The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bouvard and Pécuchet, by Gustave Flaubert.

Bouvard inclined towards Neptunism; Pécuchet, on the contrary, was a Plutonist.

"The central fire had broken the crust of the globe, heaved up the masses of earth, and made fissures. It is, as it were, an interior sea, which has its flow and ebb, its tempests; a thin film separates us from it. We could not sleep if we thought of all that is under our heels. However, the central fire diminishes, and the sun grows more feeble, so much so that one day the earth will perish of refrigeration. It will become sterile; all the wood and all the coal will be converted into carbonic acid, and no life can subsist there."

No matter, this end of the world, far away as it might be, made them gloomy; and, side by side, they walked in silence over the shingles.

The cliff, perpendicular, a mass of white, striped with black here and there by lines of flint, stretched towards the horizon like the curve of a rampart five leagues wide. An east wind, bitter and cold, was blowing; the sky was grey; the sea greenish and, as it were, swollen. From the highest points of rocks birds took wing, wheeled round, and speedily re-entered their hiding places. Sometimes a stone, getting loosened, would rebound from one place to another before reaching them.

"Unless the earth should be destroyed by a cataclysm! We do not know the length of our period. The central fire has only to overflow."

"That does not prevent its explosions from having produced the Julia Island, Monte Nuovo, and many others."

"A thousand pardons! Witness that of Lisbon. As for our own countries, the coal-mines and the firestone useful for war are numerous, and may very well, when decomposing, form the mouths of volcanoes. Moreover, the volcanoes always burst near the sea."

Bouvard cast his eyes over the waves, and fancied he could distinguish in the distance a volume of smoke ascending to the sky.

"Since the Julia Island," returned Pécuchet, "has disappeared, the fragments of the earth formed by the same cause will perhaps have the same fate. An islet in the Archipelago is as important as Normandy and even as Europe."

"Admit," said Pécuchet, "that an earthquake takes place under the British Channel: the waters rush into the Atlantic; the coasts of France and England, tottering on their bases, bend forward and reunite—and there you are! The entire space between is wiped out."

Instead of answering, Bouvard began walking so quickly that he was soon a hundred paces away from Pécuchet. Being alone, the idea of a cataclysm disturbed him. He had eaten nothing since morning; his temples were throbbing. All at once the soil appeared to him to be shaking, and the cliff over his head to be bending forward at its summit. At that moment a shower of gravel rolled down from the top of it. Pécuchet observed him scampering off wildly, understood his fright, and cried from a distance:

And in order to overtake him he made enormous bounds with the aid of his tourist's stick, all the while shouting out:

Bouvard, in a mad state, kept running without stopping. The many-branched umbrella fell down, the skirts of his coat were flying, the knapsack was tossing on his back. He was like a tortoise with wings about to gallop amongst the rocks. One bigger than the rest concealed him from view.

Pécuchet reached the spot out of breath, saw nobody, then returned in order to gain the fields through a defile, which Bouvard, no doubt, had taken.

This narrow ascent was cut by four great steps in the cliff, as lofty as the heights of two men, and glittering like polished alabaster.

At an elevation of fifty feet Pécuchet wished to descend; but as the sea was dashing against him in front, he set about clambering up further. At the second turning, when he beheld the empty space, terror froze him. As he approached the third, his legs were becoming weak. Volumes of air vibrated around him, a cramp gripped his epigastrium; he sat down on the ground, with eyes closed, no longer having consciousness of aught save the beatings of his own heart, which were suffocating him; then he flung his tourist's stick on the ground, and on his hands and knees resumed his ascent. But the three hammers attached to his belt began to press against his stomach; the stones with which he had crammed his pockets knocked against his sides; the peak of his cap blinded him; the wind increased in violence. At length he reached the upper ground, and there found Bouvard, who had ascended higher through a less difficult defile. A cart picked them up. They forgot all about Étretat.

The next evening, at Havre, while waiting for the packet-boat, they saw at the tail-end of a newspaper, a short scientific essay headed, "On the Teaching of Geology." This article, full of facts, explained the subject as it was understood at the period.

"There has never been a complete cataclysm of the globe, but the same space has not always the same duration, and is exhausted more quickly in one place than in another. Lands of the same age contain different fossils, just as depositaries very far distant from each other enclose similar ones. The ferns of former times are identical with the ferns of to-day. Many contemporary zoophytes are found again in the most ancient layers. To sum up, actual modifications explain former convulsions. The same causes are always in operation; Nature does not proceed by leaps; and the periods, Brogniart asserts, are, after all, only abstractions."

Cuvier's work up to this time had appeared to them surrounded with the glory of an aureola at the summit of an incontestable science. It was sapped. Creation had no longer the same discipline, and their respect for this great man diminished.

From biographies and extracts they learned something of the doctrines of Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

Bouvard experienced relief as if from a broken yoke. "I should like to see now what answer Citizen Jeufroy would make to me about the Deluge!"

They found him in his little garden, where he was awaiting the members of the vestry, who were to meet presently with a view to the purchase of a chasuble.

And Bouvard began, "What means, in Genesis, 'The abyss which was broken up,' and 'The cataracts of heaven?' For an abyss does not get broken up, and heaven has no cataracts."

The abbé closed his eyelids, then replied that it was always necessary to distinguish between the sense and the letter. Things which shock you at first, turn out right when they are sifted.

"Very well, but how do you explain the rain which passed over the highest mountains—those that are two leagues in height. Just think of it! Two leagues!—a depth of water that makes two leagues!"

"I am ignorant of his motives; it was, no doubt, to inspire a salutary fear in the people of whom he was the leader."

Through the garden gate they saw M. Girbal, superintendent of taxes, making his way in, together with Captain Heurtaux, a landowner; and Beljambe, the innkeeper, appeared, assisting with his arm Langlois, the grocer, who walked with difficulty on account of his catarrh.

