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Bouvard and Pécuchet: A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life, part 2

by Gustave Flaubert · English · Gutenberg #46909 · 451,195 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Bouvard and Pécuchet: A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life, part 2

Author: Gustave Flaubert


        
Release date: September 20, 2014 [eBook #46909]
                Most recently updated: November 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET: A TRAGI-COMIC NOVEL OF BOURGEOIS LIFE, PART 2 ***




Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)







[Illustration: frontispiece]




                         BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET

                        _A TRAGI-COMIC NOVEL OF
                            BOURGEOIS LIFE_

                                  BY
                           GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

                              _VOLUME X._

                            SIMON P. MAGEE
                               PUBLISHER
                             CHICAGO, ILL.

                          COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY

                            M. WALTER DUNNE

                 _Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_




CONTENTS

BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET

(_Continued._)


CHAPTER IX.                                    PAGE

SONS OF THE CHURCH                                1

CHAPTER X.

LESSONS IN ART AND SCIENCE                       50

CONFERENCE

[EXTRACT FROM A PLAN FOUND AMONGST
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT'S PAPERS INDICATING
THE CONCLUSION OF THE WORK.]                     94

THE DANCE OF DEATH                             1-14

RABELAIS                                       1-12

PREFACE TO THE LAST SONGS (_Posthumous
Poems_) OF LOUIS BOUILHET                      1-22

LETTER TO THE MUNICIPALITY OF ROUEN            1-15

SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE

INTIMATE REMEMBRANCES OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT      1-42

CORRESPONDENCE                               43-135




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                             FACING
                                               PAGE

"THEN, HAPLY, FAITHFUL ONE, WEARY AS I, THOU
FINALLY SHALT SEEK SOME PRECIPICE FROM
WHICH TO CAST THYSELF." (See page 6, _The
Dance of Death_)                      _Frontispiece_

BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET

BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET CARRIED THEM OFF            43

THE DANCE OF DEATH

NERO: YET, I AM LOTH TO DIE}
DEATH: DIE, THEN!          }                      7




BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET (_CONTINUED._)




CHAPTER IX.

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]




CHAPTER X.

LESSONS IN ART AND SCIENCE.


They procured a number of works relating to education, and resolved to
adopt a system of their own. It was necessary to banish every
metaphysical idea, and, in accordance with the experimental method, to
follow in the lines of natural development. There was no haste, for the
two pupils might forget what they had learned.

Though they had strong constitutions, Pécuchet wished, like a Spartan,
to make them more hardy, to accustom them to hunger, thirst, and severe
weather, and even insisted on having their feet badly shod in order that
they might be prepared for colds. Bouvard was opposed to this.

The dark closet at the end of the corridor was used as their sleeping
apartment. Its furniture consisted of two folding beds, two couches, and
a jug. Above their heads the top window was open, and spiders crawled
along the plaster. Often the children recalled to mind the interior of a
cabin where they used to wrangle. One night their father came home with
blood on his hands. Some time afterwards the gendarmes arrived. After
that they lived in a wood. Men who made wooden shoes used to kiss their
mother. She died, and was carried off in a cart. They used to get severe
beatings; they got lost. Then they could see once more Madame de Noares
and Sorel; and, without asking themselves the reason why they were in
this house, they felt happy there. But they were disagreeably surprised
when at the end of eight months the lessons began again. Bouvard took
charge of the little girl, and Pécuchet of the boy.

Victor was able to distinguish letters, but did not succeed in forming
syllables. He stammered over them, then stopped suddenly, and looked
like an idiot. Victorine put questions. How was it that "ch" in
"orchestra" had the sound of a "q," and that of a "k" in "archæology."
We must sometimes join two vowels and at other times separate them. All
this did not seem to her right. She grew indignant at it.

The teachers gave instruction at the same hour in their respective
apartments, and, as the partition was thin, these four voices, one soft,
one deep, and two sharp, made a hideous concert. To finish the business
and to stimulate the youngsters by means of emulation, they conceived
the idea of making them work together in the museum; and they proceeded
to teach them writing. The two pupils, one at each end of the table,
copied written words that were set for them; but the position of their
bodies was awkward. It was necessary to straighten them; their copybooks
fell down; their pens broke, and their ink bottles were turned upside
down.

Victorine, on certain days, went on capitally for about three minutes,
then she would begin to scrawl, and, seized with discouragement, she
would sit with her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Victor was not long before
he fell asleep, lying over his desk.

Perhaps they were distressed by it? Too great a strain was bad for young
heads.

"Let us stop," said Bouvard.

There is nothing so stupid as to make children learn by heart; yet, if
the memory is not exercised, it will go to waste, and so they taught the
youngsters to recite like parrots the first fables of La Fontaine. The
children expressed their approval of the ant that heaped up treasure, of
the wolf that devoured the lamb, and of the lion that took everyone's
share.

When they had become more audacious, they spoiled the garden. But what
amusement could be provided for them?

Jean Jacques Rousseau in _Emile_ advises the teacher to get the pupil to
make his own playthings. Bouvard could not contrive to make a hoop or
Pécuchet to sew up a ball. They passed on to toys that were instructive,
such as cut-paper work. Pécuchet showed them his microscope. When the
candle was lighted, Bouvard would sketch with the shadow of his finger
on the wall the profile of a hare or a pig. But the pupils grew tired of
it.

Writers have gone into raptures about the delightfulness of an open-air
luncheon or a boating excursion. Was it possible for them really to have
such recreations? Fénelon recommends from time to time "an innocent
conversation." They could not invent one. So they had to come back to
the lessons--the multiplying bowls, the erasures of their scrawlings,
and the process of teaching them how to read by copying printed
characters. All had proved failures, when suddenly a bright idea struck
them.

As Victor was prone to gluttony, they showed him the name of a dish: he
soon ran through _Le Cuisinier Français_ with ease. Victorine, being a
coquette, was promised a new dress if she wrote to the dressmaker for
it: in less than three weeks she accomplished this feat. This was
playing on their vices--a pernicious method, no doubt; but it had
succeeded.

Now that they had learned to read and write, what should they be taught?
Another puzzle.

Girls have no need of learning, as in the case of boys. All the same,
they are usually brought up like mere animals, their sole intellectual
baggage being confined to mystical follies.

Is it expedient to teach them languages? "Spanish and Italian," the Swan
of Cambray lays down, "scarcely serve any purpose save to enable people
to read dangerous books."

Such a motive appeared silly to them. However, Victorine would have to
do only with these languages; whereas English is more widely used.
Pécuchet proceeded to study the rules of the language. He seriously
demonstrated the mode of expressing the "th"--"like this, now, _the_,
_the_, _the_."

But before instructing a child we must be acquainted with its aptitudes.
They may be divined by phrenology. They plunged into it, then sought to
verify its assertions by experiments on their own persons. Bouvard
exhibited the bumps of benevolence, imagination, veneration, and amorous
energy--_vulgo_, eroticism. On Pécuchet's temples were found philosophy
and enthusiasm allied with a crafty disposition. Such, in fact, were
their characters. What surprised them more was to recognise in the one
as well as in the other a propensity towards friendship, and, charmed
with the discovery, they embraced each other with emotion.

They next made an examination of Marcel. His greatest fault, of which
they were not ignorant, was an excessive appetite. Nevertheless Bouvard
and Pécuchet were dismayed to find above the top of the ear, on a level
with the eye, the organ of alimentivity. With advancing years their
servant would perhaps become like the woman in the Salpêtrière, who
every day ate eight pounds of bread, swallowed at one time fourteen
different soups, and at another sixty bowls of coffee. They might not
have enough to keep him.

The heads of their pupils presented no curious characteristics. No doubt
they had gone the wrong way to work with them. A very simple expedient
enabled them to develop their experience.

On market days they insinuated themselves among groups of country people
on the green, amid the sacks of oats, the baskets of cheese, the calves
and the horses, indifferent to the jostlings; and whenever they found a
young fellow with his father, they asked leave to feel his skull for a
scientific purpose. The majority vouchsafed no reply; others, fancying
it was pomatum for ringworm of the scalp, refused testily. A few,
through indifference, allowed themselves to be led towards the porch of
the church, where they would be undisturbed.

One morning, just as Bouvard and Pécuchet were beginning operations, the
curé suddenly presented himself, and seeing what they were about,
denounced phrenology as leading to materialism and to fatalism. The
thief, the assassin, the adulterer, have henceforth only to cast the
blame of their crimes on their bumps.

Bouvard retorted that the organ predisposes towards the act without
forcing one to do it. From the fact that a man has in him the germ of a
vice, there is nothing to show that he will be vicious.

"However, I wonder at the orthodox, for, while upholding innate ideas,
they reject propensities. What a contradiction!"

But phrenology, according to M. Jeufroy, denied Divine Omnipotence, and
it was unseemly to practise under the shadow of the holy place, in the
very face of the altar.

"Take yourselves off! No!--take yourselves off!"

They established themselves in the shop of Ganot, the hairdresser.
Bouvard and Pécuchet went so far as to treat their subjects' relations
to a shave or a clip. One afternoon the doctor came to get his hair cut.
While seating himself in the armchair he saw in the glass the reflection
of the two phrenologists passing their fingers over a child's pate.

"So you are at these fooleries?" he said.

"Why foolery?"

Vaucorbeil smiled contemptuously, then declared that there were not
several organs in the brain. Thus one man can digest food which another
cannot digest. Are we to assume that there are as many stomachs in the
stomach as there are varieties of taste?

They pointed out that one kind of work is a relaxation after another; an
intellectual effort does not strain all the faculties at the same time;
each has its distinct seat.

"The anatomists have not discovered it," said Vaucorbeil.

"That's because they have dissected badly," replied Pécuchet.

"What?"

"Oh, yes! they cut off slices without regard to the connection of the
parts"--a phrase out of a book which recurred to his mind.

"What a piece of nonsense!" exclaimed the physician. "The cranium is not
moulded over the brain, the exterior over the interior. Gall is
mistaken, and I defy you to justify his doctrine by taking at random
three persons in the shop."

The first was a country woman, with big blue eyes.

Pécuchet, looking at her, said:

"She has a good memory."

Her husband attested the fact, and offered himself for examination.

"Oh! you, my worthy fellow, it is hard to lead you."

According to the others, there was not in the world such a headstrong
fellow.

The third experiment was made on a boy who was accompanied by his
grandmother.

Pécuchet observed that he must be fond of music.

"I assure you it is so," said the good woman. "Show these gentlemen,
that they may see for themselves."

He drew a Jew's-harp from under his blouse and began blowing into it.

There was a crashing sound--it was the violent slamming of the door by
the doctor as he went out.

They were no longer in doubt about themselves, and summoning their two
pupils, they resumed the analysis of their skull-bones.

That of Victorine was even all around, a sign of ponderation; but her
brother had an unfortunate cranium--a very large protuberance in the
mastoid angle of the parietal bones indicated the organ of
destructiveness, of murder; and a swelling farther down was the sign of
covetousness, of theft. Bouvard and Pécuchet remained dejected for eight
days.

But it was necessary to comprehend the exact sense of words: what we
call combativeness implies contempt for death. If it causes homicides,
it may, likewise bring about the saving of lives. Acquisitiveness
includes the tact of pickpockets and the ardour of merchants.
Irreverence has its parallel in the spirit of criticism, craft in
circumspection. An instinct always resolves itself into two parts, a bad
one and a good one. The one may be destroyed by cultivating the other,
and by this system a daring child, far from being a vagabond, may become
a general. The sluggish man will have only prudence; the penurious,
economy; the extravagant, generosity.

A magnificent dream filled their minds. If they carried to a successful
end the education of their pupils, they would later found an
establishment having for its object to correct the intellect, to subdue
tempers, and to ennoble the heart. Already they talked about
subscriptions and about the building.

Their triumph in Ganot's shop had made them famous, and people came to
consult them in order that they might tell them their chances of good
luck.

All sorts of skulls were examined for this purpose--bowl-shaped,
pear-shaped, those rising like sugar loaves, square heads, high heads,
contracted skulls and flat skulls, with bulls' jaws, birds' faces, and
eyes like pigs'; but such a crowd of people disturbed the hairdresser in
his work. Their elbows rubbed against the glass cupboard that contained
the perfumery, they put the combs out of order, the wash-hand stand was
broken; so he turned out all the idlers, begging of Bouvard and Pécuchet
to follow them, an ultimatum which they unmurmuringly accepted, being a
little worn out with cranioscopy.

Next day, as they were passing before the little garden of the captain,
they saw, chatting with him, Girbal, Coulon, the keeper, and his younger
son, Zephyrin, dressed as an altar-boy. His robe was quite new, and he
was walking below before returning to the sacristy, and they were
complimenting him.

Curious to know what they thought of him, Placquevent asked "these
gentlemen" to feel his young man's head.

The skin of his forehead looked tightly drawn; his nose, thin and very
gristly at the tip, drooped slantwise over his pinched lips; his chin
was pointed, his expression evasive, and his right shoulder was too
high.

"Take off your cap," said his father to him.

Bouvard slipped his hands through his straw-coloured hair; then it was
Pécuchet's turn, and they communicated to each other their observations
in low tones:

"Evident _love of books_! Ha! ha! _approbativeness_! _Conscientiousness_
wanting! No _amativeness_!"

"Well?" said the keeper.

Pécuchet opened his snuff-box, and took a pinch.

"Faith!" replied Bouvard, "this is scarcely a genius."

Placquevent reddened with humiliation.

"All the same, he will do my bidding."

"Oho! Oho!"

"But I am his father, by God! and I have certainly the right----"

"Within certain limits," observed Pécuchet.

Girbal interposed. "The paternal authority is indispensable."

"But if the father is an idiot?"

