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._]

[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.

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.

[E] Letter of condolence to Saint-Ouen park.--Meeting of June 2, 1865. (See analytical summary of the Academy of Rouen.)

[F] Winter in the city. (Letter.--Meeting of Aug. 6th, 1863.)

[G] Winter in the city. (Letter.--Meeting Aug. 6th, 1863.)

[H] Vacations. (Familiar letter.--Meeting of Aug. 6th, 1861.)

Do not stop, by any means! Write dramas even, you who have such a keen conception of dramatic form! And rest assured, honourable sir, that if your "reputation were sufficiently established," and although like Louis Bouilhet's, your "talent" is not "proof against criticism," you are not "original" not "a first-class author," you will never be called "an imitator," even "sometimes successful," of Alfred de Musset!

Besides, your memory is at fault on this point. Did not one of your colleagues of the Academy of Rouen, at the meeting of Aug. 7th, 1862, praise Louis Bouilhet in flattering terms? He praised him so highly as a dramatic author, and denied so energetically that he was an imitator of Alfred de Musset, that when I wrote the preface to _Dernières Chansons_, I simply copied the words of my old friend, Alfred Nion, brother of M. Emile Nion, the gentleman that lacked boldness!

What was the gentleman "who has special charge of the fine arts" afraid of? Of obstructing your public by-ways? Poets like this one (begging your pardon) are not precisely innumerable. Since you have refused to accept his statue, _notwithstanding_ our gift of a fountain, you have lost one of your colleagues, M. Thubeuf. I do not wish to speak unbecomingly, or to insult a sorrowful family I have not the honour of knowing, but it seems to me that Nicholas-Louis-Juste Thubeuf is at the present moment as forgotten as if he never had existed, while Bouilhet's name is known over all Europe. _Aïssé_ is being played in St. Petersburg and London. His plays and verses will be printed in six, twenty, even a hundred years hence, and perhaps beyond that. A man is seldom remembered unless he has been amusing or serviceable. You are not able to be the former; grant us the latter. Instead of devoting your time to literary criticism, a pastime that is beyond your powers, attend to more serious things such as: the construction of a bridge; the construction of a bonded-warehouse; the widening of the Rue du Grand-Pont; the opening of a street, running from the Court-House to the docks; the much delayed completion of the spire of the cathedral, etc. Queer collection, indeed! It might be called "Museum of deferred projects."

You are so afraid of compromising yourselves, so afraid to act, that each outgoing administration hands its caution down to its successor. You think caution such a virtue that it would be a crime for you to act. Mediocrity is not detrimental, you think, but one must avoid being enterprising. When the public clamours, a committee is at once appointed; and from that time nothing is done. "We can do absolutely nothing; we await the committee's decision." Invincible argument to soothe public impatience!

Sometimes, however, you are bold enough to act; but it almost creates a scandal: as when the ex-Rue de l'Impératrice, now the Rue Jeanne-Darc, and the Square Solferino were opened in Rouen. Still: "Public parks are the style now, and Rouen must have one!"[I]

[I] M. Decorde's poetry. (Letter of condolence to Saint-Ouen Park, already cited.)

But the most important, though the most neglected, of all your projects is the distribution of water throughout the city. Take Saint-Sever, for example, where there is great need of it. What we proposed was, to erect, at any street corner, a small fountain adorned with a statue. Several of you had formally promised that our fountain should be erected; we were therefore greatly surprised at your decision, inasmuch as you are sometimes generous in these matters. The statue to Napoleon I. on the Place Saint-Ouen is an instance. You gave, for the erection of this masterpiece, which had cost 160,000 francs or thereabouts, the small sum of 30,000 francs! The council had appropriated the first time 10,000 francs; the second time, 8,000; and the third time, 5,000, as indemnity to the sculptor, because his _maquette_ had casually been overthrown by the committee--always the committee! What aptitude for art! For the statue of Pierre Corneille, proposed in 1805 and erected twenty-nine years later, 1834, you spent 7,037.38 francs--not a cent more. True, he was a great poet, and you are so considerate that you prefer to deprive yourselves of a necessity, rather than honour a second-rate poet!

Permit me to ask two questions: If this fountain, this useful public monument which we offered, had represented anything but Louis Bouilhet's bust, would you have refused it? If it had been intended for one of the capitalists of our district, whose fortune runs into the millions, would you have refused it? I doubt it.