"Excuse me, M. Jeufroy. The weight of the atmosphere, science demonstrates to us, is equal to that of a mass of water which would make a covering of ten metres [8] around the globe. Consequently, if all the air that had been condensed fell down in a liquid state, it would augment very little the mass of existing waters."

The curé lost patience. "Will you deny that shells have been found on the mountains? What put them there, if not the Deluge? They are not accustomed, I believe, to grow out of the ground of themselves alone, like carrots!" And this joke having made the assembly laugh, he added, pressing his lips together: "Unless this be another discovery of science!"

Bouvard was pleased to reply by referring to the rising of mountains, the theory of Elie de Beaumont.

Foureau hastened to explain: "He is from Caen. I have seen him at the Prefecture."

"But if your Deluge," Bouvard broke in again, "had sent shells drifting, they would be found broken on the surface, and not at depths of three hundred metres sometimes."

The priest fell back on the truth of the Scriptures, the tradition of the human race, and the animals discovered in the ice in Siberia.

The earth, in Pécuchet's view, was much older. "The delta of the Mississippi goes back to tens of thousands of years. The actual epoch is a hundred thousand, at least. The lists of Manetho——"

The Count de Faverges appeared on the scene. They were all silent at his approach.

Bouvard immediately pleaded that they had a right, as geologists, to discuss religion.

"Take care," said the count; "you know the phrase, my dear sir, 'A little science takes us away from it, a great deal leads us back to it'?" And in a tone at the same time haughty and paternal: "Believe me, you will come back to it! you will come back to it!"

"Perhaps so. But what were we to think of a book in which it is pretended that the light was created before the sun? as if the sun were not the sole cause of light!"

Bouvard, without answering this point, strongly denied that light could be on one side and darkness on the other, that evening and morning could have existed when there were no stars, or that the animals made their appearance suddenly, instead of being formed by crystallisation.

As the walks were too narrow, while gesticulating, they trod on the flower-borders. Langlois took a fit of coughing.

"No! let me speak!" And Bouvard, growing more heated, went on to say that man was descended from the ape!

All the vestrymen looked at each other, much amazed, and as if to assure themselves that they were not apes.

Bouvard went on: "By comparing the fœtus of a woman, of a bitch, of a bird, of a frog——"

"For my part, I go farther!" cried Pécuchet. "Man is descended from the fishes!"

The two comrades had not given the Abbé Jeufroy such a fall as they expected; therefore, Pécuchet found in him "the stamp of Jesuitism." His "boreal light," however, caused them uneasiness. They searched for it in Orbigny's manual.

"This is a hypothesis to explain why the vegetable fossils of Baffin's Bay resemble the Equatorial plants. We suppose, in place of the sun, a great luminous source of heat which has now disappeared, and of which the Aurora Borealis is but perhaps a vestige."

Then a doubt came to them as to what proceeds from man, and, in their perplexity, they thought of Vaucorbeil.

He had not followed up his threats. As of yore, he passed every morning before their grating, striking all the bars with his walking-stick one after the other.

Bouvard watched him, and, having stopped him, said he wanted to submit to him a curious point in anthropology.

They continued their studies, but without enthusiasm, being weary of eocene and miocene, of Mount Jurillo, of the Julia Island, of the mammoths of Siberia and of the fossils, invariably compared in all the authors to "medals which are authentic testimonies," so much so that one day Bouvard threw his knapsack on the ground, declaring that he would not go any farther.

"Geology is too defective. Some parts of Europe are hardly known. As for the rest, together with the foundation of the oceans, we shall always be in a state of ignorance on the subject."

"I don't believe in it, this mineral kingdom, since organic substances have taken part in the formation of flint, of chalk, and perhaps of gold. Hasn't the diamond been charcoal; coal a collection of vegetables? and by heating it to I know not how many degrees, we get the sawdust of wood, so that everything passes, everything goes to ruin, and everything is transformed. Creation is carried out in an undulating and fugitive fashion. Much better to occupy ourselves with something else."

He stretched himself on his back and went to sleep, while Pécuchet, with his head down and one knee between his hands, gave himself up to his own reflections.

A border of moss stood on the edge of a hollow path overhung by ash trees, whose slender tops quivered; angelica, mint, and lavender exhaled warm, pungent odours. The atmosphere was drowsy, and Pécuchet, in a kind of stupor, dreamed of the innumerable existences scattered around him—of the insects that buzzed, the springs hidden beneath the grass, the sap of plants, the birds in their nests, the wind, the clouds—of all Nature, without seeking to unveil her mysteries, enchanted by her power, lost in her grandeur.

"That's easy," answered a man who was passing by in his shirt-sleeves with a plank on his shoulder. And they recognised that vagabond to whom, on a former occasion, Bouvard had given a glass of wine. He seemed ten years younger, wore his hair foppishly curled, his moustache well waxed, and twisted his figure about in quite a Parisian fashion. After walking about a hundred paces, he opened the gateway of a farmyard, threw down his plank against the wall, and led them into a large kitchen.

A young girl appeared. At a word from him she drew some liquor and came back to the table to serve the gentlemen.

Her wheat-coloured head-bands fell over a cap of grey linen. Her worn dress of poor material fell down her entire body without a crease, and, with her straight nose and blue eyes, she had about her something dainty, rustic, and ingenuous.

"She's nice, eh?" said the joiner, while she was bringing them the glasses. "You might take her for a lady dressed up as a peasant-girl, and yet able to do rough work! Poor little heart, come! When I'm rich I'll marry you!"

"You are always talking nonsense, Monsieur Gorju," she replied, in a soft voice, with a slightly drawling accent.

A stable boy came in to get some oats out of an old chest, and let the lid fall down so awkwardly that it made splinters of wood fly upwards.

Gorju declaimed against the clumsiness of all "these country fellows," then, on his knees in front of the article of furniture, he tried to put the piece in its place. Pécuchet, while offering to assist him, traced beneath the dust faces of notable characters.