"No matter," said the captain; "his power is none the less absolute."

"In the interests of the children," added Coulon.

According to Bouvard and Pécuchet, they owed nothing to the authors of
their being; and the parents, on the other hand, owed them food,
education, forethought--in fact, everything.

Their good neighbours protested against this opinion as immoral.
Placquevent was hurt by it as if it were an insult.

"For all that, they are a nice lot that you collect on the high-roads.
They will go far. Take care!"

"Care of what?" said Pécuchet sourly.

"Oh! I am not afraid of you."

"Nor I of you either."

Coulon here used his influence to restrain the keeper and induce him to
go away quietly.

For some minutes there was silence. Then there was some talk about the
dahlias of the captain, who would not let his friends depart till he had
exhibited every one of them.

Bouvard and Pécuchet were returning homeward when, a hundred paces in
front of them, they noticed Placquevent; and close beside him Zephyrin
was lifting up his elbow, like a shield, to save his ear from being
boxed.

What they had just heard expressed, in another form, were the opinions
of the count; but the example of their pupils proved how much liberty
had the advantage over coercion. However, a little discipline was
desirable.

Pécuchet nailed up a blackboard in the museum for the purpose of
demonstrations. They each resolved to keep a journal wherein the things
done by the pupil, noted down every evening, could be read next morning,
and, to regulate the work by ringing the bell when it should be
finished. Like Dupont de Nemours, they would, at first, make use of the
paternal injunction, then of the military injunction, and familiarity in
addressing them would be forbidden.

Bouvard tried to teach Victorine ciphering. Sometimes he would make
mistakes, and both of them would laugh. Then she would kiss him on the
part of his neck which was smoothest and ask leave to go, and he would
give his permission.

Pécuchet at the hour for lessons in vain rang the bell and shouted out
the military injunction through the window. The brat did not come. His
socks were always hanging over his ankles; even at table he thrust his
fingers into his nostrils, and did not even keep in his wind. Broussais
objects to reprimands on this point on the ground that "it is necessary
to obey the promptings of a conservative instinct."

Victorine and he made use of frightful language, saying, _mé itou_
instead of _moi aussi_, _bère_ instead of _boire_, _al_ instead of
_elle_, and _deventiau_ with the _iau_; but, as grammar cannot be
understood by children, and as they would learn the use of language by
hearing others speak correctly, the two worthy men watched their own
words till they found it quite distressing.

They held different views about the way to teach geography. Bouvard
thought it more logical to begin with the commune, Pécuchet with the
entire world.

With a watering-pot and some sand he sought to demonstrate what was
meant by a river, an island, a gulf, and even sacrificed three
flower-beds to explain three continents; but the cardinal points could
not be got into Victor's head.

On a night in January Pécuchet carried him off in the open country.
While they walked along he held forth on astronomy: mariners find it
useful on their voyages; without it Christopher Columbus would not have
made his discovery. We owe a debt of gratitude to Copernicus, to
Galileo, and to Newton.

It was freezing hard, and in the dark blue sky countless stars were
scintillating. Pécuchet raised his eyes.

"What! No Ursa Major!"

The last time he had seen it, it was turned to the other side. At length
he recognised it, then pointed out the polar star, which is always
turned towards the north, and by means of which travellers can find out
their exact situation.

Next day he placed an armchair in the middle of the room and began to
waltz round it.

"Imagine that this armchair is the sun and that I am the earth; it moves
like this."

Victor stared at him, filled with astonishment.

After this he took an orange, passed through it a piece of stick to
indicate the poles, then drew a circle across it with charcoal to mark
the equator. He next moved the orange round a wax candle, drawing
attention to the fact that the various points on the surface were not
illuminated at the same time--which causes the difference of climates;
and for that of the seasons he sloped the orange, inasmuch as the earth
does not stand up straight--which brings about the equinoxes and the
solstices.

Victor did not understand a bit of it. He believed that the earth turns
around in a long needle, and that the equator is a ring pressing its
circumference.

By means of an atlas Pécuchet exhibited Europe to him; but, dazzled by
so many lines and colours, he could no longer distinguish the names of
different places. The bays and the mountains did not harmonise with the
respective nations; the political order confused the physical order. All
this, perhaps, might be cleared up by studying history.

It would have been more practical to begin with the village, and go on
next to the arrondissement, the department, and the province; but, as
Chavignolles had no annals, it was absolutely necessary to stick to
universal history. It was rendered embarrassing by such a variety of
details that one ought only to select its beautiful features. For Greek
history there are: "We shall fight in the shade," the banishment of
Aristides by the envious, and the confidence of Alexander in his
physician. For Roman, the geese of the Capitol, the tripod of Scævola,
the barrel of Regulus. The bed of roses of Guatimozin is noteworthy for
America. As for France, it supplies the vase of Soissons, the oak of St.
Louis, the death of Joan of Arc, the boiled hen of Bearnais--you have
only too extensive a field to select from, not to speak of _À moi
d'Auvergne!_ and the shipwreck of the _Vengeur_.

Victor confused the men, the centuries, and the countries. Pécuchet,
however, was not going to plunge him into subtle considerations, and the
mass of facts is a veritable labyrinth. He confined himself to the names
of the kings of France. Victor forgot them through not knowing the
dates. But, if Dumouchel's system of mnemonics had been insufficient for
themselves, what would it be for him! Conclusion: history can be learned
only by reading a great deal. He would do this.

Drawing is useful where there are numerous details; and Pécuchet was
courageous enough to try to learn it himself from Nature by working at
the landscape forthwith. A bookseller at Bayeux sent him paper,
india-rubber, pasteboard, pencils, and fixtures, with a view to the
works, which, framed and glazed, would adorn the museum.

Out of bed at dawn, they started each with a piece of bread in his
pocket, and much time was lost in finding a suitable scene. Pécuchet
wished to reproduce what he found under his feet, the extreme horizon,
and the clouds, all at the same time; but the backgrounds always got the
better of the foregrounds; the river tumbled down from the sky; the
shepherd walked over his flock; and a dog asleep looked as if he were
hunting. For his part, he gave it up, remembering that he had read this
definition:

"Drawing is composed of three things: line, grain, and fine graining,
and, furthermore, the powerful touch. But it is only the master who can
give the powerful touch."

He rectified the line, assisted in the graining process, watched over
the fine graining, and waited for the opportunity of giving the powerful
touch. It never arrived, so incomprehensible was the pupil's landscape.

Victorine, who was very lazy, used to yawn over the multiplication
table. Mademoiselle Reine showed her how to stitch, and when she was
marking linen she lifted her fingers so nicely that Bouvard afterwards
had not the heart to torment her with his lesson in ciphering. One of
these days they would resume it. No doubt arithmetic and sewing are
necessary in a household; but it is cruel, Pécuchet urged, to bring up
girls merely with an eye to the husbands they might marry. Not all of
them are destined for wedlock; if we wish them later to do without men,
we ought to teach them many things.

The sciences can be taught in connection with the commonest objects; for
instance, by telling what wine is made of; and when the explanation was
given, Victor and Victorine had to repeat it. It was the same with
groceries, furniture, illumination; but for them light meant the lamp,
and it had nothing in common with the spark of a flint, the flame of a
candle, the radiance of the moon.

One day Victorine asked, "How is it that wood burns?" Her masters looked
at each other in confusion. The theory of combustion was beyond them.

Another time Bouvard, from the soup to the cheese, kept talking of
nutritious elements, and dazed the two youngsters with fibrine, caseine,
fat and gluten.

After this, Pécuchet desired to explain to them how the blood is
renewed, and he became puzzled over the explanation of circulation.

The dilemma is not an easy one; if you start with facts, the simplest
require proofs that are too involved, and by laying down principles
first, you begin with the absolute--faith.

How is it to be solved? By combining the two methods of teaching, the
rational and the empirical; but a double means towards a single end is
the reverse of method. Ah! so much the worse, then.

To initiate them in natural history, they tried some scientific
excursions.

"You see," said they, pointing towards an ass, a horse, an ox, "beasts
with four feet--they are called quadrupeds. As a rule, birds have
feathers, reptiles scales, and butterflies belong to the insect class."

They had a net to catch them with, and Pécuchet, holding the insect up
daintily, made them take notice of the four wings, the six claws, the
two feelers, and of its bony proboscis, which drinks in the nectar of
flowers.

He gathered herbs behind the ditches, mentioned their names, and, when
he did not know them, invented them, in order to keep up his prestige.
Besides, nomenclature is the least important thing in botany.

He wrote this axiom on the blackboard: "Every plant has leaves, a calyx,
and a corolla enclosing an ovary or pericarp, which contains the seed."
Then he ordered his pupils to go looking for plants through the fields,
and to collect the first that came to hand.

Victor brought him buttercups; Victorine a bunch of strawberries. He
searched vainly for the pericarp.

Bouvard, who distrusted his own knowledge, rummaged in the library, and
discovered in _Le Redouté des Dames_ a sketch of an iris in which the
ovaries were not situated in the corolla, but beneath the petals in the
stem. In their garden were some scratchweeds and lilies-of-the-valley in
flower. These rubiaceæ had no calyx; therefore the principle laid down
on the blackboard was false.

"It is an exception," said Pécuchet.

But chance led to the discovery of a field-madder in the grass, and it
had a calyx.

"Goodness gracious! If the exceptions themselves are not true, what are
we to put any reliance on?"

One day, in one of these excursions, they heard the cries of peacocks,
glanced over the wall, and at first did not recognise their own farm.
The barn had a slate roof; the railings were new; the pathways had been
metalled.

Père Gouy made his appearance.

"'Tisn't possible! Is it you?"

How many sad stories he had to tell of the past three years, amongst
others the death of his wife! As for himself, he had always been as
strong as an oak.

"Come in a minute."

It was early in April, and in the three fruit-gardens rows of apple
trees in full blossom showed their white and red clusters; the sky,
which was like blue satin, was perfectly cloudless. Table-cloths,
sheets, and napkins hung down, vertically attached to tightly-drawn
ropes by wooden pins. Père Gouy lifted them as they passed; and suddenly
they came face to face with Madame Bordin, bareheaded, in a
dressing-gown, and Marianne offering her armfuls of linen.

"Your servant, gentlemen. Make yourselves at home. As for me, I shall
sit down; I am worn out."

The farmer offered to get some refreshment for the entire party.

"Not now," said she; "I am too hot."

Pécuchet consented, and disappeared into the cellar with Père Gouy,
Marianne and Victor.

Bouvard sat down on the grass beside Madame Bordin.

He received the annual payment punctually; he had nothing to complain
of; and he wished for nothing more.

The bright sunshine lighted up her profile. One of her black head-bands
had come loose, and the little curls behind her neck clung to her brown
skin, moistened with perspiration. With each breath her bosom heaved.
The smell of the grass mingled with the odour of her solid flesh, and
Bouvard felt a revival of his attachment, which filled him with joy.
Then he complimented her about her property.

She was greatly charmed with it; and she told him about her plans. In
order to enlarge the farmyard, she intended to take down the upper bank.

Victorine was at that moment climbing up the slopes, and gathering
primroses, hyacinths, and violets, without being afraid of an old horse
that was browsing on the grass at her feet.

"Isn't she pretty?" said Bouvard.

"Yes, she is pretty, for a little girl."

And the widow heaved a sigh, which seemed charged with life-long regret.

"You might have had one yourself."

She hung down her head.

"That depended on you."

"How?"

He gave her such a look that she grew purple, as if at the sensation of
a rough caress; but, immediately fanning herself with her
pocket-handkerchief:

"You have let the opportunity slip, my dear."

"I don't quite understand." And without rising he drew closer to her.

She remained looking down at him for some time; then smiling, with moist
eyes:

"It is your fault."

The sheets, hanging around them, hemmed them in, like the curtains of a
bed.

He leaned forward on his elbow, so that his face touched her knees.

"Why?--eh?--why?"

And as she remained silent, while he was in a condition in which words
cost nothing, he tried to justify himself; accused himself of folly, of
pride.

"Forgive me! Let everything be as it was before. Do you wish it?" And he
caught her hand, which she allowed to remain in his.

A sudden gust of wind blew up the sheets, and they saw two peacocks, a
male and a female. The female stood motionless, with her tail in the
air. The male marched around her, erected his tail into a fan and
bridled up, making a clucking noise.

Bouvard was clasping the hand of Madame Bordin. She very quickly loosed
herself. Before them, open-mouthed and, as it were, petrified, was young
Victor staring at them; a short distance away Victorine, stretched on
her back, in the full light of day, was inhaling all the flowers which
she had gathered.

The old horse, frightened by the peacocks, broke one of the lines with a
kick, got his legs entangled in it, and, galloping through the
farmyard, dragged the washed linen after him.

At Madame Bordin's wild screams Marianne rushed up. Pére Gouy abused his
horse: "Fool of a beast! Old bag of bones! Infernal thief of a
horse!"--kicked him in the belly, and lashed his ears with the handle of
a whip.

Bouvard was shocked at seeing the animal maltreated.

The countryman, in answer to his protest, said:

"I've a right to do it; he's my own."

This was no justification. And Pécuchet, coming on the scene, added that
animals too have their rights, for they have souls like ourselves--if
indeed ours have any existence.

"You are an impious man!" exclaimed Madame Bordin.

Three things excited her anger: the necessity for beginning the washing
over again, the outrage on her faith, and the fear of having been seen
just now in a compromising attitude.

"I thought you were more liberal," said Bouvard.

She replied, in a magisterial manner, "I don't like scamps."

And Gouy laid the blame on them for having injured his horse, whose
nostrils were bleeding. He growled in a smothered voice:

"Damned unlucky people! I was going to put him away when they turned
up."

