers unskilful at drill.--TRANSLATOR.

[17]

_A nous l'animal timide!

Atteignons le cerf rapide!

Oui! nous vaincons!

Courons! courons! courons!_

+------------------------------------------------------------+

|Transcriber's Notes: |

| |

|Page 12: Bartholemée _sic_ |

| |

|Page 15: Bartholemée _sic_ |

| |

|Page 36: The text of the second footnote on this page is |

|missing in the original edition of the book. |

| |

|Page 111: Single opening quote changed to double quote |

|(... returned Pécuchet, "has disappeared...") |

| |

|Page 114: Heurteaux amended to Heurtaux |

| |

|Page 133: Heurteaux amended to Heurtaux |

| |

|Page 150: Full stop added after "well-balanced idea" |

| |

|Page 167: comma added after _Mauprat_ |

| |

|Page 218: abbê amended to abbé |

| |

|Page 221: parlimentary amended to parliamentary |

| |

|Page 250: Loadstone _sic_ |

| |

|Page 259: Full stop added after "imagination" |

| |

|Page 276: Comma added after "Yet" |

| |

|Small discrepancies between the Table of Contents and |

|the chapter headings have been retained. |

| |

|Hyphenation has been standardised. Where the hyphenated and |

|unhyphenated version of a word occur an equal number of |

|times, both have been retained: cocoa-nuts/cocoanuts; |

|cross-beam/crossbeam; foot-warmer/footwarmer; |

|night-cap/nightcap; sugar-loaves/sugarloaves; |

|tri-coloured/tricoloured; wash-house/washhouse. |

| |

+------------------------------------------------------------+

End of Project Gutenberg's Bouvard and Pécuchet, by Gustave Flaubert