It was a chest of the Renaissance period, with a twisted fringe below, vine branches in the corner, and little columns dividing its front into five portions. In the centre might be seen Venus-Anadyomene standing on a shell, then Hercules and Omphale, Samson and Delilah, Circe and her swine, the daughters of Lot making their father drunk; and all this in a state of complete decay, the chest being worm-eaten, and even its right panel wanting.

Gorju took a candle, in order to give Pécuchet a better view of the left one, which exhibited Adam and Eve under a tree in Paradise in an affectionate attitude.

And he dragged Pécuchet towards the fruit-garden, where Madame Castillon, the mistress, was spreading linen.

Mélie, when she had washed her hands, took from where it lay beside the window her lace-frame, sat down in the broad daylight and worked.

The lintel of the door enclosed her like a picture-frame. The bobbins disentangled themselves under her fingers with a sound like the clicking of castanets. Her profile remained bent.

Bouvard asked her questions as to her family, the part of the country she came from, and the wages she got.

She was from Ouistreham, had no relations alive, and earned seventeen shillings a month; in short, she pleased him so much that he wished to take her into his service to assist old Germaine.

Pécuchet reappeared with the mistress of the farm-house, and, while they went on with their bargaining, Bouvard asked Gorju in a very low tone whether the girl would consent to become their servant.

The bargain had just been concluded, the price fixed for the chest being thirty-five francs. They were to come to an understanding about the repairs.

They had scarcely got out into the yard when Bouvard spoke of his intentions with regard to Mélie.

Pécuchet stopped (in order the better to reflect), opened his snuff-box, took a pinch, and, wiping the snuff off his nose:

"Indeed, it is a good idea. Good heavens! yes! why not? Besides, you are the master."

Ten minutes afterwards, Gorju showed himself on the top of a ditch, and questioning them: "When do you want me to bring you the chest?"

CHAPTER IV.

Researches in Archæology.

Six months later they had become archæologists, and their house was like a museum.

In the vestibule stood an old wooden beam. The staircase was encumbered with the geological specimens, and an enormous chain was stretched on the ground all along the corridor. They had taken off its hinges the door between the two rooms in which they did not sleep, and had condemned the outer door of the second in order to convert both into a single apartment.

As soon as you crossed the threshold, you came in contact with a stone trough (a Gallo-Roman sarcophagus); the ironwork next attracted your attention. Fixed to the opposite wall, a warming-pan looked down on two andirons and a hearthplate representing a monk caressing a shepherdess. On the boards all around, you saw torches, locks, bolts, and nuts of screws. The floor was rendered invisible beneath fragments of red tiles. A table in the centre exhibited curiosities of the rarest description: the shell of a Cauchoise cap, two argil urns, medals, and a phial of opaline glass. An upholstered armchair had at its back a triangle worked with guipure. A piece of a coat of mail adorned the partition to the right, and on the other side sharp spikes sustained in a horizontal position a unique specimen of a halberd.

The second room, into which two steps led down, contained the old books which they had brought with them from Paris, and those which, on their arrival, they had found in a press. The leaves of the folding-doors had been removed hither. They called it the library.

The back of the door was entirely covered by the genealogical tree of the Croixmare family. In the panelling on the return side, a pastel of a lady in the dress of the period of Louis XV. made a companion picture to the portrait of Père Bouvard. The casing of the glass was decorated with a sombrero of black felt, and a monstrous galoche filled with leaves, the remains of a nest.

Two cocoanuts (which had belonged to Pécuchet since his younger days) flanked on the chimney-piece an earthenware cask on which a peasant sat astride. Close by, in a straw basket, was a little coin brought up by a duck.

In front of the bookcase stood a shell chest of drawers trimmed with plush. The cover of it supported a cat with a mouse in its mouth—a petrifaction from St. Allyre; a work-box, also of shell work, and on this box a decanter of brandy contained a Bon Chrétien pear.

But the finest thing was a statue of St. Peter in the embrasure of the window. His right hand, covered with a glove of apple-green colour, was pressing the key of Paradise. His chasuble, ornamented with fleurs-de-luce, was azure blue, and his tiara very yellow, pointed like a pagoda. He had flabby cheeks, big round eyes, a gaping mouth, and a crooked nose shaped like a trumpet. Above him hung a canopy made of an old carpet in which you could distinguish two Cupids in a circle of roses, and at his feet, like a pillar, rose a butter-pot bearing these words in white letters on a chocolate ground: "Executed in the presence of H.R.H. the Duke of Angoulême at Noron, 3rd of October, 1847."

Pécuchet, from his bed, saw all these things in a row, and sometimes he went as far as Bouvard's room to lengthen the perspective.

One spot remained empty, exactly opposite to the coat of arms, that intended for the Renaissance chest. It was not finished; Gorju was still working at it, jointing the panels in the bakehouse, squaring them or undoing them.

At eleven o'clock he took his breakfast, chatted after that with Mélie, and often did not make his appearance again for the rest of the day.

In order to have pieces of furniture in good style, Bouvard and Pécuchet went scouring the country. What they brought back was not suitable; but they had come across a heap of curious things. Their first passion was a taste for articles of virtù; then came the love of the Middle Ages.

To begin with, they visited cathedrals; and the lofty naves mirroring themselves in the holy-water fonts, the glass ornaments dazzling as hangings of precious stones, the tombs in the recesses of the chapels, the uncertain light of crypts—everything, even to the coolness of the walls, thrilled them with a shudder of joy, a religious emotion.

They were soon able to distinguish the epochs, and, disdainful of sacristans, they would say: "Ha! a Romanesque apsis!" "That's of the twelfth century!" "Here we are falling back again into the flamboyant!"