The two worthies took themselves off, shrugging their shoulders.

Victor asked them why they had been vexed with Gouy.

"He abuses his strength, which is wrong."

"Why is it wrong?"

Could it be that the children had no idea of justice? Perhaps so.

And the same evening, Pécuchet, with Bouvard sitting at his right, and
facing the two pupils with some notes in his hand, began a course of
lectures on morality.

"This science teaches us to exercise control over our actions.

"They have two motives--pleasure and interest, and a third, more
imperious--duty.

"Duties are divided into two classes: first, duties towards ourselves,
which consist in taking care of our bodies, protecting ourselves against
all injury." (They understood this perfectly.) "Secondly, duties towards
others; that is to say, to be always loyal, good-natured, and even
fraternal, the human race being only one single family. A thing often
pleases us which is injurious to our fellows; interest is a different
thing from good, for good is in itself irreducible." (The children did
not comprehend.) He put off the sanction of duties until the next
occasion.

In the entire lecture, according to Bouvard, he had not defined "good."

"Why do you wish to define it? We feel it."

So, then, the lessons of morality would suit only moral people--and
Pécuchet's course did not go further.

They made their pupils read little tales tending to inspire them with
the love of virtue. They plagued Victor to death.

In order to strike his imagination, Pécuchet suspended from the walls of
his apartment representations of the lives of the good person and the
bad person respectively. The first, Adolphe, embraced his mother,
studied German, assisted a blind man, and was admitted into the
Polytechnic School. The bad person, Eugène, began by disobeying his
father, had a quarrel in a café, beat his wife, fell down dead drunk,
smashed a cupboard--and a final picture represented him in jail, where a
gentleman, accompanied by a young lad, pointed him out, saying, "You
see, my son, the dangers of misconduct."

But for the children, the future had no existence. In vain were their
minds saturated with the maxim that "work is honourable," and that "the
rich are sometimes unhappy." They had known workmen in no way honoured,
and had recollections of the château, where life seemed good. The pangs
of remorse were depicted for them with so much exaggeration that they
smelled humbug, and after that became distrustful. Attempts were then
made to govern their conduct by a sense of honour, the idea of public
opinion, and the sentiment of glory, by holding up to their admiration
great men; above all, men who made themselves useful, like Belzunce,
Franklin, and Jacquard. Victor displayed no longing to resemble them.

One day, when he had done a sum in addition without a mistake, Bouvard
sewed to his jacket a ribbon to symbolise the Cross. He strutted about
with it; but, when he forgot about the death of Henry IV., Pécuchet put
an ass's cap on his head. Victor began to bray with so much violence and
for so long a time, that it was found necessary to take off his
pasteboard ears.

Like him, his sister showed herself vain of praise, and indifferent to
blame.

In order to make them more sensitive, a black cat was given to them,
that they might take care of it; and two or three coppers were presented
to them, so that they might bestow alms. They thought the requirement
unjust; this money belonged to them.

In compliance with the wish of the pedagogues, they called Bouvard "my
uncle," and Pécuchet "good friend;" but they "thee'd" and "thou'd" them,
and half the lessons were usually lost in disputes.

Victorine ill-treated Marcel, mounted on his back, dragged him by the
hair. In order to make game of his hare-lip, she spoke through her nose
like him; and the poor fellow did not venture to complain, so fond was
he of the little girl. One evening his hoarse voice was unusually
raised. Bouvard and Pécuchet went down to the kitchen. The two pupils
were staring at the chimneypiece, and Marcel, with clasped hands, was
crying out:

"Take him away! It's too much--it's too much!"

The lid of the pot flew off like the bursting of a shell. A greyish mass
bounded towards the ceiling, then wriggled about frantically, emitting
fearful howls.

They recognised the cat, quite emaciated, with its hair gone, its tail
like a piece of string, and its dilated eyes starting out of its head.
They were as white as milk, vacant, so to speak, and yet glaring.

The hideous animal continued its howling till it flung itself into the
fireplace, disappeared, then rolled back in the middle of the cinders
lifeless.

It was Victor who had perpetrated this atrocity; and the two worthy men
recoiled, pale with stupefaction and horror. To the reproaches which
they addressed to him, he replied, as the keeper had done with reference
to his son and the farmer with reference to his horse: "Well! since it's
my own," without ceremony and with an air of innocence, in the placidity
of a satiated instinct.

The boiling water from the pot was scattered over the floor, and
saucepans, tongs, and candlesticks lay everywhere thrown about.

Marcel was some time cleaning up the kitchen, and his masters and he
buried the poor cat in the garden under the pagoda.

After this Bouvard and Pécuchet had a long chat about Victor. The
paternal blood was showing itself. What were they to do? To give him
back to M. de Faverges or to entrust him to others would be an admission
of impotence. Perhaps he would reform.

No matter! It was a doubtful hope; and they no longer felt any
tenderness towards him. What a pleasure it would have been, however, to
have near them a youth interested in their ideas, whose progress they
could watch, who would by and by have become a brother to them! But
Victor lacked intellect, and heart still more. And Pécuchet sighed, with
his hands clasped over his bent knee.

"The sister is not much better," said Bouvard.

He pictured to himself a girl of nearly fifteen years, with a refined
nature, a playful humour, adorning the house with the elegant tastes of
a young lady; and, as if he had been her father and she had just died,
the poor man began to weep.

Then, seeking an excuse for Victor, he quoted Rousseau's opinion: "The
child has no responsibility, and cannot be moral or immoral."

Pécuchet's view was that these children had reached the age of
discretion, and that they should study some method whereby they could be
corrected. Bentham lays down that a punishment, in order to be
effectual, should be in proportion to the offence--its natural
consequence. The child has broken a pane of glass--a new one will not be
put in: let him suffer from cold. If, not being hungry any longer, he
asks to be served again, give way to him: a fit of indigestion will
quickly make him repent. Suppose he is lazy--let him remain without
work: boredom of itself will make him go back to it.

But Victor would not endure cold; his constitution could stand excesses;
and doing nothing would agree with him.

They adopted the reverse system: medicinal punishment. Impositions were
given to him; he only became more idle. They deprived him of sweet
things; his greediness for them redoubled. Perhaps irony might have
success with him? On one occasion, when he came to breakfast with dirty
hands, Bouvard jeered at him, calling him a "gay cavalier," a "dandy,"
"yellow gloves." Victor listened with lowering brow, suddenly turned
pale, and flung his plate at Bouvard's head; then, wild at having missed
him, made a rush at him. It took three men to hold him. He rolled
himself on the floor, trying to bite. Pécuchet, at some distance,
sprinkled water over him out of a carafe: he immediately calmed down;
but for two days he was hoarse. The method had not proved of any use.

They adopted another. At the least symptom of anger, treating him as if
he were ill, they put him to bed. Victor was quite contented there, and
showed it by singing.

One day he took out of its place in the library an old cocoanut, and was
beginning to split it open, when Pécuchet came up:

"My cocoanut!"

It was a memento of Dumouchel! He had brought it from Paris to
Chavignolles. He raised his arms in indignation. Victor burst out
laughing. "Good friend" could not stand it any longer, and with one good
box sent him rolling to the end of the room, then, quivering with
emotion, went to complain to Bouvard.

Bouvard rebuked him.

"Are you crazy with your cocoanut? Blows only brutalise; terror
enervates. You are disgracing yourself!"

Pécuchet returned that corporal chastisements were sometimes
indispensable. Pestalozzi made use of them; and the celebrated
Melancthon confesses that without them he would have learned nothing.

His friend observed that cruel punishments, on the other hand, had
driven children to suicide. He had in his reading found examples of it.

Victor had barricaded himself in his room.

Bouvard parleyed with him outside the door, and, to make him open it,
promised him a plum tart.

From that time he grew worse.

There remained a method extolled by Monseigneur Dupanloup: "the severe
look." They tried to impress on their countenances a dreadful
expression, and they produced no effect.

"We have no longer any resource but to try religion."

Pécuchet protested. They had banished it from their programme.

But reasoning does not satisfy every want. The heart and the imagination
desire something else. The supernatural is for many souls indispensable.
So they resolved to send the children to catechism.

Reine offered to conduct them there. She again came to the house, and
knew how to make herself liked by her caressing ways.

Victorine suddenly changed, became shy, honey-tongued, knelt down before
the Madonna, admired the sacrifice of Abraham, and sneered disdainfully
at the name of Protestant.

She said that fasting had been enjoined upon her. They made inquiries:
it was not true. On the feast of Corpus Christi some damask violets
disappeared from one of the flower-beds to decorate the processional
altar: she impudently denied having cut them. At another time she took
from Bouvard twenty sous, which she placed at vesper-time in the
sacristan's collecting-plate.

They drew from this the conclusion that morality is distinguishable from
religion; when it has not another basis, its importance is secondary.

One evening, while they were dining, M. Marescot entered. Victor fled
immediately.

The notary, having declined to sit down, told what had brought him
there.

Young Touache had beaten--all but killed--his son. As Victor's origin
was known, and as he was unpopular, the other brats called him
"Convict," and not long since he had given Master Arnold Marescot a
drubbing, which was an insult. "Dear Arnold" bore the marks of it on his
body.

"His mother is in despair, his clothes are in rags, his health is
imperilled. What are we coming to?"

The notary insisted on severe chastisement, and, amongst other things,
on Victor being henceforth kept away from catechism, to prevent fresh
collisions.

Bouvard and Pécuchet, although wounded by his haughty tone, promised
everything he wished--yielded.

Had Victor obeyed a sentiment of honour or of revenge? In any case, he
was no coward.

But his brutality frightened them. Music softens manners. Pécuchet
conceived the notion of teaching him the solfeggio.

Victor had much difficulty in reading the notes readily and not
confounding the terms _adagio_, _presto_, and _sforzando_. His master
strove to explain to him the gamut, perfect harmony, the diatonic, the
chromatic, and the two kinds of intervals called major and minor.

He made him stand up straight, with his chest advanced, his shoulders
thrown back, his mouth wide open, and, in order to teach by example,
gave out intonations in a voice that was out of tune. Victor's voice
came forth painfully from his larynx, so contracted was it. When the bar
began with a crotchet rest, he started either too soon or too late.

Nevertheless Pécuchet took up an air in two parts. He used a rod as a
substitute for a fiddle-stick, and moved his arm like a conductor, as if
he had an orchestra behind him; but, engaged as he was in two tasks, he
sometimes made a mistake; his blunder led to others on the part of the
pupil; and, knitting their brows, straining the muscles of their necks,
they went on at random down to the end of the page.

At length Pécuchet said to Victor:

"You're not likely to shine in a choral society."

And he abandoned the teaching of music.

Besides, perhaps Locke is right: "Music is associated with so much
profligate company that it is better to occupy oneself with something
else."

Without desiring to make an author of him, it would be convenient for
Victor to know how to despatch a letter. A reflection stopped them: the
epistolary style cannot be acquired, for it belongs exclusively to
women.

They next thought of cramming his memory with literary fragments, and,
perplexed about making selections, consulted Madame Campan's work. She
recommends the scene of Eliakim, the choruses in _Esther_, and the
entire works of Jean Baptiste Rousseau.

These are a little old-fashioned. As for romances, she prohibits them,
as depicting the world under too favourable colours. However, she
permits _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _The Father of a Family_, by Mrs.
Opie.[A] Who is this Mrs. Opie?

 [A] This is possibly a reference to that once celebrated specimen of
 English didactic fiction, _Fathers and Daughters_, by Mrs. Amelia
 Opie.--TRANSLATOR.

They did not find her name in the Biographie of Michaud.

There remained fairy tales. "They would be expecting palaces of
diamonds," said Pécuchet. Literature develops the intellect, but excites
the passions.

Victorine was sent away from catechism on account of her conduct. She
had been caught kissing the notary's son, and Reine made no joke of it:
her face looked grave under her cap with its big frills.

After such a scandal, why keep a young girl so corrupted?

Bouvard and Pécuchet called the curé an old fool. His housekeeper
defended him, muttering:

"We know you!--we know you!"

They made a sharp rejoinder, and she went off rolling her eyes in a
fearful manner.

Victorine was, in fact, smitten with a fancy for Arnold, so nice did she
think him, with his embroidered collar, his velvet jacket, and his
well-scented hair; and she had been bringing bouquets to him up to the
time when Zephyrin told about her.

What foolishness was exhibited regarding this adventure, the two
children being perfectly innocent!

The two guardians thought Victor required a stirring amusement like
hunting; this would lead to the expense of a gun, of a dog. They thought
it better to fatigue him, in order to tame the exuberance of his animal
spirits, and went in for coursing in the fields.

The young fellow escaped from them, although they relieved each other.
They could do nothing more; and in the evening they had not the strength
to hold up the newspaper.

Whilst they were waiting for Victor they talked to the passers-by, and
through the sheer necessity of playing the pedagogue, they tried to
teach them hygiene, deplored the injuries from floods and the waste of
manures, thundered against such superstitions as leaving the skeleton of
a blackbird in a barn, putting consecrated wood at the end of a stable
and a bag of worms on the big toes of people suffering from fever.

They next took to inspecting wet nurses, and were incensed at their
management of babies: some soaked them in gruel, causing them to die of
exhaustion; others stuffed them with meat before they were six months
old, and so they fell victims to indigestion; several cleaned them with
their own spittle; all managed them barbarously.

When they saw over a door an owl that had been crucified, they went into
the farmhouse and said:

"You are wrong; these animals live on rats and field-mice. There has
been found in a screech-owl's stomach a quantity of caterpillars'
larvæ."

The country-folk knew them from having seen them, in the first place, as
physicians, then searching for old furniture, and afterwards looking for
stones; and they replied:

"Come, now, you pair of play-actors! don't try to teach us."