Be careful, or you will be accused of despising those who cannot boast of a fortune! For such cautious men, who consider success the main object, you have sadly erred, gentlemen! The _Moniteur Universel_, _l'Ordre_, the _Paris-Journal_, the _Bien Public_, the _XIXème Siècle_, _l'Opinion Nationale_, the _Constitutionnel_, the _Gaulois_, the _Figaro_, in fact, nearly all the papers, were against you. To convince you, we will simply quote a few lines from the dean of modern critics, Jules Janin:

"When the time came for definitive compensation, the last hope of Louis Bouilhet's friends was dashed to the ground; they encountered all sorts of obstacles. His statue was refused a place in a city that his fame had made illustrious! His friends proposed in vain to erect a much needed fountain, so that the statue ornamenting it might not be thought the main object of this good deed. But how can unjust men understand the cruelty of such a refusal? They might erect a statue to war, but to a poet, never!"

Of the twenty-four composing the committee, eleven sided with us; and Messrs. Vaucquier du Traversin, F. Deschamps and Raoul Duval spoke eloquently in our favour. This affair is trifling in itself, but it may be noted as a characteristic feature of the century--of your class.

"I address myself to you no longer, gentlemen, but to all the _bourgeoisie_. Therefore I say: Conservators who conserve nothing, it is time to follow a different path. You speak of decentralizing, regenerating,--if so, rouse yourselves. Be active! Originate! French nobles lost their prestige for having had, during two centuries, the feelings of menials. The end of the _bourgeois_ is at hand, because their feelings are those of the rabble. I do not see that they read different papers, or hear different music, or that their pleasures are more refined. In one as in the other, it is the same love of money; the same wish to destroy idols; the same hatred of superior minds; the same meanness; the same crass ignorance."

Of the seven hundred members of l'Assemblée Nationale, how many are there who could name six kings of France, who know the first rudiments of political economy, who have even read Bastiat? The whole municipality of Rouen, who disowned a poet's talent, no doubt are ignorant of the rules of versification. They do not need to know them, so long as they do not meddle with poetry.

To be respected by those beneath us, we must respect those above us! Before educating the rabble, educate yourselves! Enlightened people, enlighten yourselves! Because of your disdain for superiority, you think you have abundant good sense, you are positive, you are practical. One is never really practical unless he carries it a little farther.... You would not enjoy the benefits of industry if your ancestors of the eighteenth century had had other ideals than common usefulness. How we scoffed at Germany--at her dreamers, her ideologists, her ethereal poets! Our milliards compensated her for the time well employed in perfecting plans. It seems to me, it was the dreamer Fichte who reorganized the Prussian army after Jena; and that the poet Koërner sent a few Uhlans against us about 1813!

You practical? Come! You cannot even hold a pen or a gun! You let convicts rob, imprison, and slaughter you! You have lost even the brute's instinct of defence; and when not only your life, but your purse (which ought to be dearer to you), is in danger, you lack the energy to drop a ballot into a box! With all your capital, all your wisdom, you never can form an association equal to _l'Internationale_! All your intellectual efforts consist of trembling for the future. Think! Hasten! or France, between a hideous demagogy and a stupid _bourgeoisie_, will sink lower and lower!

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.

SELECTED

CORRESPONDENCE

OF

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

WITH AN

INTIMATE STUDY OF THE AUTHOR

BY

CAROLINE COMMANVILLE

SIMON P. MAGEE

PUBLISHER

CHICAGO, ILL.

COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY

M. WALTER DUNNE

_Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_

INTIMATE REMEMBRANCES

OF

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

I.

* * * * *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

erected a sanctury=> erected a sanctuary {pg 9}

Pecuchet=> Pécuchet {pg 62}

two abysse's, twixt=> two abysses, 'twixt {pg 5 RABELAIS}

Le Deluge=> Le Déluge {pg 7 PREFACE TO LOST SONGS}

which Theophile Gautier called=> which Théophile Gautier called {pg 14 PREFACE TO LOST SONGS}

Comedie Française=> Comédie Française {pg 4 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

M. Faure=> M. Fauré {pg 4 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

Moliere's=> Molière's {pg 8 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

ex-Rue de l'Imperatrice=> ex-Rue de l'Impératrice {pg 11 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

a seeond-rate=> a second-rate {pg 12 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

alalthough=> although {pg 34 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

Eugene Suë=> Eugène Suë {pg 66 CORRESPONDENCE}

archælogical researches=> archæological researches {pg 86 CORRESPONDENCE}

l'Historie de Ma Vie=> l'Histoire de Ma Vie {pg 105 CORRESPONDENCE}

End of Project Gutenberg's Bouvard and Pécuchet, part 2, by Gustave Flaubert