They strove to interpret the sculptured symbols on the capitals, such as the two griffins of Marigny pecking at a tree in blossom; Pécuchet read a satire in the singers with grotesque jaws which terminate the mouldings at Feugerolles; and as for the exuberance of the man that covers one of the mullions at Hérouville, that was a proof, according to Bouvard, of our ancestors' love of broad jokes.

They ended by not tolerating the least symptom of decadence. All was decadence, and they deplored vandalism, and thundered against badigeon.

But the style of a monument does not always agree with its supposed date. The semicircular arch of the thirteenth century still holds sway in Provence. The ogive is, perhaps, very ancient; and authors dispute as to the anteriority of the Romanesque to the Gothic. This want of certainty disappointed them.

After the churches they studied fortresses—those of Domfront and Falaise. They admired under the gate the grooves of the portcullis, and, having reached the top, they first saw all the country around them, then the roofs of the houses in the town, the streets intersecting one another, the carts on the square, the women at the washhouse. The wall descended perpendicularly as far as the palisade; and they grew pale as they thought that men had mounted there, hanging to ladders. They would have ventured into the subterranean passages but that Bouvard found an obstacle in his stomach and Pécuchet in his horror of vipers.

They desired to make the acquaintance of the old manor-houses—Curcy, Bully, Fontenay, Lemarmion, Argonge. Sometimes a Carlovingian tower would show itself at the corner of some farm-buildings behind a heap of manure. The kitchen, garnished with stone benches, made them dream of feudal junketings. Others had a forbiddingly fierce aspect with their three enceintes still visible, their loopholes under the staircase, and their high turrets with pointed sides. Then they came to an apartment in which a window of the Valois period, chased so as to resemble ivory, let in the sun, which heated the grains of colza that strewed the floor. Abbeys were used as barns. The inscriptions on tombstones were effaced. In the midst of fields a gable-end remained standing, clad from top to bottom in ivy which trembled in the wind.

A number of things excited in their breasts a longing to possess them—a tin pot, a paste buckle, printed calicoes with large flowerings. The shortness of money restrained them.

By a happy chance, they unearthed at Balleroy in a tinman's house a Gothic church window, and it was big enough to cover, near the armchair, the right side of the casement up to the second pane. The steeple of Chavignolles displayed itself in the distance, producing a magnificent effect. With the lower part of a cupboard Gorju manufactured a prie-dieu to put under the Gothic window, for he humoured their hobby. So pronounced was it that they regretted monuments about which nothing at all is known—such as the villa residence of the bishops of Séez.

"Bayeux," says M. de Caumont, "must have possessed a theatre." They searched for the site of it without success.

The village of Montrecy contained a meadow celebrated for the number of medals which chanced formerly to have been found there. They calculated on making a fine harvest in this place. The caretaker refused to admit them.

They were not more fortunate as to the connection which existed between a cistern at Falaise and the faubourg of Caen. Ducks which had been put in there reappeared at Vaucelles, quacking, "Can, can, can"—whence is derived the name of the town!

At the inn of Mesnil-Villement, in 1816, M. Galeron got a breakfast for the sum of four sous. They took the same meal there, and ascertained with surprise that things were altered!

Who was the founder of the abbey of St. Anne? Is there any relationship between Marin Onfroy, who, in the twelfth century, imported a new kind of potato, and Onfroy, governor of Hastings at the period of the Conquest? How were they to procure L'Astucieuse Pythonisse, a comedy in verse by one Dutrezor, produced at Bayeux, and just now exceedingly rare? Under Louis XIV., Hérambert Dupaty, or Dupastis Hérambert, composed a work which has never appeared, full of anecdotes about Argentan: the question was how to recover these anecdotes. What have become of the autograph memoirs of Madame Dubois de la Pierre, consulted for the unpublished history of L'Aigle by Louis Dasprès, curate of St. Martin? So many problems, so many curious points, to clear up.

Accordingly, they put on their blouses, in order not to put people on their guard, and, in the guise of hawkers, they presented themselves at houses, where they expressed a desire to buy up old papers. They obtained heaps of them. These included school copybooks, invoices, newspapers that were out of date—nothing of any value.

He was absorbed in Celtic studies, and while summarily replying to their questions put others to them.

Had they observed in their rounds any traces of dog-worship, such as are seen at Montargis, or any special circumstances with regard to the fires on St. John's night, marriages, popular sayings, etc.? He even begged of them to collect for him some of those flint axes, then called celtæ, which the Druids used in their criminal holocausts.

They procured a dozen of them through Gorju, sent him the smallest of them, and with the others enriched the museum. There they walked with delight, swept the place themselves, and talked about it to all their acquaintances.

The beam was nothing less than the old gibbet of Falaise, according to the joiner who had sold it, and who had got this information from his grand-father.

The big chain in the corridor came from the subterranean cells of the keep of Torteval. In the notary's opinion it resembled the boundary chains in front of the entrance-courts of manor-houses. Bouvard was convinced that it had been used in former times to bind the captives. He opened the door of the first chamber.

"To heat the stoves. But let us be a little regular, if you please. This is a tomb discovered in an inn where they made use of it as a horse-trough."

After this, Bouvard took up the two urns filled with a substance which consisted of human dust, and he drew the phials up to his eyes, for the purpose of showing the way the Romans used to shed tears in it.

Indeed it was a rather grave subject for a lady. So he next drew out of a case several copper coins, together with a silver denarius.

The coat of mail which he was examining slipped out of his fingers; some of the links snapped.

Bouvard stifled his annoyance. He had even the politeness to unfasten the halberd, and, bending forward, raising his arms and stamping with his heels, he made a show of hamstringing a horse, stabbing as if with a bayonet and overpowering an enemy.

The cat of St. Allyre much astonished her, the pear in the decanter not quite so much; then, when she came to the chimney-piece: "Ha! here's a hat that would need mending!"

It was the head-piece of a robber chief under the Directory, David de la Bazoque, caught in the act of treason, and immediately put to death.