Their conviction was shaken, for the sparrows cleanse the
kitchen-gardens, but eat up the cherries. The owls devour insects, and
at the same time bats, which are useful; and, if the moles eat the
slugs, they upset the soil. There was one thing of which they were
certain: that all game should be destroyed as fatal to agriculture.

One evening, as they were passing along by the wood of Faverges, they
found themselves in front of Sorel's house, at the side of the road.
Sorel was gesticulating in the presence of three persons. The first was
a certain Dauphin, a cobbler, small, thin, and with a sly expression of
countenance; the second, Père Aubain, a village porter, wore an old
yellow frock-coat, with a pair of coarse blue linen trousers; the
third, Eugène, a man-servant employed by M. Marescot, was distinguished
by his beard cut like that of a magistrate.

Sorel was showing them a noose in copper wire attached to a silk thread,
which was held by a clamp--what is called a snare--and he had discovered
the cobbler in the act of setting it.

"You are witnesses, are you not?"

Eugène lowered his chin by way of assent, and Père Aubain replied:

"Once you say so."

What enraged Sorel was that anyone should have the audacity to set up a
snare at the entrance of his lodge, the rascal imagining that one would
have no idea of suspecting it in such a place.

Dauphin adopted the blubbering system:

"I was walking over it; I even tried to break it." They were always
accusing him. They had a grudge against him; he was most unlucky.

Sorel, without answering him, had drawn out of his pocket a note-book
and a pen and ink, in order to make out an official report.

"Oh, no!" said Pécuchet.

Bouvard added: "Let him go. He is a decent fellow."

"He--a poacher!"

"Well, such things will happen."

And they proceeded to defend poaching: "We know, to start with, that the
rabbits nibble at the young sprouts, and that the hares destroy the corn
crops--except, perhaps, the woodcock----"

"Let me alone, now." And the gamekeeper went on writing with clenched
teeth.

"What obstinacy!" murmured Bouvard.

"Another word, and I shall send for the gendarmes!

"You are an ill-mannered fellow!" said Pécuchet.

"You are no great things!" retorted Sorel.

Bouvard, forgetting himself, referred to him as a blockhead, a bully;
and Eugène kept repeating, "Peace! peace! let us respect the law"; while
Père Aubain was groaning three paces away from them on a heap of
pebbles.

Disturbed by these voices, all the dogs of the pack rushed out of their
kennels. Through the railings their black snouts could be seen, and,
rushing hither and thither they kept barking loudly.

"Don't plague me further," cried their master, "or I'll make them go for
your breeches!"

The two friends departed, satisfied, however, with having upheld
progress and civilisation.

Next day a summons was served on them to appear at the police court for
offering insults to the gamekeeper, and to pay a hundred francs'
compensation, "reserving an appeal to the public administration, having
regard to the contraventions committed by them. Costs: 6 francs 75
centimes.--TIERCELIN, Summoner."

Wherefore a public administration? Their heads became giddy; then,
becoming calm, they set about preparing their defence.

On the day named, Bouvard and Pécuchet repaired to the court-house an
hour too early. No one was there; chairs and three cushioned seats
surrounded an oval table covered with a cloth; a niche had been made in
the wall for the purpose of placing a stove there; and the Emperor's
bust, which was on a pedestal, overlooked the scene.

They strolled up to the top room of the building, where there was a
fire-engine, a number of flags, and in a corner, on the floor, other
plaster busts--the great Napoleon without a diadem; Louis XVIII. with
epaulets on a dress-coat; Charles X., recognisable by his hanging lip;
Louis Philippe, with arched eyebrows and hair dressed in pyramid
fashion, the slope of the roof grazing the nape of his neck; and all
these objects were befouled by flies and dust. This spectacle had a
demoralising effect on Bouvard and Pécuchet. Governing powers excited
their pity as they made their way back to the main hall.

There they found Sorel and the field-keeper, the one wearing his badge
on his arm, and the other his military cap.

A dozen persons were talking, having been summoned for not having swept
in front of their houses, or for having let their dogs go at large, or
neglecting to attach lanterns to their carts, or for keeping a
public-house open during mass-time.

At length Coulon presented himself, wrapped in a robe of black serge and
wearing a round cap with velvet edgings. His clerk sat down at his left,
the mayor, scarfed, at his right; and shortly afterwards the case of
Sorel against Bouvard and Pécuchet was called.

Louis-Martial-Eugène Lenepveur, valet at Chavignolles (Calvados),
availed himself of his character as a witness to unburden himself of all
he knew about a great many things that were foreign to the issue.

Nicolas-Juste Aubain, day-labourer, was afraid both of displeasing Sorel
and of injuring "these gentlemen." He had heard abusive words, and yet
he had his doubts about it. He pleaded that he was deaf.

The justice of the peace made him sit down; then, addressing himself to
the gamekeeper: "Do you persist in your declarations?"

"Certainly."

Coulon then asked the two defendants what they had to say.

Bouvard maintained that he had not insulted Sorel, but that in taking
the poacher's part he had vindicated the rights of the peasantry. He
recalled the abuses of feudal times and the ruinous huntings of the
nobles.

"No matter! The contravention----"

"Allow me to stop you," exclaimed Pécuchet.

The words "contravention," "crime," and "delict" were of no value. To
seek in this way to class punishable acts was to take an arbitrary
basis. As much as to say to citizens: "Don't bother yourself as to the
value of your actions; that is determined by the punishment inflicted by
authority." However, the penal code appeared to him an absurd production
devoid of principles.

"That may be," replied Coulon; and he proceeded to pronounce his
judgment.

But here Foureau, who represented the public administration, arose. They
had outraged the gamekeeper in the exercise of his functions. If no
regard were shown for propriety, everything would be destroyed.

"In short, may it please Monsieur the Justice of the Peace to apply the
maximum penalty."

This was ten francs, in the form of damages to Sorel.

"Bravo!" exclaimed Bouvard.

Coulon had not finished.

"Impose on them, in addition, a fine of five francs for having been
guilty of the contravention mentioned by the public administration."

Pécuchet turned around to the audience:

"The fine is a trifle to the rich man, but a disaster to the poor man.
As for myself, it matters nothing to me."

And he presented the appearance of defying the court.

"Really," said Coulon, "I am astonished that people of intelligence----"

"The law dispenses you from the possession of it," retorted Pécuchet.
"The justice of the peace occupies his post indefinitely, while the
judge of the supreme court is reputed capable up to seventy-five years,
and the judge of first instance is no longer so at seventy."

But, at a gesture from Foureau, Placquevent advanced.

They protested.

"Ah! if you were appointed by competition!"

"Or by the General Council!"

"Or a committee of experts, and according to a proper list!"

Placquevent moved them on, and they went out while the other defendants'
names were being called, believing that they had made a good show in the
course of these vile proceedings.

To give vent to their indignation they went that evening to Beljambe's
hostelry. His café was empty, the principal customers being in the habit
of leaving about ten o'clock. The lamp had been lowered; the walls and
the counter seemed shrouded in a fog. A female attendant came on the
scene. It was Mélie. She did not appear agitated, and, smiling, she
poured them out two bocks. Pécuchet, ill at ease, quickly left the
establishment.

Bouvard came back there alone, entertained some of the villagers with
sarcasms at the mayor's expense, and after that went into the
smoking-room.

Six months later Dauphin was acquitted for want of evidence. What a
shame! These very witnesses who had been believed when testifying
against them were now regarded with suspicion. And their anger knew no
bounds when the registrar gave them notice to pay the fine. Bouvard
attacked the registry as injurious to property.

"You are mistaken," said the collector. "Why, it bears a third of the
public expenditure!"

"I would have proceedings with regard to taxes less vexatious, a better
system of land registration, alterations in the law as to mortgages, and
would abolish the Bank of France, which has the privilege of usury."

Girbal, not being strong on the subject, let the argument fall to the
ground, and departed. However, Bouvard made himself agreeable to the
innkeeper; he would attract a crowd around him; and, while he was
waiting for the guests, he chatted familiarly with the barmaid.

He gave utterance to odd ideas on primary education. On leaving school,
pupils ought to be capable of nursing the sick, understanding scientific
discoveries, and taking an interest in the arts. The requirements of his
programme made him fall out with Petit; and he offended the captain by
maintaining that soldiers, instead of losing their time with drilling,
would be better occupied in growing vegetables.

When the question of free trade turned up he brought Pécuchet along with
him, and the whole winter there were in the café angry looks,
contemptuous attitudes, insults and vociferations, with blows of fists
on the table that made the beer-glasses jump.

Langlois and the other merchants defended national commerce; Oudot,
owner of a spinning factory, and Mathieu, a goldsmith, national
industry; the landowners and the farmers, national agriculture: everyone
claiming privileges for himself to the detriment of the public at large.

The observations of Bouvard and Pécuchet had an alarming effect.

As they were accused of ignoring the practical side of life, of having a
tendency towards levelling, and of immorality, they developed these
three ideas: to replace the family name by a registered number; to
arrange the French people in a hierarchy, and in such a way that, in
order to preserve his grade, it would be necessary for one to submit
from time to time to an examination; no more punishments, no more
rewards, but in every village an individual chronicle of all persons
living there, which would pass on to posterity.

Their system was treated with disdain. They wrote an article about it
for the Bayeux daily paper, drew up a note to the prefect, a petition to
the Chambers, and a memorial to the Emperor.

The newspaper did not publish their article.

The prefect did not condescend to reply.

The Chambers were silent; and they waited a long time for a
communication from the Tuileries.

What, then, was the Emperor occupying his time with?

With women, no doubt.

Foureau, on the part of the sub-prefect, suggested the desirability of
more reserve.

They laughed at the sub-prefect, the prefect, the councillors of the
prefecture, even the council of state. Administrative justice was a
monstrosity, for the administration by means of favours and threats
unjustly controls its functionaries. In short, they came to be regarded
as a nuisance, and the leading men of the place gave injunctions to
Beljambe not to entertain two such fellows.

At this period, Bouvard and Pécuchet were burning to signalise
themselves by a work which would dazzle their neighbours; and they saw
nothing better than plans for the embellishment of Chavignolles.

Three fourths of the houses should be demolished. They would construct
in the centre of the village a monumental square, on the way to Falaise
a hospital, slaughter-houses on the way to Caen, and at the "Cows' Pass"
a Roman church of many colours.

Pécuchet manufactured a colouring mixture with Indian ink, and did not
forget in preparing his plans to give a yellow tint to the woods, a red
to the buildings, and a green to the meadows, for the pictures of an
ideal Chavignolles pursued him in his daydreams, and he came back to
them as he lay on his mattress.

Bouvard was awakened by him one night.

"Are you unwell?"

Pécuchet stammered, "Haussmann prevents me from going to sleep."

About this time he received a letter from Dumouchel to know the cost of
sea-baths on the Norman coast.

"Let him go about his business with his baths! Have we any time to
write?"

And, when they had procured a land-surveyor's chain, a semicircle, a
water-level, and a compass, they began at other studies.

They encroached on private properties. The inhabitants were frequently
surprised to see the pair fixing stakes in the ground for surveying
purposes. Bouvard and Pécuchet announced their plans, and what would be
the outcome of them, with the utmost self-complacency. The people became
uneasy, for, perchance, authority might at length fall in with these
men's views! Sometimes they rudely drove them away.

Victor scaled the walls and crept up to the roof to hang up signals
there; he exhibited good-will, and even a degree of enthusiasm.

They were also better satisfied with Victorine.

When she was ironing the linen she hummed in a sweet voice as she moved
her smoothing-iron over the board, interested herself in looking after
the household, and made a cap for Bouvard, with a well-pointed peak that
won compliments for her from Romiche.

This man was one of those tailors who go about mending clothes in
farmhouses. He was taken into the house for a fortnight.

Hunchbacked, with bloodshot eyes, he made up for his bodily defects by a
facetious disposition. While the masters were out, he used to amuse
Marcel and Victorine by telling them funny stories. He would put out his
tongue as far as his chin, imitate the cuckoo, or give exhibitions of
ventriloquism; and at night, saving the cost of an inn, he went to sleep
in the bakehouse.

Now, one morning, at a very early hour, Bouvard, being cold, happened to
go there to get chips to light his fire.

What he saw petrified him. Behind the remains of the chest, upon a straw
mattress, Romiche and Victorine lay asleep together.

He had passed his arm around her waist, and his other hand, long as that
of an ape, clutched one of her knees. She was smiling, stretched on her
back. Her fair hair hung loose, and the whiteness of the dawn threw its
pale light upon the pair.

Bouvard for a moment felt as if he had received a blow in the chest;
then a sense of shame prevented him from making a single movement. He
was oppressed by painful reflections.

"So young! Lost! lost!" He then went to awaken Pécuchet, and briefly
told him everything.

"Ah! the wretch!"

"We cannot help it. Be calm!" And for some time they remained sighing,
one after the other--Bouvard, with his coat off and his arms folded;
Pécuchet, at the side of his bed, sitting barefooted in a cotton
nightcap.

Romiche should leave that very day, when his work was finished. They
would pay him in a haughty fashion, and in silence.

But Providence had some spite against them.

Marcel, a short time afterwards, led them to Victor's room and showed
them at the bottom of his chest of drawers a twenty-franc piece. The
youngster had asked him to get the change of it.

Where did it come from? No doubt it was got by a theft committed while
they were going about as engineers. But in order to restore it they
would require to know the person; and if some one came to claim it they
would look like accomplices.

At length, having sent for Victor, they ordered him to open his drawer:
the napoleon was no longer there. He pretended not to understand. A
short time before, however, they had seen it, this very coin, and Marcel
was incapable of lying. This affair had revolutionised Pécuchet so much
that he had, since morning, kept in his pocket a letter for Bouvard:

"Sir,--Fearing lest M. Pécuchet may be ill, I have recourse to your
kindness----"

"Whose is the signature, then?"

"Olympe Dumouchel, _née_ Charpeau."

She and her husband were anxious to know in which
bathing-place--Courseulles, Langrune, or Lucques--the best society was
to be found, which was least noisy, and as to the means of transport,
the cost of washing, etc.

This importunity made them angry with Dumouchel; then weariness plunged
them into deeper despondency.

They went over all the pains that they had taken--so many lessons,
precautions, torments!

"And to think that we intended at one time to make Victorine a teacher,
and Victor an overseer of works!"

"Ah! how deceived we were in her!"

"If she is vicious, it is not the fault of the lessons she got."

"For my part, to make her virtuous, I would have learned Cartouche's
biography."

"Perhaps they needed family life--the care of a mother?"

"I was like one to them," protested Bouvard.

"Alas!" replied Pécuchet. "But there are natures bereft of moral sense;
and education in that case can do nothing."

"Ah! yes, 'tis a fine thing, education!"

As the orphans had not learned any trade, they would seek two situations
for them as servants; and then, with the help of God, they would have
nothing more to do with them.

And henceforth "My uncle" and "Good friend" made them take their meals
in the kitchen.

But soon they grew restless, their minds feeling the need of work, their
existence of an aim.

Besides, what does one failure prove? What had proved abortive in the
case of children might be more successful with men. And they conceived
the idea of preparing a course of lectures for adults.

In order to explain their views, a conference would be necessary. The
great hall of the inn would be perfectly suitable for this purpose.

Beljambe, as deputy mayor, was afraid to compromise himself, refused at
first, then, thinking that he might make something out of it, changed
his mind, and sent word to that effect by his servant-maid.

Bouvard, in the excess of his joy, kissed her on both cheeks.

The mayor was absent. The other deputy, M. Marescot, entirely taken up
with his office, would pay little attention to the conference. So it was
to take place; and, to the beating of the drum, the hour was announced
as three o'clock on the following Sunday.

It was only on the day before that they thought about their costumes.
Pécuchet, thank Heaven, had preserved an old ceremonial coat with a
velvet collar, two white cravats, and black gloves. Bouvard put on his
blue frock-coat, a nankeen waistcoat and beaver shoes; and they were
strongly moved when they had passed through the village and arrived at
the hostelry of the Golden Cross.

[_Here Gustave Flaubert's manuscript breaks off._]

[Illustration: decoration]




[EXTRACT FROM A PLAN FOUND AMONGST GUSTAVE FLAUBERT'S PAPERS INDICATING
THE CONCLUSION OF THE WORK.]

CONFERENCE


The inn of the Golden Cross--two wooden galleries at the sides on the
first floor, with projecting balcony; main building at the bottom; café
on the ground floor, dining-room, billiard-room; the doors and the
windows are open.

Crowd: people of rank, ordinary folk.

Bouvard: "The first thing to do is to demonstrate the utility of our
project; our studies entitle us to pronounce an opinion."

       *       *       *       *       *

Discourse by Pécuchet of a pedantic description.

Follies of the government and of the administration. Too much taxation.
Two economies to be practised: the suppression of the religious and of
the military budget.

He is accused of atheism.

"Quite the contrary; but there is need of a religious renovation."

Foureau appears on the scene, and insists on dissolving the meeting.

Bouvard excites a laugh at the mayor's expense by recalling his idiotic
bounties for owls. Objection to this.

"If it is necessary to destroy animals that injure plants, it would
likewise be necessary to destroy the cattle that devour the grass."

Foureau withdraws.

       *       *       *       *       *

Discourse by Bouvard--in a familiar style.

Prejudices: celibacy of priests, futility of adultery, emancipation of
woman.

"Her earrings are the symbol of her former servitude."

Studs of men.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bouvard and Pécuchet are reproached with the misconduct of their pupils.
Also, why did they adopt the children of a convict?

Theory of rehabilitation. They would dine with Touache.

Foureau, having returned, reads, with a view to having revenge on
Bouvard, a petition from him to the municipal council, in which he asks
for the establishment of a brothel at Chavignolles. (Contemptuous
arguments.)

The meeting is brought to a close amid the utmost confusion.

       *       *       *       *       *

On their return to their own residence, Bouvard and Pécuchet perceive
Foureau's man-servant galloping along the road from Falaise at full
speed.

They go to bed, quite jaded, without suspecting how many plots are
fermenting against them.--Explain the motives for ill-will towards them
actuating the curé, the physician, the mayor, Marescot, the people,
everybody.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next day, at breakfast, they talk about the conference.

Pécuchet sees the future of humanity in dark colours.

The modern man is lessened, and has become a machine.

Final anarchy of the human race. (Buchner, I., II.)

Impossibility of peace. (_Id._) Savagery traceable to the excess of
individualism and the frenzy of science.

Three hypotheses--first: pantheistic radicalism will break every tie
with the past, and an inhuman despotism will result; second: if theistic
absolutism triumphs, the liberalism with which humanity has been
penetrated since the era of reform succumbs--all is thrown back; third:
if the convulsions which have been going on since '89 continue, without
an end between the two issues, these oscillations will carry us away by
their own force. There will be no longer ideal, religion, morality.

The United States will have conquered the earth.

Future of literature.

Universal greed. There will be no longer anything but a debauch of
workmen.

End of the world through the cessation of caloric.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bouvard sees the future of humanity in a bright light. The modern man is
progressive.

Europe will be regenerated by Asia. The historic law that civilisation
travels from East to West--the part to be played by China--the two
humanities will at length be fused.

Future inventions: modes of travelling. Balloons. Submarine barges with
glass windows, in an unchanging calm, the sea's agitation being only on
the surface. Passing travellers shall see the fishes and the landscapes
in the ocean's depths. Animals tamed. All forms of cultivation.

Future of literature (opposite of industrial literature). Future
sciences.--How to regulate the force of magnetism.

Paris will become a winter-garden; fruit will be grown on the
boulevards; the Seine filtered and heated; abundance of precious stones
artificially made; prodigality as to gilding; lighting of houses--light
will be stored up, for there are bodies which possess this property,
such as sugar, the flesh of certain molluscs, and the phosphorus of
Bologna. People will be ordered to cover the fronts of the houses with a
phosphorescent substance, and the radiations from them will illuminate
the streets.

Disappearance of evil by the disappearance of want. Philosophy will be a
religion.

Communion of all peoples. Public fêtes.

People will travel to the heavenly bodies; and when the earth is used
up, humanity will set up housekeeping in the stars.

       *       *       *       *       *

He has hardly finished when the gendarmes make their appearance. Entry
of the gendarmes.

At the sight of them the children are terror-stricken, owing to vague
recollections.

Marcel's desolation.

Anxiety on the part of Bouvard and Pécuchet. Do they mean to arrest
Victor?

The gendarmes exhibit an order to take them into custody.

It is the conference that brought it on. They are accused of having made
attempts on religion, on order, having roused people to revolt, etc.

Sudden arrival of M. and Madame Dumouchel with their baggage; they have
come to take sea-baths. Dumouchel is not changed; Madame wears
spectacles and composes fables. Their perplexity.

The mayor, knowing that the gendarmes are with Bouvard and Pécuchet,
arrives, encouraged by their presence.

Gorju, seeing that authority and public opinion are against them, has
thought of profiting by it, and escorts Foureau. Assuming Bouvard to be
the richer of the pair, he accuses him of having formerly debauched
Mélie.

"I? Never!"

Bouvard breaks into a loud exclamation.

"Let him at least make allowance for the child that is about to be born,
for she is pregnant."

This second accusation is based on the liberties taken with her by
Bouvard at the café.

The public gradually overrun the house.

Barberou, called into the country by a matter connected with his own
business, has just learned at the inn what is going on, and comes on the
scene.

He believes Bouvard to be guilty, takes him aside, and makes him promise
to yield and give the allowance.

Next comes the doctor, the count, Reine, Madame Bordin, Madame
Marescot, under her umbrella, and other persons of rank.

The village brats, outside the railing, scream out and fling stones into
the garden. (It is now well kept, and this makes the inhabitants
jealous.)

Foureau wishes to drag Bouvard and Pécuchet to prison.

Barberou interposes, and Marescot, the doctor, and the count likewise
interpose with insolent pity.

Explain the order for the arrest. The sub-prefect, on receiving
Foureau's letter, has despatched an order to take them into custody, in
order to frighten them, together with a letter to Marescot and Faverges,
saying that they might be let alone if they exhibited repentance.

Vaucorbeil seeks likewise to defend them.

"'Tis rather to a madhouse that they ought to be sent; they are
lunatics. I'll write to the prefect."

Everything is settled. Bouvard will make an allowance for Mélie.

The custody of the children cannot be left to them. They refuse to give
them up; but as they have not adopted the orphans according to the forms
of law, the mayor takes them back.

They display a revolting insensibility. Bouvard and Pécuchet shed tears
at it.

M. and Madame Dumouchel go away.

       *       *       *       *       *

So everything has gone to pieces in their hands.

They no longer have any interest in life.

A good idea cherished secretly by each of them. They conceal it from
each other. From time to time they smile when it comes into their heads;
then at last communicate it to each other:

_To copy as in former times._

Designing of a bureau with a double desk. (For this purpose they seek
the services of a joiner. Gorju, who has heard about their invention,
proposes to make it. Recall the trunk incident.)

Purchase of books, writing materials, sandaracs, erasers, etc.

They sit down to write.




THE DANCE OF DEATH

(_1838_)

    "Many words for few things!"
    "Death ends all; judgment comes to all."

     [This work may be called a prose poem. It is impregnated with the
     spirit of romanticism, which at the time of writing had a temporary
     but powerful hold on the mind of Gustave Flaubert.]


DEATH SPEAKS.

[Illustration: A]At night, in winter, when the snowflakes fall slowly
from heaven like great white tears, I raise my voice; its resonance
thrills the cypress trees and makes them bud anew.

I pause an instant in my swift course over earth; throw myself down
among cold tombs; and, while dark-plumaged birds rise suddenly in terror
from my side, while the dead slumber peacefully, while cypress branches
droop low o'er my head, while all around me weeps or lies in deep
repose, my burning eyes rest on the great white clouds, gigantic
winding-sheets, unrolling their slow length across the face of heaven.

How many nights, and years, and ages have I journeyed thus! A witness of
the universal birth and of a like decay! Innumerable are the
generations I have garnered with my scythe. Like God, I am eternal! The
nurse of Earth, I cradle it each night upon a bed both soft and warm.
The same recurring feasts; the same unending toil! Each morning I
depart, each evening I return, bearing within my mantle's ample folds
all that my scythe has gathered. And then I scatter them to the four
winds of Heaven!

       *       *       *       *       *

When high the billows run, when the heavens weep, and shrieking winds
lash ocean into madness, then in the turmoil and the tumult do I fling
myself upon the surging waves, and lo! the tempest softly cradles me, as
in her hammock sways a queen. The foaming waters cool my weary feet,
burning from bathing in the falling tears of countless generations that
have clung to them in vain endeavour to arrest my steps.

Then, when the storm has ceased, after its roar has calmed me like a
lullaby, I bow my head: the hurricane, raging in fury but a moment
earlier dies instantly. No longer does it live, but neither do the men,
the ships, the navies that lately sailed upon the bosom of the waters.

'Mid all that I have seen and known,--peoples and thrones, loves,
glories, sorrows, virtues--what have I ever loved? Nothing--except the
mantling shroud that covers me!

       *       *       *       *       *

My horse! ah, yes! my horse! I love thee too! How thou rushest o'er the
world! thy hoofs of steel resounding on the heads bruised by thy
speeding feet.

Thy tail is straight and crisp, thine eyes dart flames, the mane upon
thy neck flies in the wind, as on we dash upon our maddened course.
Never art thou weary! Never do we rest! Never do we sleep! Thy neighing
portends war; thy smoking nostrils spread a pestilence that, mist-like,
hovers over earth. Where'er my arrows fly, thou overturnest pyramids and
empires, trampling crowns beneath thy hoofs! All men respect thee; nay,
adore thee! To invoke thy favour, popes offer thee their triple crowns,
and kings their sceptres; peoples, their secret sorrows; poets, their
renown. All cringe and kneel before thee, yet thou rushest on over their
prostrate forms.

Ah, noble steed! Sole gift from heaven! Thy tendons are of iron, thy
head is of bronze. Thou canst pursue thy course for centuries as swiftly
as if borne up by eagle's wings; and when, once in a thousand years,
resistless hunger comes, thy food is human flesh, thy drink, men's
tears. My steed! I love thee as Pale Death alone can love!

       *       *       *       *       *

Ah! I have lived so long! How many things I know! How many mysteries of
the universe are shut within my breast!

Sometimes, after I have hurled a myriad of darts, and, after coursing
o'er the world on my pale horse, have gathered many lives, a weariness
assails me, and I long to rest.

But on my work must go; my path I must pursue; it leads through infinite
space and all the worlds. I sweep away men's plans together with their
triumphs, their loves together with their crimes, their very all.

I rend my winding-sheet; a frightful craving tortures me incessantly, as
if some serpent stung continually within.

I throw a backward glance, and see the smoke of fiery ruins left behind;
the darkness of the night; the agony of the world. I see the graves that
are the work of these, my hands; I see the background of the past--'tis
nothingness! My weary body, heavy head, and tired feet, sink, seeking
rest. My eyes turn towards a glowing horizon, boundless, immense,
seeming to grow increasingly in height and depth. I shall devour it, as
I have devoured all else.