Marescot smiled disdainfully as he gazed at the different objects. He did not understand this galoche having been the sign of a hosier, nor the purport of the earthenware cask—a common cider-keg—and, to be candid, the St. Peter was lamentable with his drunkard's physiognomy.

After this, she found fault on the score of propriety with the low dress of the lady in the powdered wig.

"Where is the harm," replied Bouvard, "when one possesses something beautiful?" And he added in a lower tone: "Just as you are yourself, I'm sure."

(The notary turned his back on them, and studied the branches of the Croixmare family.)

She made no response but began to play with her long gold chain. Her bosom swelled out the black taffeta of her corsage, and, with her eyelashes slightly drawn together, she lowered her chin like a turtle-dove bridling up; then, with an ingenuous air:

"It is unknown; she was one of the Regent's mistresses, you know; he who played so many pranks."

And the notary, without giving her time to finish the sentence, deplored this example of a prince carried away by his passions.

The two gentlemen protested, and then followed a dialogue on women and on love. Marescot declared that there were many happy unions; sometimes even, without suspecting it, we have close beside us what we require for our happiness.

The allusion was direct. The widow's cheeks flushed scarlet; but, recovering her composure almost the next moment:

They traced on its surface a scarlet cloak and two angels' wings. All the rest was lost under the leads which held in equilibrium the numerous breakages in the glass. The day was declining; the shadows were lengthening; Madame Bordin had become grave.

Bouvard withdrew, and presently reappeared muffled up in a woollen wrapper, then knelt down at the prie-dieu with his elbows out, his face in his hands, the light of the sun falling on his bald patch; and he was conscious of this effect, for he said:

Then he raised his forehead on one side, with swimming eyes, and trying to give a mystical expression to his face. The solemn voice of Pécuchet was heard in the corridor:

"Don't be afraid. It is I." And he entered, his head covered with a helmet—an iron pot with pointed ear-pieces.

Bouvard did not quit the prie-dieu. The two others remained standing. A minute slipped away in glances of amazement.

Madame Bordin appeared rather cold to Pécuchet. However he wished to know whether everything had been shown to them.

"It seems to me so." And pointing towards the wall: "Ah! pray excuse us; there is an object which we may restore in a moment."

The widow and Marescot thereupon took their leave. The two friends conceived the idea of counterfeiting a competition. They set out on a race after each other; one giving the other the start. Pécuchet won the helmet.

Bouvard congratulated him upon it, and received praises from his friend on the subject of the wrapper.

Mélie arranged it with cords, in the fashion of a gown. They took turns about in receiving visits.

They had visits from Girbal, Foureau, and Captain Heurtaux, and then from inferior persons—Langlois, Beljambe, their husbandmen, and even the servant-girls of their neighbours; and, on each occasion, they went over the same explanations, showed the place where the chest would be, affected a tone of modesty, and claimed indulgence for the obstruction.

Pécuchet on these days wore the Zouave's cap which he had formerly in Paris, considering it more in harmony with an artistic environment. At a particular moment, he would put the helmet on his head, and incline it over the back of his neck, in order to have his face free. Bouvard did not forget the movement with the halberd; finally, with one glance, they would ask each other whether the visitor was worthy of having "the monk of the Middle Ages" represented.

What a thrill they felt when M. de Faverges' carriage drew up before the garden gate! He had only a word to say to them. This was the occasion of his visit:

Hurel, his man of business, had informed him that, while searching everywhere for documents, they had bought up old papers at the farm of Aubrye.

Had they not discovered some letters of Baron de Gonneval, a former aide-de-camp of the Duke of Angoulême, who had stayed at Aubrye? He wished to have this correspondence for family reasons.

They had not got it in the house, but they had in their possession something that would interest him if he would be good enough to follow them into their library.

Never before had such well-polished boots creaked in the corridor. They knocked against the sarcophagus. He even went near smashing several tiles, moved an armchair about, descended two steps; and, when they reached the second chamber, they showed him under the canopy, in front of the St. Peter, the butter-pot made at Noron.

Bouvard and Pécuchet thought that the date might some time be of use. Through politeness, the nobleman inspected their museum. He kept repeating, "Charming! very nice!" all the time giving his mouth little taps with the handle of his switch; and said that, for his part, he thanked them for having rescued those remains of the Middle Ages, an epoch of religious faith and chivalrous devotion. He loved progress, and would have given himself up like them to these interesting studies, but that politics, the General Council, agriculture, a veritable whirlwind, drove him away from them.

"After you, however, one would have merely gleanings, for soon you will have captured all the curiosities of the department."

However, one might still discover some at Chavignolles; for example, there was, close to the cemetery wall in the lane, a holy-water basin buried under the grass from time immemorial.

They were pleased with the information, then exchanged a significant glance—"Is it worth the trouble?"—but already the Count was opening the door.

As he passed out of the house into the grounds, he observed Gorju smoking his pipe with folded arms.

"You employ this fellow? I would not put much confidence in him in a time of disturbance."

They questioned her, and she told them she had been employed on his farm. She was that little girl who poured out drink for the harvesters when they came there two years before. They had taken her on as a help at the château, and dismissed her in consequence of false reports.

As for Gorju, how could they find fault with him? He was very handy, and showed the utmost consideration for them.

Next day, at dawn, they repaired to the cemetery. Bouvard felt with his walking-stick at the spot indicated. They heard the sound of a hard substance. They pulled up some nettles, and discovered a stone basin, a baptismal font, out of which plants were sprouting. It is not usual, however, to bury baptismal fonts outside churches.

Pécuchet made a sketch of it; Bouvard wrote out a description of it; and they sent both to Larsoneur. His reply came immediately.

However, let them be careful about the matter. The axe was doubtful; and as much for his sake as for their own, he pointed out a series of works to be consulted.

In a postscript, Larsoneur confessed his longing to have a look at this bowl, which opportunity would be afforded him in a few days, when he would be starting on a trip from Brittany.