When, O God! shall I sleep in my turn? When wilt Thou cease creating?
When may I, digging my own grave, stretch myself out within my tomb,
and, swinging thus upon the world, list the last breath, the death-gasp,
of expiring nature?

When that time comes, away my darts and shroud I'll hurl. Then shall I
free my horse, and he shall graze upon the grass that grows upon the
Pyramids, sleep in the palaces of emperors, drink the last drop of water
from the sea, and snuff the odour of the last slow drop of blood! By
day, by night, through the countless ages, he shall roam through fields
eternal as the fancy takes him; shall leap with one great bound from
Atlas to the Himalayas; shall course, in his insolent pride, from heaven
to earth; disport himself by caracoling in the dust of crumbled empires;
shall speed across the beds of dried-up oceans; shall bound o'er ruins
of enormous cities; inhale the void with swelling chest, and roll and
stretch at ease.

Then haply, faithful one, weary as I, thou finally shalt seek some
precipice from which to cast thyself; shalt halt, panting before the
mysterious ocean of infinity; and then, with foaming mouth, dilated
nostrils, and extended neck turned towards the horizon, thou shalt, as
I, pray for eternal sleep; for repose for thy

[Illustration]

fiery feet; for a bed of green leaves, whereon reclining thou canst
close thy burning eyes forever. There, waiting motionless upon the
brink, thou shalt desire a power stronger than thyself to kill thee at a
single blow--shalt pray for union with the dying storm, the faded
flower, the shrunken corpse. Thou shalt seek sleep, because eternal life
is torture, and the tomb is peace.

Why are we here? What hurricane has hurled us into this abyss? What
tempest soon shall bear us away towards the forgotten planets whence we
came?

Till then, my glorious steed, thou shalt run thy course; thou mayst
please thine ear with the crunching of the heads crushed under thy feet.
Thy course is long, but courage! Long time hast thou carried me: but
longer time still must elapse, and yet we shall not age.

Stars may be quenched, the mountains crumble, the earth finally wear
away its diamond axis; but we two, we alone are immortal, for the
impalpable lives forever!

But to-day thou canst lie at my feet, and polish thy teeth against the
moss-grown tombs, for Satan has abandoned me, and a power unknown
compels me to obey his will. Lo! the dead seek to rise from their
graves.

       *       *       *       *       *

Satan, I love thee! Thou alone canst comprehend my joys and my
deliriums. But, more fortunate than I, thou wilt some day, when earth
shall be no more, recline and sleep within the realms of space.

But I, who have lived so long, have worked so ceaselessly, with only
virtuous loves and solemn thoughts,--I must endure immortality. Man has
his tomb, and glory its oblivion; the day dies into night, but I--!

And I am doomed to lasting solitude upon my way, strewn with the bones
of men and marked by ruins. Angels have fellow-angels; demons their
companions of darkness; but I hear only sounds of a clanking scythe, my
whistling arrows, and my speeding horse. Always the echo of the surging
billows that sweep over and engulf mankind!

SATAN.

Dost thou complain,--thou, the most fortunate creature under heaven? The
only, splendid, great, unchangeable, eternal one--like God, who is the
only Being that equals thee! Dost thou repine, who some day in thy turn
shalt disappear forever, after thou hast crushed the universe beneath
thy horse's feet?

When God's work of creating has ceased; when the heavens have
disappeared and the stars are quenched; when spirits rise from their
retreats and wander in the depths with sighs and groans; then, what
unpicturable delight for thee! Then shalt thou sit on the eternal
thrones of heaven and of hell--shalt overthrow the planets, stars, and
worlds--shalt loose thy steed in fields of emeralds and diamonds--shalt
make his litter of the wings torn from the angels,--shalt cover him with
the robe of righteousness! Thy saddle shall be broidered with the stars
of the empyrean,--and then thou wilt destroy it! After thou hast
annihilated everything,--when naught remains but empty space,--thy
coffin shattered and thine arrows broken, then make thyself a crown of
stone from heaven's highest mount, and cast thyself into the abyss of
oblivion. Thy fall may last a million æons, but thou shalt die at last.
Because the world must end; all, all must die,--except Satan! Immortal
more than God! I live to bring chaos into other worlds!

DEATH.

But thou hast not, as I, this vista of eternal nothingness before thee;
thou dost not suffer with this death-like cold, as I.

SATAN.

Nay, but I quiver under fierce and unrelaxing heats of molten lava,
which burn the doomed and which e'en I cannot escape.

For thou, at least, hast only to destroy. But I bring birth and I give
life. I direct empires and govern the affairs of States and of hearts.

I must be everywhere. The precious metals flow, the diamonds glitter,
and men's names resound at my command. I whisper in the ears of women,
of poets, and of statesmen, words of love, of glory, of ambition. With
Messalina and Nero, at Paris and at Babylon, within the self-same moment
do I dwell. Let a new island be discovered, I fly to it ere man can set
foot there; though it be but a rock encircled by the sea, I am there in
advance of men who will dispute for its possession. I lounge, at the
same instant, on a courtesan's couch and on the perfumed beds of
emperors. Hatred and envy, pride and wrath, pour from my lips in
simultaneous utterance. By night and day I work. While men are burning
Christians, I luxuriate voluptuously in baths perfumed with roses; I
race in chariots; yield to deep despair; or boast aloud in pride.

At times I have believed that I embodied the whole world, and all that I
have seen took place, in verity, within my being.

Sometimes I weary, lose my reason, and indulge in such mad follies that
the most worthless of my minions ridicule me while they pity me.

No creature cares for me; nowhere am I loved,--neither in heaven, of
which I am a son, nor yet in hell, where I am lord, nor upon earth,
where men deem me a god. Naught do I see but paroxysms of rage, rivers
of blood, or maddened frenzy. Ne'er shall my eyelids close in slumber,
never my spirit find repose, whilst thou, at least, canst rest thy head
upon the cool, green freshness of the grave. Yea, I must ever dwell amid
the glare of palaces, must listen to the curses of the starving, or
inhale the stench of crimes that cry aloud to heaven.

God, whom I hate, has punished me indeed! But my soul is greater even
than His wrath; in one deep sigh I could the whole world draw into my
breast, where it would burn eternally, even as I.

When, Lord, shall thy great trumpet sound? Then a great harmony shall
hover over sea and hill. Ah! would that I could suffer with humanity;
their cries and sobs should drown the sound of mine!

[_Innumerable skeletons, riding in chariots, advance at a rapid pace,
with cries of joy and triumph. They drag broken branches and crowns of
laurel, from which the dried and yellow leaves fall continually in the
wind and the dust._]

Lo, a triumphal throng from Rome, the Eternal City! Her Coliseum and her
Capitol are now two grains of sand that served once as a pedestal; but
Death has swung his scythe: the monuments have fallen. Behold! At their
head comes Nero, pride of my heart, the greatest poet earth has known!

[_Nero advances in a chariot drawn by twelve skeleton horses. With the
sceptre in his hand, he strikes the bony backs of his steeds. He stands
erect, his shroud flapping behind him in billowy folds. He turns, as if
upon a race-course; his eyes are flaming and he cries loudly_:]

NERO.

Quick! Quick! And faster still, until your feet dash fire from the
flinty stones and your nostrils fleck your breasts with foam. What! do
not the wheels smoke yet? Hear ye the fanfares, whose sound reached even
to Ostia; the clapping of the hands, the cries of joy? See how the
populace shower saffron on my head! See how my pathway is already damp
with sprayed perfume! My chariot whirls on; the pace is swifter than the
wind as I shake the golden reins! Faster and faster! The dust clouds
rise; my mantle floats upon the breeze, which in my ears sings "Triumph!
triumph!" Faster and faster! Hearken to the shouts of joy, list to the
stamping feet and the plaudits of the multitude. Jupiter himself looks
down on us from heaven. Faster! yea, faster still!

[_Nero's chariot now seems to be drawn by demons; a black cloud of dust
and smoke envelops him; in his erratic course he crashes into tombs,
and the re-awakened corpses are crushed under the wheels of the chariot,
which now turns, comes forward, and stops._]

NERO.

Now let six hundred of my women dance the Grecian Dances silently before
me, the while I lave myself with roses in a bath of porphyry. Then let
them circle me, with interlacing arms, that I may see on all sides
alabaster forms in graceful evolution, swaying like tall reeds bending
over an amorous pool.

And I will give the empire and the sea, the Senate, and Olympus, the
Capitol, to her who shall embrace me the most ardently; to her whose
heart shall throb beneath my own; to her who shall enmesh me in her
flowing hair, smile on me sweetest, and enfold me in the warmest clasp;
to her who soothing me with songs of love shall waken me to joy and
heights of rapture!

Rome shall be still this night; no barque shall cleave the waters of the
Tiber, since 'tis my wish to see the mirrored moon on its untroubled
face and hear the voice of woman floating over it. Let perfumed breezes
pass through all my draperies! Ah, I would die, voluptuously
intoxicated.

Then, while I eat of some rare meat, that only I may taste, let some one
sing, while damsels, lightly draped, serve me from plates of gold and
watch my rest. One slave shall cut her sister's throat, because it is my
pleasure--a favourite with the gods--to mingle the perfume of blood with
that of food, and cries of victims soothe my nerves.

This night I shall burn Rome. The flames shall light up heaven, and
Tiber shall roll in waves of fire!

Then, I shall build of aloes wood a stage to float upon the Italian sea,
and the Roman populace shall throng thereto chanting my praise. Its
draperies shall be of purple, and on it I shall have a bed of eagles'
plumage. There I shall sit, and at my side shall be the loveliest woman
in the empire, while all the universe applauds the achievements of a
god! And though the tempest roar around me, its rage shall be
extinguished 'neath my feet, and sounds of music shall o'ercome the
clamor of the waves!

       *       *       *       *       *

What didst thou say? Vindex revolts, my legions fly, my women flee in
terror? Silence and tears alone remain, and I hear naught but the
rolling of thunder. Must I die, now?

DEATH.

Instantly!

NERO.

Must I give up my days of feasting and delight, my spectacles, my
triumphs, my chariots and the applause of multitudes?

DEATH.

All! All!

SATAN.

Haste, Master of the World! One comes--One who will put thee to the
sword. An emperor knows how to die!

NERO.

Die! I have scarce begun to live! Oh, what great deeds I should
accomplish--deeds that should make Olympus tremble! I would fill up the
bed of hoary ocean and speed across it in a triumphal car. I would still
live--would see the sun once more, the Tiber, the Campagna, the Circus
on the golden sands. Ah! let me live!

DEATH.

I will give thee a mantle for the tomb, and an eternal bed that shall be
softer and more peaceful than the Imperial couch.

NERO.

Yet, I am loth to die.

DEATH.

Die, then!

[_He gathers up the shroud, lying beside him on the ground, and bears
away Nero, wrapped in its folds._]




RABELAIS[B]

 [B] The manuscript of this essay, unlike all other early manuscripts
 of Gustave Flaubert, bears no date. It belongs to the earliest of his
 writing, a time when there was a far from unanimous opinion among the
 literary _cognoscenti_ regarding the work of Rabelais.


[Illustration: N]No name in literature has been more generally cited
than that of Rabelais; and never, perhaps, has one been cited with so
much ignorance and injustice. Thus, to some minds he is merely a
drunken, cynical old monk, with a mind disordered and fantastic, as
obscene as it is ingenious, dangerous in its ideas and revolting in
their expression. To others he is a practical philosopher, gentle and
moderate; sceptical, certainly, but, after all, an honest man of
reputable life. He has been alternately loved and despised,
misunderstood and rehabilitated; and ever since his prodigious genius
first launched at the world his biting and all-embracing satire, in the
form of the colossal mocking glee of giants, creatures of his
imagination, each century has puzzled over his meaning, and has
interpreted in a thousand fashions this long enigma, apparently so
trivial, gross and merry, but in reality profound and true.

Rabelais' work is a historical achievement, in itself so important that
it belongs to and illumines the thought of each age. Thus, at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, when first given to the world, it
was in reality an open revolt, a moral pamphlet. It had the importance
of actuality and the controlling power of a revolution. Rabelais may be
regarded as a Luther in his own way. His sphere was that of laughter,
but his power over men was such that with titanic mockery he demolished
more of evil than the good man of Wittenberg, with all his anger. He
managed everything so well--wielded so cleverly the sharp chisel of
satire--that his laughter became a terror. His work is the embodiment of
the grotesque; it is as eternal as the world.

Rabelais was the father of the frank and naïve literature of the
seventeenth century--of Molière and La Fontaine,--all were immortals,
geniuses, in spirit the most essentially French of Gallic writers. All
three regarded poor human nature with a smile at once good-natured and
cynical; all were frank, free and easy in their language, men in every
sense of the word: careless of philosophers, of sects, of religions,
they were of the religion of mankind itself, and well they understood
it. They turned it over, analysed and dissected it; one in a strange
story full of gross obscenities, bursting with laughter and blasphemy;
the second, on the stage, in deftly constructed dialogue, full of truth
and wisdom and a naïveté almost sublime--more of a philosopher in the
simple laughter of his Mascarille, in the good sense of Philinte, or in
the bilious spleen of Alceste, than any other philosopher that ever
lived; and the third, in fables for children with morals for men, in
verses full of good-nature and kindly humour, in words and phrases,
wherein rests something of sublimity; in crystalline sonnets, in all the
poetic gems that deck his name with splendid ornaments.