According to this science, the ancient Gauls, our ancestors, adored Kirk and Kron, Taranis Esus, Nelalemnia, Heaven and Earth, the Wind, the Waters, and, above all, the great Teutates, who is the Saturn of the Pagans; for Saturn, when he reigned in Phœnicia, wedded a nymph named Anobret, by whom he had a child called Jeüd. And Anobret presents the same traits as Sara; Jeüd was sacrificed (or near being so), like Isaac; therefore, Saturn is Abraham; whence the conclusion must be drawn that the religion of the Gauls had the same principles as that of the Jews.

Their society was very well organised. The first class of persons amongst them included the people, the nobility, and the king; the second, the jurisconsults; and in the third, the highest, were ranged, according to Taillepied, "the various kinds of philosophers," that is to say, the Druids or Saronides, themselves divided into Eubages, Bards, and Vates.

One section of them prophesied, another sang, while a third gave instruction in botany, medicine, history, and literature, in short, all the arts of their time.

Pythagoras and Plato were their pupils. They taught metaphysics to the Greeks, sorcery to the Persians, aruspicy to the Etruscans, and to the Romans the plating of copper and the traffic in hams.

But of this people, who ruled the ancient world, there remain only stones either isolated or in groups of three, or placed together so as to resemble a rude chamber, or forming enclosures.

Bouvard and Pécuchet, filled with enthusiasm, studied in succession the stone on the Post-farm at Ussy, the Coupled Stone at Quest, the Standing Stone near L'Aigle, and others besides.

All these blocks, of equal insignificance, speedily bored them; and one day, when they had just seen the menhir at Passais, they were about to return from it when their guide led them into a beech wood, which was blocked up with masses of granite, like pedestals or monstrous tortoises. The most remarkable of them is hollowed like a basin. One of its sides rises, and at the further end two channels run down to the ground; this must have been for the flowing of blood—impossible to doubt it! Chance does not make these things.

The roots of the trees were intertwined with these rugged pedestals. In the distance rose columns of fog like huge phantoms. It was easy to imagine under the leaves the priests in golden tiaras and white robes, and their human victims with arms bound behind their backs, and at the side of the bowl the Druidess watching the red stream, whilst around her the multitude yelled, to the accompaniment of cymbals and of trumpets made from the horns of the wild bull.

Immediately they decided on their plan. And one night, by the light of the moon, they took the road to the cemetery, stealing in like thieves, in the shadows of the houses. The shutters were fastened, and quiet reigned around every dwelling-place; not a dog barked.

Gorju accompanied them. They set to work. All that could be heard was the noise of stones knocking against the spade as it dug through the soil.

The vicinity of the dead was disagreeable to them. The church clock struck with a rattling sound, and the rosework on its tympanum looked like an eye espying a sacrilege. At last they carried off the bowl.

The abbé, who was taking the air at his door, begged of them to do him the honour of a visit, and, having introduced them into his breakfast-parlour, he gazed at them in a singular fashion.

In the middle of the sideboard, between the plates, was a soup-tureen decorated with yellow bouquets.

"It is old Rouen," returned the curé; "an heirloom. Amateurs set a high value on it—M. Marescot especially." As for him, thank God, he had no love of curiosities; and, as they appeared not to understand, he declared that he had seen them himself stealing the baptismal font.

The two archæologists were quite abashed. The article in question was not in actual use.

No doubt! But, at least, let them be permitted to get a painter to make a drawing of it.

It was not he whom they feared, but rather Larsoneur. When he would be passing through Chavignolles, he would feel a hankering after the bowl; and his chatterings might reach the ears of the Government. Out of prudence they kept it hidden in the bakehouse, then in the arbour, in the trunk, in a cupboard. Gorju was tired of dragging it about.

The possession of such a rare piece of furniture bound them the closer to the Celticism of Normandy.

Its sources were Egyptian. Séez, in the department of the Orne, is sometimes written Saïs, like the city of the Delta. The Gauls swore by the bull, an idea derived from the bull Apis. The Latin name of Bellocastes, which was that of the people of Bayeux, comes from Beli Casa, dwelling, sanctuary of Belus—Belus and Osiris, the same divinity!

"There is nothing," says Mangou de la Londe, "opposed to the idea that druidical monuments existed near Bayeux." "This country," adds M. Roussel, "is like the country in which the Egyptians built the temple of Jupiter Ammon."

So then there was a temple in which riches were shut up. All the Celtic monuments contain them.

"In 1715," relates Dom Martin, "one Sieur Heribel exhumed in the vicinity of Bayeux, several argil vases full of bones, and concluded (in accordance with tradition and authorities which had disappeared) that this place, a necropolis, was the Mount Faunus in which the Golden Calf is buried."

In the first place, where is Mount Faunus? The authors do not point it out. The natives know nothing about it. It would be necessary to devote themselves to excavations, and with that view they forwarded a petition to the prefect, to which they got no response.

Several of them contain skeletons that have the position of the fœtus in the mother's womb. This meant that for them the tomb was, as it were, a second gestation, preparing them for another life. Therefore the barrow symbolises the female organ, just as the raised stone is the male organ.

In fact, where menhirs are found, an obscene creed has persisted. Witness what took place at Guerande, at Chichebouche, at Croissic, at Livarot. In former times the towers, the pyramids, the wax tapers, the boundaries of roads, and even the trees had a phallic meaning. Bouvard and Pécuchet collected whipple-trees of carriages, legs of armchairs, bolts of cellars, apothecaries' pestles. When people came to see them they would ask, "What do you think that is like?" and then they would confide the secret. And, if anyone uttered an exclamation, they would shrug their shoulders in pity.

One evening as they were dreaming about the dogmas of the Druids, the abbé cautiously stole in.