But Rabelais is to-day a subject of serious study, the favourite author
of those rare minds that rise superior to the ordinary limitations of
intelligence. Besides those men whose names we cite, La Bruyère studied
and appreciated his work with the utmost impartiality. The great
romancer was not sufficiently correct to please the scrupulous taste of
Boileau, or to accord with the reserve and purity of Racine. That
prudish age, governed by Madame de Maintenon, so well typified in the
flat and angular garden at Versailles, was ashamed of literature at once
so frank and open, nude and picturesque. This giant made them fear. They
seemed instinctively to feel that they were placed between two terrible
epochs: the sixteenth century, which produced a Luther and a Rabelais,
and the Revolution, which was to give a Mirabeau, a Robespierre. First
the demolishers of faith, then the demolishers of life: two abysses,
'twixt which they stood firm in the adoration of themselves!

In the eighteenth century things were still worse. Philosophers then
were of a high moral tone, and would have none of Rabelais. The poor
curate of Meudon would have found himself much out of place in the
salons of the witty and beautiful _marquises_, or in the intellectual
society of Madame du Deffand or Madame Geoffrin. Never would they have
comprehended the flashing darts of wit, the bubbling spirits, the
whirlwind, the poetic mind, throbbing with adventures, inventions,
travel, and extravagances. The petty and affected tastes, the cold and
formal manners of the age, were horrified at aught that might be called
licentiousness of mind. The "Precieuses" probably preferred to have it
in their manners! Voltaire, for instance, could pardon Rabelais because
he ridiculed the Church; but of his style, of his meaning, Voltaire had
scarce an idea, although he claimed to have a key to the great work,
which he summed up in vicious epigram: "A mass of the grossest refuse
ever vomited by a drunken monk."

It is quite natural that this should have been his opinion. The glory
and value of Rabelais, as in the case of all great men, all illustrious
names, have long been vigorously disputed. His genius is unique,
exceptional; its product stands alone among the histories of the
literatures of the world. Where is his rival to be found?

To go back to antiquity, shall we cite Petronius or Apuleius, with their
studied and premeditated art, their classic style, their scholarly
conceptions?

Passing to the Middle Ages, shall we compare the epics of the twelfth
century, the comic and the morality plays? No, certainly not; and
although much of the comic material in the work of Rabelais is
characteristic of the grotesque humour and manners of the Middle Ages,
we do not find its predecessor in any literary document.

Coming down to modern times, his closest imitator, Béroald of Verville,
author of _L'Art de Parvenir_, is so far removed from his model in style
and power that it is scarcely worth while to make a comparison. Sterne
attempted to reproduce the style of Rabelais, but his affectation and
over-refined sensibility destroyed the parallel.

No, Rabelais is unique because he himself expresses the traits and
characteristics of an entire century. His work possesses the highest
significance in literature, politics, morals and religion. Certain
geniuses appear from time to time, to create new literatures, or to
resuscitate old ones; they deliver their message to the world, express
the sentiment of their own generation, and we hear from them no more.

Homer sang the glories of the martial life, of the valiant and warlike
youth of the world, the vernal season when the trees put forth new
sprouts. In Virgil's day civilisation was already old; we find him full
of tears, of shadows, sentiment and delicacy. Dante is sombre and
radiant at the same time; he was the Christian poet, the bard of death
and of hell, full of melancholy and of hope also. In olden times, if
satiety overtook a people, if doubt entered into all hearts, if all
beautiful dreams, all illusions, all Utopian yearnings fell, one by one,
destroyed by stern realities, by science, reason, and analysis, what did
the poet do? He retired within himself; he had sublime flights of pride
and enthusiasm, and moments of poignant despair. He sang the agonies of
the heart and the vagaries of fancy. Then, all the griefs that compassed
him, the sobs that rang in his ears, the maledictions that he heard on
every side, resounded in his soul--which God had made great, responsive,
all-embracing--and issued thence through the voice of genius, to mark
forever in history an epoch in a nation's life, to record its sorrows,
and carve indelibly the names of its unfortunates. In our own day Lord
Byron has done this. For this reason, the true poet is more accurate
than the historian, and indeed most poets are more strictly truthful
than historians. Great writers, then, may be compared, in the realms of
thought, to the capitals of kingdoms. They absorb the brains of every
province and every individuality; mingling those qualities of each that
are distinctively personal and original, they amalgamate them, arrange
them, and after a time the result is seen in the form of art.

Rabelais was born in 1483, the year that Louis XI. died. Luther had just
become known. The king had overthrown the ancient feudalism; the monks
were about to attack the Papacy: this situation describes the history of
the Middle Ages--a period divided between the wars of Nations and of the
Church. But the people, weary of both, would have no more of either.
They realised that the men of arms devoured their substance and ruined
them; they knew the priests made use of them for their own selfish
purposes, besides deceiving them. For some time the people contented
themselves with inscribing satires and scurrilities on the stones of the
cathedrals, with making songs against the seigneurs, or publishing,
broadcast, biting criticisms of the ruling power or of the nobility, as
in the _Romance of the Rose_. But something more was wanted: a revolt, a
reform. Symbols were old, and so were mystery plays and poems; and there
was a general feeling that an entirely new form of attack was desirable.
Science was needed, even in poetry and philosophy.

In 1473, a caricature representing the Church, with the body of a woman,
the legs of a chicken, the claws of a vulture, and the tail of a
serpent, was circulated throughout Europe. It was the epoch of Comines,
of Machiavelli, of Arétin. The Papacy had lately had Alexander VI.; now
it had Leo X., who was no better. An intellectual orgy had set in,
destined to be long, and to end with blood. During the eighteenth
century this was repeated, and the termination was the same.

In the chaotic conditions belonging to this epoch lived Rabelais. We are
not surprised that, in the midst of this society, corrupt from its
debaucheries and tottering on its foundations, and being witness to such
ruin and devastation, the genius of this wonderful man prompted him to
reveal, by means of withering sarcasm, the frightful past of the Middle
Ages, the effects of which were still felt in his own century, which
looked back upon that past with horror.

In my opinion, those who have claimed to possess a key to Rabelais, to
be able to understand his allegories, and to translate each jest into
its real significance, do not understand him in the least. His satire is
general and universal, not at all personal or local. A careful reading
of his work should prove the fallacy of such pretensions.

Shall I cite all that was done in this respect in the sixteenth century,
and tell of all the abuse poured by that century upon the Middle Ages,
of which it was the outcome? For instance, without saying anything of
Ariosto, are not Falstaff, Sancho Panza, and Gargantua a grotesque
trilogy forming a bitter satire on the old society?

Falstaff belongs wholly to England; he is John Bull bloated with beer
and pork; fat, sensual, running away from the dead, eternally drawing
from his pocket a flask of old Spanish wine. He possesses none of the
terrible grotesqueness of Iago, or of the deliberate immorality of
Schiller's Hassan, the Moor. His greatest passion was self-love; he
carried it to the highest degree; it was even sublime. He was egotism
personified, with a certain facility in analysis and a strain of
ridicule, by which he managed to turn everything to his own advantage.

As for peaceful Sancho Panza, mounted on his lazy, tawny ass, snoring
all night and sleeping all day, a poltroon, not able to understand the
meaning of heroism, full of proverbs, the prosaic man _par
excellence_,--is not his base blood the crying reason why he endeavours
with all his power to stop Don Quixote from tilting at the windmills,
which the worthy knight takes for giants? The man of gentle birth
attacks them, nevertheless, but he breaks his arm and wounds his head.
His helmet is a barber's basin, his horse, Rosinante, and a labourer's
donkey brays at the sight of his coat-of-arms.

Placed between these two figures, that of Gargantua is vaguer, less
precise. His characterisation is ampler, freer, and grander. Gargantua
is less gluttonous, less sensual than Falstaff, and not so lazy as
Sancho Panza; but he is a greater drinker, a heartier laugher, and makes
a louder clamour. He is terrible and monstrous in his gaiety.

One more reflection: the satire of Rabelais does not apply to his own
day only. He denounces, for all time, all abuses, crimes, and everything
that is ridiculous. Perhaps he was able to foresee a better state of the
body politic and a society whose moral laws should be purified. Existing
conditions aroused his pity, and, to employ a trivial expression, all
the world was a farce. And he made himself a part of the farce.

Since his time, what has been done? Everything has changed. Reform has
come, with independence of thought. We have had the Revolution. We
possess material independence. And what besides all this?

Thousands of questions have been discussed,--sciences, arts,
philosophies, theories,--how many questions even during the last twenty
years! What a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas! Where will they lead us?

Let us see. Where are we? Are we in the twilight or in full dawn? We
have no more Christianity. What have we? I ask. Railways, factories,
chemists, mathematicians. To be sure, our bodies are better off, we
suffer less in the flesh, but the heart still bleeds! Do you not feel
the perturbation of your soul, although its outward covering seems calm
and happy? It is plunged in the abyss of universal scepticism; it is
overcome by that deadly ennui that seizes upon our race even in the
cradle. Meanwhile, politicians babble, poets have scarcely time to rhyme
their fancies and scribble them hastily on ephemeral sheets of paper;
and the suicidal bullet is heard in every garret and every palace where
dwell misery, pride, or satiety!

Material questions have been settled. But others--have they also been
solved? Answer me that! And the longer you delay in filling this yawning
chasm in the soul of mankind, the more I mock at your efforts to be
happy, and laugh at your miserable sciences, that are worth no more than
a blade of grass.

Now is the time for another genius like Rabelais to arise. Let him be
without anger, without hatred, without grief. What could he laugh at?
Not at kings--there are no more; nor at God, because although we may
have lost our faith, yet a certain fear remains; nor at the Jesuits, for
they are an old story.

What could he laugh at, then? The material world has improved, or at
least it is on the road to improvement.

But the other? He would have fine sport with that. And if such a poet
could conceal his tears and laugh instead, I assure you his book would
be the most terrible and the most sublime that ever has been written!




Preface to the Last Songs

(_POSTHUMOUS POEMS_)

OF

LOUIS BOUILHET.


[Illustration: I]It would perhaps make criticism easier, if, before
giving our opinion, we should make known our preferences. To omit this
preliminary distinction is a great injustice, as every book contains a
peculiarity pertaining to the writer himself, which, independently of
the execution, will charm or irritate us according to our preferences.
We are never completely charmed unless a book appeals to our feelings
and our intellect at the same time.

First, let us discuss the object of the book. "Why this novel, this
drama? Of what use is it? etc." Instead of following the author's idea,
instead of pointing out to him where he failed of his aim, and how he
should have gone about to attain it, we bicker with him on a thousand
things outside of his subject, always declaring the contrary of what he
meant to express. If a critic's sphere extends beyond the author's
province, he should first of all look to the æsthetics and the moral.

It is impossible for me to warrant either of these concerning the poet
in questions. As for writing his life, it has been linked so closely
with mine, that I shall be brief on this subject; individual memoirs
belong only to great men. Besides, has not research been exhausted?
History will soon absorb all literature. In studying too closely what
makes up the author's atmosphere, we fail to give the originality of his
genius due consideration. In La Harpe's time, when a masterpiece
appeared, we were convinced,--thanks to certain rules!--that it was
under no obligation whatsoever; whereas now, after we have examined
everything about it, we still wish to discover its right to exist.

I have another scruple. I do not wish to betray the modesty that my
friend constantly maintained. At an epoch when insignificant mediocrity
aspired to fame, when typography was the medium of all affectations, and
the rivalry of the most insipid personalities became a public pest, he
was proud of being modest. His photograph was never displayed on the
boulevards. No article, no letter, not a single line from him, was ever
published in the papers. He did not even belong to the academy of his
province. Yet no life is more deserving of praise than his. He lived
nobly and labouriously. Though poor, he remained free. He was as strong
as a blacksmith, mild as a child, intellectual without being
paradoxical, noble without affectation; and those who knew him well will
say that I have not praised him enough.

Louis Hyacinthe Bouilhet was born at Cany (Seine Inférieure), the 27th
day of May, 1822. His father, chief of ambulances in the campaign of
1812, swam the Bérésina, carrying on his head the regiment's chest, and
died quite young from wounds received. His maternal grandfather, Pierre
Hourcastremé, dabbled in legislation, poetry, and geometry, received
congratulations from Voltaire, corresponded with Turgot and Condorcet,
spent nearly all his money buying shells, produced _Les Aventures de
Messire Anselme_, an _Essai sur la Faculté de Penser_, _Les Etrennes de
Mnémosyne_, etc., and after being a lawyer in Pau, a journalist in
Paris, administrator of the navy at Havre, and a schoolmaster at
Montvilliers, died almost a centenarian, bequeathing to his grandson the
memory of a strange but charming old man, who powdered his hair, wore
knee-breeches and cultivated tulips.

The child was sent to Ingouville, to a boarding-school on a high cliff,
and went to the college of Rouen at twelve, where he was usually at the
head of his class. He was not a model pupil, however; this term applies
to mediocre natures and a calmness of spirit which was rare in those
days.

I do not know what students admire nowadays, but our dreams were wildly
imaginative. The most enthusiastic dreamt of violent courtships, with
gondolas, and fainting ladies carried away in stagecoaches by masked
ruffians. Some, more gloomily disposed (admirers of Armand Carrel, a
countryman), preferred the clash of the press and the court-room, or the
glory of conspiracy. A rhetorician wrote an _Apologie de Robespierre_,
which reached a certain gentleman and so scandalised him that it brought
on an exchange of notes, followed by a challenge to a duel, in which the
said gentleman did not play a very creditable part. One good-natured
fellow always wore a red cap; another swore to live as a Mohican; one
of my intimate friends aspired to the honour of serving under
Abd-el-Kader. Apart from being troubadours, insurgents and Orientals, we
were, above all, artists. After studies, we wrote, and read novels till
late in the night. Bar ..., declaring he was tired of life, shot
himself; and And ... hanged himself with his cravat. We certainly
deserved little praise for our follies; but we hated platitudes; our
minds soared towards noble things. How we revered the masters! How we
admired Victor Hugo!