Immediately they showed the museum, beginning with the church window; but they longed to reach the new compartment—that of the phallus. The ecclesiastic stopped them, considering the exhibition indecent. He came to demand back his baptismal font.

Bouvard and Pécuchet begged for another fortnight, the time necessary for taking a moulding of it.

Pécuchet, who had left the room a minute, on coming back slipped a napoleon into his hand.

To give back the bowl, the bowl for sacrifices! Never, while they lived! They were even anxious to learn Hebrew, which is the mother-tongue of Celtic, unless indeed the former language be derived from it! And they had planned a journey into Brittany, commencing with Rennes, where they had an appointment with Larsoneur, with a view of studying that urn mentioned in the Memorials of the Celtic Academy, which appeared to have contained the ashes of Queen Artimesia, when the mayor entered unceremoniously with his hat on, like the boorish individual he was.

In the first place, this holy-water basin was not wanted, as it really was not a holy-water basin at all. They would prove this by a vast number of scientific reasons. Next, they offered to acknowledge in their will that it belonged to the parish. They even proposed to buy it.

The twenty francs accepted by M. Jeufroy furnished a proof of the contract, and if he compelled them to go before a justice of the peace, so much the worse: he would be taking a false oath!

During these disputes he had again seen the soup-tureen many times, and in his soul had sprung up the desire, the thirst for possession of this piece of earthenware. If the curé was willing to give it to him, he would restore the bowl, otherwise not.

Through weariness or fear of scandal, M. Jeufroy yielded it up. It was placed amongst their collection near the Cauchoise cap. The bowl decorated the church porch; and they consoled themselves for the loss of it with the reflection that the people of Chavignolles were ignorant of its value.

But the soup-tureen inspired them with a taste for earthenware—a new subject for study and for explorations through the country.

It was the period when persons of good position were looking out for old Rouen dishes. The notary possessed a few of them, and derived from the fact, as it were, an artistic reputation which was prejudicial to his profession, but for which he made up by the serious side of his character.

When he learned that Bouvard and Pécuchet had got the soup-tureen, he came to propose to them an exchange.

"Let us say no more about it!" and Marescot proceeded to examine their ceramic collection.

All the specimens hung up along the wall were blue on a background of dirty white, and some showed their horn of plenty in green or reddish tones. There were shaving-dishes, plates and saucers, objects long sought for, and brought back in the recesses of one's frock-coat close to one's heart.

Marescot praised them, and then talked about other kinds of faïence, the Hispano-Arabian, the Dutch, the English, and the Italian, and having dazzled them with his erudition:

He made it ring by rapping on it with his fingers, then he contemplated the two S's painted on the lid.

"Ho! ho! Rouen, properly speaking, would not have any mark. When Moutiers was unknown, all the French faïence came from Nevers. So with Rouen to-day. Besides, they imitate it to perfection at El-bœuf."

"Majolica is cleverly imitated. Your specimen is of no value; and as for me, I was about to do a downright foolish thing."

When the notary had gone, Pécuchet sank into an armchair in a state of nervous prostration.

"We shouldn't have given back the bowl," said Bouvard; "but you get excited, and always lose your head."

"Yes, I do lose my head"; and Pécuchet, snatching up the soup-tureen, flung it some distance away from him against the sarcophagus.

Bouvard, more self-possessed, picked up the broken pieces one by one; and some time afterwards this idea occurred to him: "Marescot, through jealousy, might have been making fools of us!"

"There's nothing to show me that the soup-tureen was not genuine! Whereas the other specimens which he pretended to admire are perhaps counterfeit."

They even purposed to take Gorju along with them to assist them in their excavations.

For some time past, he had slept at the house, in order to finish the more quickly the repairing of the chest.

The prospect of a change of place annoyed him, and when they talked about menhirs and barrows which they calculated on seeing: "I know better ones," said he to them; "in Algeria, in the South, near the sources of Bou-Mursoug, you meet quantities of them." He then gave a description of a tomb which chanced to be open right in front of him, and which contained a skeleton squatting like an ape with its two arms around its legs.

Larsoneur, when they informed him of the circumstance, would not believe a word of it.

How does it happen that the monuments of the Gauls are shapeless, whereas these same Gauls were civilised in the time of Julius Cæsar? No doubt they were traceable to a more ancient people.

No matter; there is nothing to show that these monuments are the work of Gauls. "Show us a text!"

The Academician was displeased, and made no reply; and they were very glad of it, so much had the Druids bored them.

If they did not know what conclusion to arrive at as to earthenware and as to Celticism, it was because they were ignorant of history, especially the history of France.

The work of Anquetil was in their library; but the series of "do-nothing kings" amused them very little. The villainy of the mayors of the Palace did not excite their indignation, and they gave Anquetil up, repelled by the ineptitude of his reflections.

Dumouchel subscribed, in their names, to a circulating library, and forwarded to them the work of Augustin Thierry, together with two volumes of M. de Genoude.

According to Genoude, royalty, religion, and the national assemblies—here are "the principles" of the French nation, which go back to the Merovingians. The Carlovingians fell away from them. The Capetians, being in accord with the people, made an effort to maintain them. Absolute power was established under Louis XIII., in order to conquer Protestantism, the final effort of feudalism; and '89 is a return to the constitution of our ancestors.

Pécuchet admired his ideas. They excited Bouvard's pity, as he had read Augustin Thierry first: "What trash you talk with your French nation, seeing that France did not exist! nor the national assemblies! and the Carlovingians usurped nothing at all! and the kings did not set free the communes! Read for yourself."

Pécuchet gave way before the evidence, and surpassed him in scientific strictness. He would have considered himself dishonoured if he had said "Charlemagne" and not "Karl the Great," "Clovis" in place of "Clodowig."

Nevertheless he was beguiled by Genoude, deeming it a clever thing to join together both ends of French history, so that the middle period becomes rubbish; and, in order to ease their minds about it, they took up the collection of Buchez and Roux.

But the fustian of the preface, that medley of Socialism and Catholicism, disgusted them; and the excessive accumulation of details prevented them from grasping the whole.

It was during the summer of 1845, in the garden beneath the arbour. Pécuchet, his feet resting on a small chair, read aloud in his cavernous voice, without feeling tired, stopping to plunge his fingers into his snuff-box. Bouvard listened, his pipe in his mouth, his legs wide apart, and the upper part of his trousers unbuttoned.

Old men had spoken to them of '93, and recollections that were almost personal gave life to the prosy descriptions of the author. At that time the high-roads were covered with soldiers singing the "Marseillaise." At the thresholds of doors women sat sewing canvas to make tents. Sometimes came a wave of men in red caps, bending forward a pike, at the end of which could be seen a discoloured head with the hair hanging down. The lofty tribune of the Convention looked down upon a cloud of dust, amid which wild faces were yelling cries "Death!" Anyone who passed, at midday, close to the basin of the Tuileries could hear each blow of the guillotine, as if they were cutting up sheep.

And the breeze moved the vine-leaves of the arbour; the ripe barley swayed at intervals; a blackbird was singing. And, casting glances around them, they relished this tranquil scene.

What a pity that from the beginning they had failed to understand one another! For if the royalists had reflected like the patriots, if the court had exhibited more candour, and its adversaries less violence, many of the calamities would not have happened.

By force of chattering in this way they roused themselves into a state of excitement. Bouvard, being liberal-minded and of a sensitive nature, was a Constitutionalist, a Girondist, a Thermidorian; Pécuchet, being of a bilious temperament and a lover of authority, declared himself a sans-culotte, and even a Robespierrist. He expressed approval of the condemnation of the King, the most violent decrees, the worship of the Supreme Being. Bouvard preferred that of Nature. He would have saluted with pleasure the image of a big woman pouring out from her breasts to her adorers not water but Chambertin.

In order to have more facts for the support of their arguments they procured other works: Montgaillard, Prudhomme, Gallois, Lacretelle, etc.; and the contradictions of these books in no way embarrassed them. Each took from them what might vindicate the cause that he espoused.

Thus Bouvard had no doubt that Danton accepted a hundred thousand crowns to bring forward motions that would destroy the Republic; while in Pécuchet's opinion Vergniaud would have asked for six thousand francs a month.

"Never! Explain to me, rather, why Robespierre's sister had a pension from Louis XVIII."

"Not at all! It was from Bonaparte. And, since you take it that way, who is the person that a few months before Égalité's death had a secret conference with him? I wish they would reinsert in the Memoirs of La Campan the suppressed paragraphs. The death of the Dauphin appears to me equivocal. The powder magazine at Grenelle by exploding killed two thousand persons. The cause was unknown, they tell us: what nonsense!" For Pécuchet was not far from understanding it, and threw the blame for every crime on the manœuvres of the aristocrats, gold, and the foreigner.

In the mind of Bouvard there could be no dispute as to the use of the words, "Ascend to heaven, son of St. Louis," as to the incident about the virgins of Verdun, or as to the culottes clothed in human skin. He accepted Prudhomme's lists, a million of victims, exactly.

But the Loire, red with gore from Saumur to Nantes, in a line of eighteen leagues, made him wonder. Pécuchet in the same degree entertained doubts, and they began to distrust the historians.

For some the Revolution is a Satanic event; others declare it to be a sublime exception. The vanquished on each side naturally play the part of martyrs.

Thierry demonstrates, with reference to the Barbarians, that it is foolish to institute an inquiry as to whether such a prince was good or was bad. Why not follow this method in the examination of more recent epochs? But history must needs avenge morality: we feel grateful to Tacitus for having lacerated Tiberius. After all, whether the Queen had lovers; whether Dumouriez, since Valmy, intended to betray her; whether in Prairial it was the Mountain or the Girondist party that began, and in Thermidor the Jacobins or the Plain; what matters it to the development of the Revolution, of which the causes were far to seek and the results incalculable?

Therefore it was bound to accomplish itself, to be what it was; but, suppose the flight of the King without impediment, Robespierre escaping or Bonaparte assassinated—chances which depended upon an innkeeper proving less scrupulous, a door being left open, or a sentinel falling asleep—and the progress of the world would have taken a different direction.

They had no longer on the men and the events of that period a single well-balanced idea. In order to form an impartial judgment upon it, it would have been necessary to have read all the histories, all the memoirs, all the newspapers, and all the manuscript productions, for through the least omission might arise an error, which might lead to others without limit.

They abandoned the subject. But the taste for history had come to them, the need of truth for its own sake.

Perhaps it is easier to find it in more ancient epochs? The authors, being far removed from the events, ought to speak of them without passion. And they began the good Rollin.

"Wait a bit," said Pécuchet, rummaging at the end of their library, where lay heaped up the books of the last proprietor, an old lawyer, an accomplished man with a mania for literature; and, having put out of their places a number of novels and plays, together with an edition of Montesquieu and translations of Horace, he obtained what he was looking for—Beaufort's work on Roman History.

Titus Livius attributes the foundation of Rome to Romulus; Sallust gives the credit of it to the Trojans under Æneas. Coriolanus died in exile, according to Fabius Pictor; through the stratagems of Attius Tullius, if we may believe Dionysius. Seneca states that Horatius Cocles came back victorious; and Dionysius that he was wounded in the leg. And La Mothe le Vayer gives expression to similar doubts with reference to other nations.

There is no agreement as to the antiquity of the Chaldeans, the age of Homer, the existence of Zoroaster, the two empires of Assyria. Quintus Curtius has manufactured fables. Plutarch gives the lie to Herodotus. We should have a different idea of Cæsar if Vercingetorix had written his Commentaries.

Ancient history is obscure through want of documents. There is an abundance of them in modern history; and Bouvard and Pécuchet came back to France, and began Sismondi.