Among this group was Bouilhet, the elegist, the poet of moonlight and
ruins. When he was nearly twenty, this affectation disappeared, to give
place to a virulent democracy, so genuine that he was about to join a
secret society.

He received his bachelor's degree, and was told to choose a profession.
He chose medicine, settled his small income on his mother, and taught
for a living. His life became painfully labourious; he combined the
duties of poet, tutor and saw-bones. Two years later, he was appointed
interne at l'Hôtel Dieu in Rouen, under my father's orders. As he could
not attend during the day, his turn came oftener than others for night
watch. He did not mind it, however, as he had no other time in which to
write. All his poems of love, flowers and birds were written in those
winter nights, amidst the sick and suffering, or on Sundays in summer,
while the patients walked under his window. Those years of sadness were
not useless; the contemplation of suffering humanity, the dressing of
wounds, the dissecting-table, gave him a better knowledge of mankind.
Some would have given way under the strain, the disgust, the torture of
having to follow a vocation unsuited to him; but, thanks to his physical
and mental health, he stood it cheerfully. Some still remember meeting
in the streets of his native city, this handsome though somewhat timid
youth, with flowing blond hair, who always carried a note-book, in which
he wrote his verses as they came to him; sometimes while teaching, at a
friend's house, in a café, during an operation, anywhere. Poor in
worldly wealth, but rich in hope, he gave them away. He was a real poet
in the classical sense of the word.

When we met again after four years' separation, he read to me three of
his plays. The first, entitled _Le Déluge_, described a lover clinging
to his beloved, while he watched with anguish the ruins of the fast
disappearing world: "Hark to the crashing of the palm-trees on the
heights, and to the agonizing cries of Earth!" It was somewhat prolix,
and too emphatic, but was replete with force and passion. The second, a
satire against the Jesuits, was more resolute and in an entirely
different style: "Smile, priests of the boudoir and gather poor feminine
souls in your golden nets!" "Charming ministers in the confessional,
inflicting penance with love-words on their lips! Heroes of the Gospel,
impleading the Lord with flowery language, and treading each day, holy
martyrs! on soft carpets the _via crucis_!" "These merchants, at the
foot of the cross, casting lots and dividing, piece by piece, O Lord,
Thy robe and Thy cloak! These fakirs of holy relics, selling, oh,
wonder! Thy heart as amulets, and phials of Thy blood."

We must not forget the disturbances of the times, and must remember that
the author was only twenty-two. The play was dated 1844.

The third was an invective to "An author who sold his poems":

    Why seek a famished passion to revive?
    After thy rustic love through green fields strive
    On flowery banks beside the rosy stream
    Archangel, drink to drunkenness the sunny beam,
    Under the willows chant etotic dreams,
    Though Brutus' sins upon thy shoulders weigh
    Doubtless thy simple soul and heart inveigh
    Against the Destiny that took from thee.

"'Tis the greedy Plutus, with his purse full, who quotes smiling, human
honesty!"

"Destiny is the bag full of gold into which we plunge our greedy hands
with rapture! It is corruption which flaunts before our eyes its
alluring breast! It is fear, the silent spectre that disturbs the coward
in the hour of danger!"

"Your prudent Apollo, no doubt, passed through the stock exchange to
reach the Parnassus? We often see, in the political sky, the morning sun
die out before night. Look through your telescope, do you not see Guizot
waning and Thiers coming to light? Do you base your changeable faith and
your flexible probity on the mobility of the weather?"

"Avaunt! Greek, whose servile words lauded Xerxes the night before
Thermopylæ!" He continued in the same rough tone against the
administration. He sent his play to the _Reforme_, hoping they would
print it; but they refused peremptorily, not wishing to expose
themselves to a law suit--for mere literature.

It was near the end of 1845, when my father died, that Bouilhet gave up
the practice of medicine. But he continued to teach, and, with the aid
of a partner, obtained bachelorships for their pupils. The events of
1848 disturbed his republican faith. He now became a confirmed
_littérateur_, fond of metaphors and comparisons, but indifferent to all
else.

His thorough knowledge of Latin (he wrote as fluently in Latin as in
French) inspired the few Roman sketches, as in _Festons et Astragales_
and the poem _Meloenis_, published in the _Revue de Paris_, on the eve
of a political crisis. The moment was badly chosen. The public's fancy
and courage were considerably cooled, and it was not disposed, neither
were the powers, to accept independent genius; besides, individual style
always seems insurrectionary to governments and immoral to commoners.
The exaltation of vulgarism, the banishment of poetry, became more than
ever the rage. Wishing to show good judgment, they rushed headlong into
stupidity; anything above the ordinary bored them.

As a protest, he took refuge in forgotten places and in the far East;
and thence came the _Fossiles_ and different Chinese plays.

However, the provincial atmosphere stifled him; he needed a vaster
field; and severing his connections, he came to Paris; but at a certain
age one can no longer acquire the Parisian judgment; the things that
seem simple to a native of the boulevards, are impracticable to a man of
thirty-three arriving in the great city, having few acquaintances and no
income, and unaccustomed to solitude. Then his bad days began.

His first book, _Madame de Montarcy_, received on approval at the
Théâtre Français, and refused at the second reading, lingered for two
years and was only accepted at the Odéon in November, 1856. The first
performance was a rousing success. The applause often interrupted the
action of the play; a whiff of youth permeated the atmosphere; it was a
reminiscence of 1830. That night he became known; his success was
assured. He could have collaborated, and made money with his name; but
he preferred the quietness of Mantes, and went to live in a little house
near an old tower, at the turn of the bridge, where his friends visited
him on Sundays.

As soon as his plays were written, he took them to Paris; but the whims
and fancies of the managers, the critics, the belated appointments, and
the loss of time, caused him much weariness. He did not know that art,
in a question of art, held such a trifling place! When he joined a
committee against the unfair dealings at the Théâtre Français, he was
the only member that did not complain of the rates of authors'
royalties.

With what pleasure he returned to his daily distraction, the study of
Chinese! He pursued it ten years, merely as a study of the race,
intending to write a grand poem on the Celestial Empire. Days when his
heart was too full, he relieved himself by writing lyrical verses on the
restrictions of the stage. His luck had turned, but with the
_Conjuration d'Ambroise_ it returned, and it lasted all winter.

Six months later he was appointed conservator of the municipal library
of Rouen; and his old dream of leisure and fortune was realized at last!
But soon afterward a dullness seized him--the exhaustion from too long a
struggle. To counteract this he resumed the Greek tragic style and
rapidly composed his last play, _Mademoiselle Aïssé_, which he never
corrected. An incurable disease, long neglected, was the cause of his
death, which took place on the 18th of July, 1869. He passed away
without pain, in the presence of a friend of his youth and her child,
whom he loved as if he were his own son. Their affection had increased
towards the last, but two other persons marred their happiness. It seems
that in a poet's family there are always bitter disappointments.
Annoying quarrels, honeyed sarcasms, direct insults to art, the million
and one things that make your heart bleed,--nothing was spared him while
he lived, and these things followed him to his death-bed.

His fellow-countrymen flocked to his funeral as if he had been a public
man; even the less educated knowing full well that a superior intellect
had passed away. The whole Parisian press joined in this universal
sorrow; even the most hostile expressed their regrets; a Catholic writer
alone spoke disparagingly. No doubt the connoisseurs in verse deplore
the loss of such a poetical spirit; but those in whom he confided, who
knew his powerful spirit, who benefited by his advice, they alone know
to what height he might have risen.

He left, besides _Aïssé_, three comedies in prose, a fairy-scene, and
the first act of _Pélerinage de Saint-Jacques_, a drama in verse, in ten
tableaux. He had outlined two short poems: _Le Boeuf_, depicting the
rustic life of Latium; and _Le Dernier Banquet_, describing the Roman
patricians poisoning themselves at a banquet the night the soldiers of
Alaric are entering Rome. He wished also to write a novel on the heathen
of the fifth century, the counterpart of the _Martyrs_; but above all,
he desired to write his Chinese tale, the scenes of which are completely
laid out. It was his supreme ambition to recapitulate modern science, to
write the _De natura rerum_ of our age!

Who has the right to classify the talents of his contemporaries, and,
thinking himself superior to all, say: "This one comes first, that one
second, and this other third"? Fame's sudden changes are numerous. There
are irretrievable failures; some long, obscure periods, and some
triumphant reappearances. Was not Ronsard forgotten before Sainte-Beuve?
In days gone by, Saint-Amant was considered inferior as a poet to
Jacques Delille. _Don Quixote_, _Gil Blas_, _Manon Lescaut_, _La Cousine
Bette_ and other masterpieces, have never had the success of _Uncle
Tom_. In my youth, I heard comparisons made between Casimir Delavigne
and Victor Hugo, and it seems that "our great national poet" was
declining. Let us then be careful, or posterity will misjudge
us--perhaps laugh at our bitterness--still more, perhaps, at our
adulations; for the fame of an author does not spring from public
approbation, but from the verdict of a few intellects, who, in the
course of time, impose it upon the public.

Some will say that I have given my friend too high a place; but they
know not, no more do I, what place he will retain. Because his first
book is written in stanzas of six lines each, with triple rhymes, like
_Naouma_, and begins like this: "Of all the men that ever walked through
Rome, in Grecian buskins and linen toga, from Suburra to the Capitoline
hill, the handsomest was Paulus," somewhat similar to this: "Of all the
libertines in Paris, the first, oldest and most prolific in vice, where
debauchery is so easily found, the lewdest of all was Jacques Rolla,"
without more ado, and ignoring the dissimilarity of execution, poetry,
and nature, it was declared that the author of _Meloenis_ imitated
Alfred de Musset! He was condemned on the spot; a farce--it is so easy
to label a thing so as to be able to put it aside.

I do not wish to be unfair; but where has Musset, in any part of his
works, harmonized description, dialogue, and intrigue in more than two
thousand consecutive rhymes, with such results of composition, such
choice of language, in short, where is there a work of such magnitude?
What wonderful ability was needed to reproduce Roman society, without
affectation, yet keeping within the narrow confines of a dramatic fable!

If you look for the primitive idea, the general element in Louis
Bouilhet's poems, you will find a kind of naturalism that reminds you of
the Renaissance. His hatred of commonplace saved him from platitudes;
his inclination towards the heroic was tempered by his wit--he was very
witty. This part of his talent was almost unknown; he kept it somewhat
in the shadow, thinking it of no consequence; but now nothing hinders me
from acknowledging that he excelled in epigrams, sonnets, rondeaux and
other jests, written for distraction or pastime, and also through sheer
good-nature. I discovered some official speeches for functionaries,
New-Year verses for a little girl, some stanzas for a barber, for the
christening of a bell, for the visit of a king. He dedicated to one of
our friends, wounded in 1848, an ode on the patron of _The Taking of
Namur_, where emphasis reached the pinnacle of dullness. To another who
killed a viper with his whip he sent a piece entitled: _The struggle of
a monster and a genius_, which contained enough imperfect metaphors and
ridiculous periphrasis to serve as a model or as a scarecrow. But his
best was a masterpiece, in Béranger's style, entitled _The Nightcap!_
His intimate friends will always remember it. It praised glory, the
ladies, and philosophy so highly,--it was enough to make all the members
of the Caveau burst with the desire of emulating him.

He had the gift of being entertaining--a rare thing for a poet. Compare
his Chinese with his Roman plays, _Neera_ with _Lied Norman_, _Pastel_
with _Clair de Lune_, _Chronique de Printemps_ with _Sombre Eglogue_,
_Le Navire_ with _Une Soirée_, and you will see how productive and
ingenious he was.

He has dramatised all human passions; he has written about the mummies,
the triumphs of the unknown, the sadness of the stones, has unearthed
worlds, described barbaric peoples and biblical scenes, and written
lullabies. The scope of his imagination is sufficiently proven in _Les
Fossiles_, which Théophile Gautier called "the most difficult subject
ever attempted by any poet!" I may add that it is the only scientific
poem in all French literature that is really poetical. The stanzas at
the end, on the future man, show how well he understood the most
transcendent utopias. Among religious works, his _Colombe_ will perhaps
live as the declaration of faith of the nineteenth century. His
individuality manifests itself plainly in _Dernière Nuit_, _A Une
Femme_, _Quand vous m'avez quitté_, _Boudeuse_, etc., where he is by
turns dismal and ironical; whereas in _La fleur rouge_ it bursts out in
a singularly sharp and almost savage manner.

He does not look for effect; follows no school but his own individual
style, which is versatile, fluent, violent, full of imagination and
always musical. He possesses all the secrets of poetry; that is the
reason that his works abound with good lines, good all the way through,
as in _Le Lutrin_ and _Les Châtiments_. Take, for instance: "Is long
like a crocodile, with bird-like extremities." "A big, brown bear,
wearing a golden helmet." "He was a muleteer from Capua." "The sky was
as blue as a calm sea." "The thousand things one sees when mingling with
a crowd."

And this one of the Virgin Mary: "Forever pale from carrying her God."

In one sense of the word, he is classical. His _l'Oncle Million_ is
written in the most excellent French. "A poem! Make rhymes! It is
insanity! I have seen saner men put into a padded cell! Zounds! Who
speaks in rhymes? What a farce! Am I imaginative? Do I make verses? Do
you know, my boy, what I have had to endure to give you the extreme
pleasure of watching, lyre in hand, which way the winds blow? Wisely
considered, these frivolities are well enough at odd moments. I myself
knew a clerk that wrote verses."

Then further: "I say Léon is not even a poet! He a poet, come! You are
joking. Why, I saw him when he was no higher than that! What has he out
of the ordinary? He is a rattle-brained, stupid fool, and I warrant you
he will be a business man, or I will know the reason why!"

This style goes straight to the point. The meaning comes out so clearly
that the words are forgotten; that is, while clin

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